Charlie Huston Catchpenny

Iva is having a episode.  Her daughter Circe is missing, likely dead.  Iva wants to remember Circe, grabbing an old stuffed toy bat and trying to inhale her, to capture the scents she left behind.  The power of her emotions is palpable, perhaps dangerous.  She is sinking into ritual, and needs help.  

Help is Sid Catchpenny, a thief with some unusual abilities.  He steals for a living, but he’s made some bad decisions.  Luckily, his friend Francois trusts him [sort of], and enlists his aid in finding Circe.  It proves that everything is connected.

Charlie Huston has written first-rate neo-noir and first-rate supernatural noir.  Catchpenny is [sort of] supernatural noir, but Huston brings an entirely original version of magic to his novel.  The details are too delightful for this reviewer to reveal. Catchpenny‘s setup enables for Huston to write a page-turning thriller that runs on emotions to power plot twists you don’t foresee, action that is heartbreaking. and character-driven reveals that feel revelatory.  It’s lots of fun, yes, Huston’s sense of humor and language ensure that.  It’s a fast read that lingers in the best possible manner.

Sid is a wonderful character, even if he spends much of the novel in an understandably depressed state.  He really needs his supernatural abilities, because much of Huston’s LA is running on a supernatural economy.  There’s a superb vision of the Laurel Canyon music scene as an eternal party where the living and the supposedly dead create jam sessions you never even dreamed about.  Huston manages to mix the macabre and the joyful without missing a beat.  Of course, Sid spirals down, and on his way he spends some time at a 40-years-long D&D session.  And just to keep Sid and reader watchful, the plastic people turn out in force and prove to be pretty unpleasant.

All this happens as fast as the reader can turn the pages.  Huston orchestrates an excellent finale, and a feeling that the well-described and imaginative mayhem actually contributes to the emotional resonance.  If you’ve not read Huston’s previous work, you’re in for a very pleasant follow-through; his other titles cover a wide range and are equally good.  If you have, you’ll be glad to see he’s back in the saddle, or as it were, the mirror.  Like the best literature, Catchpenny will have readers seeing their own mirror images differently, and paying attention rather closely.

Good times.  It had been, well a long time, since I last spoke with Charlie Huston.  We’re going to change that. In the interim, here’s the don’t-broadcast-this-on-radio version of our interview.  This one best enjoyed with an extra-long pour macchiato brewed on your Rancilio Sylvia Pro X.  Take your time making it, the bar below will wait and serves only the best conversations.

Angela Slatter The Briar Book of the Dead

Angela Slatter’s The Briar Book of the Dead fits like a magic slipper.  From the beginning, she makes a brand new world instantly familiar and welcoming.  Silverton is a small town with all the gothic attributes one associates with dark fairy tales.  The Briar witches live here and run the town with the lightest of touches.  The people are safe and prosperous, and the witches are safe from prosecution by a distant church.  Ellie is a Briar but not a witch.  She’s powerless in the world of the supernatural, but a natural bureaucrat and politician.  She makes sure all the non-magical work gets done, while her sisters keep the supernatural low-key and generally unobtrusive.  It’s a good deal until it comes undone.

As people and things go missing, Ellie discovers she can talk to ghosts.  It’s not the power she wanted, but it’s what she has.  Slatter leads the reader down a dark, delicious trail of murder and mystery, crafting strikingly realistic characters and an unreal world with ease.  She integrates mystery and the supernatural into the lives of a large cast of memorable characters, living and dead.  The feminism and politics that underlie her creation are ever-present and enjoyably supercharged by her imaginary embellishments. 

The Briar Book of the Dead is a pleasure to read because readers get to disappear into a lovely world that soon becomes embroiled in a tense mystery.  It’s very fast paced, as every step into greater danger feels like a right, reasonable decision made by smart people.  Slatter’s ability to orchestrate action and character is remarkable, and even the walk-on characters are memorable.  Moreover, she’s created a whole and diverse world to explore and leaves you wanting more adventure.  Her prose is gorgeous, which helps all of her creation have the whole feel of a place you could actually visit.  All that you needs must do is to open The Briar Book of the Dead.

Angela Slatter teaches writing, and The Briar Book of the Dead is a master class in how to do everything you might need or want to do in a novel.  Here’s a link to our spoiler-free discussion of the novel or let yourself be spellbound by pressing go below.

Gwendolyn Kiste The Haunting of Velkwood

We are a haunted species.  Memories of our mistakes, regret for what we have – or have not – done, the inadequacies of our responses to straightforward conundrums, our bad judgments of ourselves, all of them follow us relentlessly, accompanied by the intuition that they will outlast us, surviving our deaths no matter what we do to hasten our own demise.  Talitha Velkwood was not there when her suburban neighborhood disappeared, in an event that remains inexplicable.  Some 20 years on, she’s alive, sort of, scraping the bottom of a hand-to-mouth, minimum-wage existence.  The world has mostly moved on from The Velkwood Incident.  Talitha tried to leave home, but it follows her still.

With The Haunting of Velkwood, Gwendolyn Kiste reveals herself to be an author able to plumb the depths and heights of emotional, involving fiction.  This is a compelling and powerful novel, strikingly original in concept, deeply chilling, but filled with the colors of life, death, love, and memory.  Talitha’s narrative is both mournful and joyful.  

Talitha is taken away from her life of regret when she’s contacted by Jack, who represents a group of paranormal researchers.  They want her to return to her old haunts.  The world has let Velkwood pass by because nobody can get into the suburban block.  Jack and those working with him believe that Talitha can.

Kiste approaches the story with a melancholy intimacy.  Her prose is crisp, her plot is delightfully demented, but most importantly, her aim is true. The Haunting of Velkwood takes readers straight into the unreal even as it carries us forward with a very human heart.

Kiste masterfully turns a visit to an American suburb into an Otherworld journey.  Talitha discovers a battered, buffered past where time is lost, and memories are found.  Her friends from the neighborhood who also “survived,” Grace and Brett, are also haunted by the choices they all made in a past all would prefer to change or forget.  Kiste offers an eye-popping journey, and manages to find a beautiful, all-too-human surreal world at the heart of her book and her characters. The Haunting of Velkwood is a big-screen reading experience of our own smaller-than-life stories.  

Happily, Gwendolyn Kiste finds joy in her ability to craft unreal narratives of the highest quality.  Here’s a link to our conversation about The Haunting of Velkwood.  She is dark of mind, but also incredibly kind. It turns out that a conversation about regret with Gwendolyn Kiste offers a glimpse of memory at its best.