Despite his early books’ preoccupation with vampiric themes (which seem to be all the rage), if you haven’t heard of or read Charlie Huston (The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death), its probably because he hasn’t had a movie made from one of his books.

Huston, who is an exponentially more original writer than the bestselling genre writers who blurb his books, belongs with his very talented crime-story brethren Michael Connelly and George Pelecanos—which is to say that his genre-busting work is good and potent writing illuminating nifty and engaging stories.

His new tome Sleepless (Ballantine) is a dystopian nightmare set in July 2010 with at least 33 million (and growing) people infected with FFI (Fatal Familial Insomnia), which, as the name suggests, is death-inducing sleeplessness.

Philosophy Ph.D. Parker Hass has joined the LAPD on his moral imperative to make the world a better place, even as it disintegrates into chaos. He is assigned to be an undercover vice cop charged with tracking down and choking off the illicit trade in DR33M3R, also known as Dreamer, the only drug that provides relief (though death is not forestalled). And in his pursuit Park himself becomes the prey of an aging mercenary.

Meet that killer, as he is sitting in a L.A. traffic jam listening to Gonoud’s opera Faust in his air-conditioned Cadillac:

I was at peace with the world when the shockingly sinewy vegan in the Merecedes 300 plastered with biodiesel stickers got out of her car and started rapping on my window, screaming at me that I was “killing the planet and the children.” I almost didn’t roll down that window and point at her face the Beretta Tomcat I’d pulled from my ankle holster…

“You are going to die in front of dozens of witnesses, and none of them will do a thing to help you or avenge you. Because they know exactly what you know: The world is ending. The difference being they have surrendered and are willing to watch it pass away as long as they can do it in relative comfort. You, on the other hand, are squandering what few resources of personal will and energy you have left by trying to stop the avalanche. Give up. Things are as bad as you fear they are. People are self-serving as you fear they are. The Universe does not care. And neither do you. Not really. Go find a warm body you can huddle against for animal comfort. Get in your car and don’t look at me again. I’m getting bored of talking now. Go away before I get bored of not pulling the trigger and not watching your brains fountain out the top of your head”

And, yes, the story gets better (and better).  —Robert Birnbaum, Jan. 13, 2010

New York City may be the American megalopolis hated by outlanders and flyover-zone residents (in part because apparently that’s where that unfortunate rubric originated), but L.A. seems to draw more negative commentary. Artists like Jack Kerouac and Alejandro Jodorowsky have called it “the loneliest city on the planet.” I harbor no such feelings, though I am amused by the metaphor that has N.Y.C. as the opening of the U.S.A.’s alimentary system and L.A., you guessed it, at the terminal end.

For the most part I think Los Angeles has been better depicted in film—L.A. Confidential, Bugsy, Chinatown, The Long Goodbye, The Day of the Locusts—than in fiction; Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, and T. Jefferson Parker notwithstanding. Though I like Michael Connelly’s writing, I have never found his Harry Bosch series particularly instructive or descriptive of LaLaland. Pete Dexter’s under-praised, standalone novel Train was a more evocative snapshot than the Bosch bibliography.

Now comes John Buntin’s completely engaging L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City (Harmony). In a life in which books are prominent in my surroundings and occupy many units of however we measure neurological space, to say I love a particular book doesn’t mean I am any less devoted to countless other tomes. In this instance, Buntin’s new opus, for which I must profess my great admiration. To give some ostensive rationale for my reaction to this book I can point to the works of Michael Lewis, Erik Larsen, and Todd Balf as other examples of books I find especially satisfying. Essentially, it’s a delicious recipe—the imagination to find not-so-obvious connections, excellent reporting and research, and capable and robust prose.

Loathe as I am to reward advertising/publicity-speak, the book’s slogan—“Other cities have histories. Los Angeles has legends”—does adequately shorthand a useful attitude about the unruly metropolis of Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles, better known as L.A. Buntin has latched onto and burnished the stories of two polar characters to propel his account of mid-century Los Angeles: William Parker, late of Deadwood, S.D., who becomes the L.A.P.D. chief and Brooklyn transplant Mickey Cohen, who becomes the town’s regnant mobster. Though each is more than capable of carrying the story, framing the narrative as a kind of cage match leavens it with a healthy dose of dramatic tension.

Not surprisingly, Buntin’s book is not the final word on Los Angeles—as you can see below, there is actually a bus tour of sites mentioned in L.A. Noir. Brilliant! —Robert Birnbaum, Oct. 27, 2009

Crime story writer Michael Connelly’s latest offering brings back cop beat reporter Jack McEvoy from what I consider the finest of his 20 novels, The Poet, a standalone story that leaves aside Connelly’s long-running L.A. homicide detective Harry Bosch series—though the lethal serial killer the Poet does make another, final appearance in The Narrows, where he is terminally dispatched by Bosch.

The Scarecrow (Little, Brown) has McEvoy being dumped by his newspaper (naturally, he has a large salary) and be replaced by a novice, recent j-school grad. McEvoy decides he wants to go out in blaze of glory, and starts rooting around in what appears to be an open-and-shut murder case. This puts him and his replacement in the cyber-sights of the real killer, who happens to have deep expertise in computer security and the subtleties of hacking and who we come to find is responsible for at least two heinous sexual assault murders.

Given the Scarecrow’s computer skills, we are provided with a fair measure of background in hacking tactics and tricks and more than sufficient dramatic tension. But as much as any element of this book, Connelly, a former newspaper reporter, offers a requiem for the passing of the metropolitan daily print newspaper. —Robert Birnbaum, Jun. 4, 2009

I don’t know about others (though the common default explanation is some variation of attention deficit) but my reading habits have seemingly transformed into something unrecognizable to the Me of just a few years ago—perhaps even before the post-millennial chattering class preoccupation with announcing and sifting through the entrails of change, transformation, and what it all meant.

As an exercise in self-understanding/knowledge I decided to keep a list of what I have read in the past week. Now that I look at it, the only thing I can glean from it is that my primary literary preoccupation is no longer the novel, and in fact I don’t feel compelled to finish even the various texts I begin whatever their form or genre. One other thing, I have taken to leaving books in my car and whatever bag I schlep around—so as not to get caught waiting in some queue or traffic jam without some sort of escape appliance.

Here’s the list, in no particular order, and arbitrarily annotated:

“He Just Can’t Quit W” by Frank Rich
Res ipsa loquitur.

“The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama” by Frank Rich
Res ipsa loquitur.

A Strange Commonplace by Gilbert Sorrentino
An overlooked (you know what I mean) author that I had overlooked—I’m going back for more.

“Vote for Obama” by Christopher Hitchens
Even when one thinks he is wrong, Hitchens is interestingly wrong—meaning his reasons and arguments are elegant if not rigorous.

“Verbage” by James Wood
Wood sees, to his great credit, something missed by homegrown pundits.

Serena by Ron Rash
Rash is a wonderful storyteller, whose One Foot in Eden is a masterful tale.

Angels and Ages by Adam Gopnik
I read the introduction to this New Yorker staffer’s forthcoming book linking Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, both born on the same day in 1809, with great relish.

The Given Day by Dennis Lehane
So far the best of his oeuvre.

Indignation by Philip Roth
Roth is worth every moment you invest in him.

The King’s Last Song by Geoff Ryman
As far as I got in this story within a story I was riveted.

Hard Man by Allan Guthrie
One of those Scottish crime stories increasingly finding its way into print—I read it based on Thomas Perry’s blurb, which I should have read more carefully—yet I did finish it.

Our Dumb World by The Onion
The claim that this is the funniest ever is hard to argue with especially when you can’t stop laughing.

First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, the Capital of the 21st Century by David Lida
Meet Mexico City and the brave new world, mi gente.

“Mad Dog Palin” by Matt Taibbi
Oi Veh!!!

The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly
Though I avoid reading series, and I thought Connelly’s standalone The Poet was his best work, I can’t stop myself from continuing to read his Harry Bosch novels. This time Bosch meets the Lincoln Lawyer, Mickey Haller.

“Make-Believe Maverick” by Tim Dickinson
If even a portion of this article is true then American corporate media, of which Rolling Stone is a part, is worse than we all suspect. If not, one wonders how this stuff got published. —Robert Birnbaum, Oct. 24, 2008

Receiving an advance copy of The Best American Mystery Stories 2008—guest-edited this year by George Pelecanos—reminds me that Houghton Mifflin’s onslaught of its franchise The Best American Series anthologies is not far behind. What started in 1915 as simply The Best American Short Stories now has every stripe of superlative excessive collections, including the imaginative and contrived The Best American Nonrequired Reading. But the 21st century is all about exploiting Brand, right? So let me move on. If not the “best” stories, Pelecanos’s 19 selections are certainly quite wonderful, as he is certain to upset purists by including fine writers like Elizabeth Strout, Alice Munro, Thisbe Nissen, James Lee Burke, Robert Ferragamo, Michael Connelly, Chuck Hogan, and Joyce Carol Oates. My favorites are a poignant, flashback-filled story by Kyle Minor (“A Day Meant to Do Less”), Scott Phillips’s well-modulated nostalgia (“The Emerson, 1950”), and Stephen Rhodes’s Wall Street morality tale (“At the Top of His Game”).

For many years, Shannon Ravenel edited the New Stories From the South anthology; she’s turned over the reins to Kathy Pories and yearly guest editors: Alan Gurganis in 2006, Edward P. Jones in 2007, and Z.Z. Packer in 2008. As expected, these anthologies do feature many of the South’s favorite sons and daughters (which, if you are out of touch with that region’s rich literary tradition and culture, is a major public service); in this instance, Packer’s introduction is an intriguing, smart, and provocative essay entitled “The Double Indemnity of the South”:

And as backward as we’ve been portrayed—or as backward as we’ve sometimes portrayed ourselves, slipping behind a curtain of innocent and naïve agrarianism, rural somnolence, and sleepy everlasting vowels—the truth is that every awful and beautiful thing that has happened in America happened in the South first.

Kudos to Dan Wickett and Dzanc Books for finding a need and filling it well with the initial Best of the Web 2008. The volume’s editor, Nathan Leslie, writes:

This anthology does not attempt to capture some very vital aspects of the online experience—no multimedia experience, no interactive texts, no surfing here. We limited ourselves to four genres—poetry, fiction, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction. There are others; this isn’t our attempt to build Rome in a day… Rome will come. It will take time. For now I simply hope you like the anthology we put together. Read, enjoy, savor.

 —Robert Birnbaum, Aug. 21, 2008