Volume 5, Issue 7
November 18, 2009

The Latest

The 35th World Fantasy Convention, celebrating Edgar Allan Poe's 200th Birthday, was held from October 29 to November 1 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, just a few miles from our offices. We had a fun and profitable time selling at the Con, but the real enjoyment came from putting faces to the names of our mail order customers, running into people we hadn't seen since we closed the shop in 2004, hobnobbing with famous authors and catching up with people we hadn't seen since the last major convention. Of course, the absolute best part of the convention was standing around talking about books all weekend.

The 36th World Fantasy Convention, focusing on the whimsical side of fantasy, will be held in Columbus, Ohio from October 28-31, 2010. Guests and other details are to be announced.

In the past month we've attended 10 signings, not including the numerous
authors we caught up with at the World Fantasy Convention (see our Just Arrived page), and posted countless new items to our inventory.

We now have over 11000 items available through Biblio.

Scott & Tammie
Handee Books, LLC

Handee Books at World Fantasy 2009

What Scott's Been Reading

P.J. Tracy is the shared pseudonym of a mother-daughter writing team. They’ve produced four novels featuring the Monkeewrench group, the first of which is Monkeewrench. It’s the very model of the modern suspense novel, the product of an author who has studied just what makes a thriller successful.

The book begins with two unconnected murders; one committed in Minneapolis, the other in rural Wisconsin. Soon after the Minneapolis killing, Grace MacBride, the creative head of the Monkeewrench software company, begins receiving e-mails from someone identifying themselves as the killer. It quickly becomes apparent the killer is patterning his crimes after Monkeewrench’s upcoming game, Serial Killer Detective. As the game is only available to a small number of testers, when Grace and her coworkers take this information to the Minneapolis police they immediately become suspects themselves.

The author starts with an irresistible concept, throws in the right characters - the down-at-his-heels police detective and his slob partner, the small-town sheriff, the beautiful and capable woman haunted by her mysterious past - and hits all the right notes, throwing in some well thought-out plot elements and suspenseful moments. My one complaint about Monkeewrench is that at times it feels calculated and formulaic. But it did keep me reading late into the evening so I’ll not only pick up others in the series, I’ll recommend it to those who enjoy Patricia Cornwell's or John Sanford’s books as well.

One of the best things about the World Fantasy Convention is the gift bag full of books all attendees receive. There’s always cool stuff in the bag, but this year a few books immediately caught my attention.

First is Zoo by the singularly named Otsuichi. It’s a collection of very, very dark short stories, mostly horror, some science fiction, all designed to disturb. In the title story a man receives pictures in the mail every day depicting the decomposing body of his girlfriend. In another, a man hijacks a plane intending to crash it into the university which has denied him entrance. In a third a man recalls the creepy park in which he played as a child.

The most obvious comparison here is to the work of Koji Suzuki, author of The Ring and Dark Water, the source material for films of the same titles. Like Suzuki, Otsuichi finds the potential for horror in everyday occurrences - the dissolution of a relationship, moving house, playing in the park. But Suzuki is the superior writer, or at least has a better translator. Though Otsuichi possesses a great imagination and is capable of turning the occasional exceptional phrase, something about his stories feels spare and incomplete. Again, though, this may be the function of an unsympathetic translation. In the end, this book is unique and disturbing enough to recommend to Suzuki fans and watchers of Japanese horror cinema.

Also found in the bag was Planet Stories’ reissue of Robots Have No Tails, the complete collection of Henry Kuttner’s stories about Galloway Gallegher, the inventor who is a genius while drunk. Terrific stuff made even better by its presentation as an ersatz pulp magazine.

The best thing about the World Fantasy Convention is the social aspect; specifically, hundreds of people standing around talking about books and stories. I always come away from a convention with tons of things I want to read, or that I want to seek out. This year, in addition to the swag bag someone actually handed me a book and said, “you’ve got to read this”.

The Cold Dish is the first in Craig Johnson’s series starring Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire. Longmire’s been the sheriff of Absaroka County for nearly a quarter century and as the book opens is considering retirement. The mystery begins when one of four young men convicted of a heinous crime several years earlier turns up dead.

The mystery is well designed, but what elevates The Cold Dish above the typical is Johnson’s writing. His prose is colorful, he knows how to turn a phrase and he’s not above using a well constructed metaphor. His supporting cast - Walt’s best friend Henry Standing Bear, his coworkers Turk, Ferg, Ruby and especially Vic, the inhabitants of the community Walt serves, even the four young criminals - is expertly created and well delineated. The book is suspenseful, subtly humorous and carries an air of melancholy as Longmire’s professional life slowly winds down and his romantic life is on the upswing.

Thanks to David Lewis for putting a copy of this book in my hand. I recommend it to those who enjoy Tony Hillerman’s and Dashiell Hammett’s books, as well as later books by Thomas McGuane.

Reading now: The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk; also dipping into Lies Across America by James Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me.