The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

A Death In Bedford Falls

Posted on | December 5, 2013 | 12 Comments

— Wombat-socho


Once in a while you trip over a book that normally you wouldn’t look twice at, and so far this month I’ve found two of them. The first is a peculiar beast: It’s A Wonderful Death is a noir sequel to Frank Capra’s classic Christmas movie It’s A Wonderful Life, starring former New York assistant DA Richard Incles as a newly minted private eye, hired by Mary Bailey to clear her husband George. It seems the man everybody loves to hate, Old Man Potter, has been found dead in his office, his mouth stuffed full of money. Everyone’s a suspect – everyone had the motive and a lot of folks had the opportunity to off the old banker, but George Bailey is the #1 suspect. E.N. McMahon’s short novel plays with all the noir movie tropes in an amusing way, and is well worth your time and money. It’s free to Amazon Prime users under the Lending Library program.
So Join Amazon Prime.


The other unusual book is Monster Hunter Alpha by Larry Correia. I should point out that I don’t have much interest in conventional horror; tales of vampires, werewolves and such tend to leave me cold. By and large, I much prefer my horror in the Lovecraftian vein, whether it’s the Old Master himself (H.P. Lovecraft The Complete Collection) or contemporary versions of the Mythos such as Tim Powers’ Declare or Charles Stross’ The Atrocity Archives and its sequels. Correia does a good job of telling a classic tale of werewolf horror set in rural Michigan, one with its roots in the past but with plenty of contemporary complications to make a bad situation worse. I liked this enough to make me seriously think about checking out the rest of this series, and in the meantime I checked out his holiday novel, The Christmas (Noun) (and its two sequels) here. Good clean violent fun for the whole family!


A commenter brought this up on Black Friday’s In The Mailbox thread: Herbert Werner’s Iron Coffins, a grim and very personal history of the U-boat war in the Atlantic that goes very well with the more famous movie Das Boot , which is available free on Amazon Instant Video to Prime members.


I’ll probably be making a library run tomorrow. Any suggestions?
Also, thanks to everyone who bought books, movies and the Wand Essentials 8 Speed 8 Mode Wand, Purple (no, that’s not a joke) through my links last month. It was very much appreciated!


Category: Books

Comments

12 Responses to “A Death In Bedford Falls”

  1. MrEvilMatt
    December 5th, 2013 @ 11:47 am

    A Death In Bedford Falls: – Wombat-socho Once in a while you trip over a book that normally you wouldn’t look … http://t.co/BXLEWi4ya9

  2. CHideout
    December 5th, 2013 @ 11:47 am

    A Death In Bedford Falls: – Wombat-socho Once in a while you trip over a book that normally you wouldn’t look … http://t.co/ShlFWNJUQp

  3. Lockestep1776
    December 5th, 2013 @ 11:47 am

    A Death In Bedford Falls: – Wombat-socho Once in a while you trip over a book that normally you wouldn’t look … http://t.co/PtRVlOPDEI

  4. Resista38176897
    December 5th, 2013 @ 11:47 am

    A Death In Bedford Falls: – Wombat-socho Once in a while you trip over a book that normally you wouldn’t look … http://t.co/fsB6crSGsl

  5. Citzcom
    December 5th, 2013 @ 11:47 am

    A Death In Bedford Falls: – Wombat-socho Once in a while you trip over a book that normally you wouldn’t look … http://t.co/DOkqwvgIzo

  6. jwbrown1969
    December 5th, 2013 @ 11:47 am

    A Death In Bedford Falls: – Wombat-socho Once in a while you trip over a book that normally you wouldn’t look … http://t.co/IAGhjZd6Gu

  7. Quartermaster
    December 5th, 2013 @ 12:39 pm

    “Iron Coffins” is an excellent book.

  8. Wombat_socho
    December 5th, 2013 @ 3:37 pm

    Yes indeed.

  9. SDN
    December 5th, 2013 @ 11:30 pm

    Wombat, I predict you will enjoy the other books in the Monster Hunter series.

    I mean, the man whose opinion of the whole Twilight gag-fest was “The only time vampires should sparkle is when they’re on fire.” wouldn’t let you down….

  10. Ray Stickler
    December 6th, 2013 @ 4:21 am

    I agree with SDN – you need to pick up *all* the Monster Hunter books. And check out Larry’s website :

    http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/

    Monster Hunter Alpha is actually the 3rd in the series. Any book series where Orcs are noble creatures and Elfs are trailer trash is OK by me….

  11. Wombat_socho
    December 7th, 2013 @ 10:43 pm

    Judging from his blog (to say nothing of The Christmas (Noun)) I have a lot of quality reading to look forward to. 🙂

  12. Wombat_socho
    December 7th, 2013 @ 10:43 pm

    What can I say? The library doesn’t always have all the books in a series available when I want them. :/