Welcome to the newest feature I’ll probably forget to update and let slide for months on end. In Book Bubbin’, I’ll be taking a weekly look through BookBub’s featured novels and talk about one or two that I’ve read and recommend. Alternately, if I haven’t read any, I’ll talk about which ones look interesting to me. It’s going to be a fun way to pass the time in between releases. Feel free to chime in with whatever you pick up yourself, whatever you’re reading, or the like.
This week’s biggest pick for me is Charlie Huston’s Already Dead (featured on Amazon for $1.99 here). A pulpy, hard-boiled suspense series about a PI-type vampire named Joe Pitt circumnavigating various undead gangs of New York, the Pitt novels are lean, angry, and brilliantly written. Charlie Huston eschews a lot of the conventions of writing in favor of fast delivery and action, often times switching between first and third person and doing without quotation marks. If that sours you, think about giving it a once-over with the Look Inside feature. It’s something you learn not to notice remarkably quick.
I’ve mentioned it before, but Charlie Huston’s lean, pulpy style is one of the biggest influences on my Rankin Flats novels, outside of John Sandford. I love that he takes what is a traditional PI story and runs with it to some wild extremes, letting the genre evolve as his characters continue to get drawn into the world around them. I’m also a huge fan of his punchy, to-the-point dialogue.
Already Dead is the first of the series, and arguably the best. It’s a great jumping off point to introduce yourself to Charlie Huston’s work, and if you like it, I highly recommend his Hank Thompson trilogy (a non-supernatural suspense/action series) and Sleepless (a suspense novel against the backdrop of a massive plague inflicting – you guessed it – sleeplessness on the population).
Other books of note this week include Savage Season (Joe Lansdale), the first Hap and Leonard novel and the basis for the first season of the terrific TV series. I haven’t read this one yet but I did love the TV show, so I’m looking forward to diving into it sometime soon. My acquaintance Meghan Doidge also has I See Me, the first in her paranormal romance series Oracle on sale. I haven’t read it, but I mention it for fans of the more romantic aspects of my own novels. Plus, it’s free, so hey, it’s worth a shot for fans of the genre.
And that’s it! Reading anything good?
The Rankin Flats Observer 