This Femme is Quite Fatale

Femme
Bill Pronzini
Cemetery Dance
175 p.
trade hardcover $19.99
signed limited edition hardcover $50
deluxe traycased and lettered edition $175

One of my favorite subgenres, and probably the one I read the least since I started this blog, is that of the private eye.  And one of the top practitioners of the form is Bill Pronzini.  His Nameless Detective series has been going since the 70s, with new entries still being added.

The most recent is the novella Femme, published this past fall by Cemetery Dance along with a reprint of another Nameless novella, Kinsmen.  They were separate volumes, but Cemetery Dance had a preorder special.  I snatched them both up.  (The trade editions, but even without the signatures, they were a good buy and look great on the shelf.)

Both feature top notch covers by Glen Orbik; more on that shortly.

2012 in Retrospect: Publishing

Rather than doing a single post about what I thought of the past year, I'm going to break things up into some smaller posts.  There will be on short fiction and one on titles I especially enjoyed.  But I thought I would start with publishers.

Last year, I wrote about the publishers I thought you should be reading this year.  That list hasn't changed much.  The day before I posted that list, I gave reasons why I wasn't going to be reading much from the main imprints.  Those reasons haven't changed much, either.  If anything, they're more valid than ever.

What I'm going to attempt to do here, in this present post, is to assess some of the things I said in those two posts.

Another Halloween Treat

"A Little Halloween Talk"
Joe R. Lansdale
Cemetery Dance
ebook, $0.99

Here's another little treat from Cemetery Dance's 13 Days of Halloween.  It's not one you want to share with the kiddies.

This one concerns a tryst in a graveyard that goes horribly wrong with the lady's man interrupts her with his best friend.

I won't give any more details away.  If you've ever read Lansdale, you know he can write in some of the most compelling voices in modern fiction.  This story is no exception.  The narrator tells his story in a laid back style that you know from the first page isn't going to end well.  The reader is pulled in by his down home drawl.  Even though I was reading, not listening to an audiobook, I could still hear the guy's voice as I read. 

The plot is something out of EC Comics, something that should come as no surprise if you've read Lansdale.  This is a good thing, in case you were wondering.  I've read four or five of these Halloween shorts, and this one is easily my favorite so far.  Do yourself a favor and check it out.

A Halloween Treat

"Pumpkin"
Bill Pronizini
Cemetery Dance
various ebpub editions , $0.99

Cemetery Dance has been publishing Halloween themed short stories on weekdays for the last couple of weeks and will continue to do so until Halloween.  It's part of a promotion called 13 Days of Halloween. I'll be taking a look at some of them, randomly selected.

These are all short stories, so I won't go into too much detail.  In this one, Amanda Sutter and her husband run a pumpkin farm in California.  One day one of the field hands discovers that there's something wrong with one of the pumpkins...

Pronzini is one of my favorites.  While he's never to my knowledge written any heroic fantasy, he does occasionally venture from the mystery/crime fields to dip his toes in the waters of dark fantasy and horror.  I wish he would more often.  Although I have to admit that Pronzini is one of those writers whose work I would read regardless of genre.  In my opinion he's that good. 

This story isn't his most gripping, but it's still worth a read, especially the last page or two.  Pronzini isn't one to go for the gross-out.  Instead, he prefers the quiet buildup.  And he's good with the twist at the end.  This story fits that bill quite well.

It's short, only about 10 pages long, but worth the price.  If you're in the mood for a Halloween treat with a little trick at the end, check it out.

A Look at Rick Hautala's Four Octobers

Four Octobers
Rick Hautala
Cemetery Dance
various ebook editions, $4.99
(print edition is out of print)

Cemetery Dance had a special earlier in the year in which, for a fee, you could get any (or all) ebooks in print or any forthcoming this year.  I decided to take advantage of the offer; this is one of the books I've gotten so far.  It's a collection of four novellettes and novellas.  I've been reading them one at a time between novels.  Now that I've finished it, I thought I'd pass on my thoughts.