Up today, it’s writer K. A. Laity. A noted short story writer, who has now gained much acclaim for the long form, Laity is someone whose work is always worth looking out for. Here, she chooses her top 5 reads of 2013…

Top Five Reads of 2013

K. A. Laity

This past year was a hectic one of non-stop writing for me, which in some ways made it seem both incredibly fast and yet very long. It’s also been a harsh year of too many deaths that have left many around me reeling in disbelief.

So maybe the darkness of the books I read fits that mode. Here are some of the best:

Weirdo by Cathi Unsworth

I found the combination of a supernaturally-tinged murder, a seaside carnival town and a noirish aesthetic irresistible. At first this seems like a procedural but there’s so much more here and it’s all woven together with exquisite skill. Tropes that might be tired in less skillful hands—the damaged PI, the newspaper editor who’s been dragged back to her hometown by tragedy, the vulnerable mental patient, the small town boss—all spring to vivid life in a deft web of history and its unraveling that keeps you guessing right up to the last moment. The pace quickens imperceptibly until it’s got you turning the pages faster and faster. It’s hard to do that when you’re bouncing back and forth between the past and the present, but Unworth makes it look effortless. I’ve heard that it’s been optioned for television and it would make a terrific miniseries, with meaty roles that would entice a great slate of actors for sure.

Twisted Fairy Tales by Maura McHugh, Illustrated by Jane Laurie

I’m a fairy tale addict, so this beautiful book is just the thing for me. If you also devour things like Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, you’ll love it too. I know it’s meant to be a YA book, but there’s such deft hands at work here that the only thing that makes it feel like a book for young readers is that the tales are short. Despite their brevity McHugh manages to invoke entire worlds that live vividly. It’s a challenge to keep finding ways to reignite the magic of fairy tales, but so many of the tales offered up surprises that nonetheless felt just right — as if we’d had the story wrong before. This gorgeous book will be a treasure to any reader. Not only are there the gloriously dark illustrations by Laurie, who captures the feel of the stories succinctly — and wow! do the images linger — but the whole book is a beautiful macabre package. I know there are young readers now who will treasure the memory of first reading this book. It’s one of those books. Wonderful.

Plague Town by Dana Fredsti

The second book in a trilogy, it trods the thin line between humour and horror, chock full of pop culture references and glorious mayhem. Fredsti’s heroine Ashley Parker finds herself in an unexpected war with the undead — and sometimes her fellow teammates, the “wild cards” who are just as randomly selected by surviving the virus. It would seem hard to top the huge zombie swarm that they fight off at the end of the first book, but Plague Nation manages to be even more tautly intense than the first book, while continuing its development of normal people in extraordinary situations. Ashley’s humanity and stubbornness to let go of any of what makes her human forces her to make difficult choices and leaves her — and sometimes her friends — in dangerous situations. We get a little more back story that sheds light on current events while new characters get introduced deftly and with such vividness that the quick pace never slows. Not only has the plague spread, but it hasn’t been entirely through ‘natural’ means — if you can use that term in a zompocalypse. Conspiracy theorists will be unsurprised, but reasonable humans will find it all too plausible, too. Great fun at breakneck speed with plenty of wincing grue: and seriously, we need geeks building a wiki of all the pop culture references or a prize for the person who can get the most subtle of them. I’ve seen reviews that sniff at the use of zombie, horror and SF riffs, but seriously — this is how we geeks talk.

Money Shot / Choke Hold by Christa Faust

I cheat slightly by doubling up but hey—I didn’t get where I am today by following rules. Hard Case Crime has the best retro covers, hands down. They have also used a lot of bait-n-switch big names whose books aren’t hard case crime by any stretch of the imagination (Stephen King, looking in your direction). Faust rocks the line. Money Shot kicks off the adventures of Angel Dare, former adult film star, now running an agency to help young women joining the industry avoid some of the mistakes she made herself. Angel’s feeling her fortieth year with a little self-pity, so she’s flattered to be invited to return to film with up and comer Jesse Black. Instead of an ego boost, she winds up left for dead in the trunk of a Civic. Too stubborn to die, Angel crawls away from the grim reaper and starts piecing together what happened — and how to nail the bastards who did it. A heady mix of San Fernando’s porn world, human trafficking and good old-fashioned double cross, Money Shot keeps the surprises coming and the twists gut-wrenching.

Choke Hold picks up not long after Money Shot ends, timewise it’s maybe less than a year. It’s not been easy time, though. Angel Dare has been in and out of the Witness Protection program. While there are some flashbacks to fill in what’s happened in the meantime, the one thing you’ll notice about this book is the pace. You know how people say things like “thrill ride” and “rollercoaster” and usually you just yawn? If Money Shot was a wild race, Choke Hold is desperate dash through a war torn bomb corridor. It simply doesn’t let up for more than a breath now and then. And it’s so noir you could black your shoes with it. Hope you never meet Angel Dare, because you’re not too likely to survive it. When I finished this book — and believe me, I barely put it down once I picked it up — I went back and re-read quite a bit of it, picking apart just how Faust did what she did. Superb stuff.

Anno Dracula: Johnny Alucard by Kim Newman

Over and over you hear the same tired assertion: vampires are so over! It’s as true or as false as it ever was. The fun of Newman’s mash-ups is that they throw into sharp relief just how multifaceted the tropes of the vampire continue to be. To call these novels pastiche grossly underestimates the skill and the joy involved. To kick things off, Newman imagines Francis Ford Coppola making Dracula instead of Apocalypse Now but in that time with all those actors and with all the attendant mania surrounding that massive undertaking: Duvall’s crew charging into battle with music blasting, Martin Sheen’s obsession leading to heart attack and a massive Brando not Kurtz but a very Kurtzian Drac.

The trimulierate of women from earlier adventures return: Katie Reed, Geneviève Dieudonné and Penelope Churchward provide touchstones for the disparate threads of narrative (parts of this book were published piecemeal as shorts) which intertwine more tightly as the narrative develops. The three offer camera-eye observations of the unfolding events, coloured by their greater knowledge and long lives. The titular character develops from a pitiable foundling to a force to be reckoned with, ingratiating himself with the cast and crew on Coppola’s epic in Romania, worming his way into Andy Warhol’s inner circle in NYC and then heading west because Hollywood beckons.

Along the way Newman weaves together his encyclopaedic knowledge of both film and vampire lore, touching on just about every meme or mythos (Buffy fans may be a little irked) and weaving unexpected tropes into vamp stories that delight with their unexpectedness (two words: Top Gun). But it’s achieved with thoughtfulness: Newman makes a Chandler-esque homage lightly so and a Welles script both amusing and believable. While the references to films, books and fellow writers come thick and fast it’s always done with a point not simply gratuitously, though sometimes the point is making you laugh out loud. There’s a moment in the NYC section where a crowd of vampire hunters gathers that edges into excess, but since one of them is Popeye Doyle, you forgive.

K. A. Laity is the author of the Chastity Flame thriller series, including the most recent novel, A Cut-Throat Business. Vincent Zandri says, “Laity has been proving for quite some time now that her noir prose ranks right up there with the likes of Meg Abbott, Dorothy B. Hughes, and Sara Paretsky. A Cut-Throat Business only further solidifies her standing as a contemporary master of the genre.” Her noir novella Extricate (writing as Graham Wynd) will be out from Fox Spirit Books in January 2014.