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Taking this anthology slow.
These interconnected stories are first-person narratives, each voiced by a character calling himself John.
They’re hardboiled tales involving bad cops, ex-cons, guys on the run, guys violating terms of their paroles, working “straight” gigs as loggers in Upstate New York.
Violence dogs them like a bad cough they can’t shake.
Amazing writer - a modern Steinbeck or Hemingway.

Don’t get why the author -Scott Wolven- isn’t being raved about across the reading universe.

Short stories of beautiful-losers, sentimentally unsentimental about real men and women, bent but square shooters, weathering quiet emotional breakdowns and tests of their soul’s resilience.

Criminals and ex-cons working blue collar gigs attempting to go straight.
As great as Wolven’s first collection of stories.

Lost a few days.

Had to do real life crap and set this down for a few.

I only realized today that the Errol Morris documentary film on Manson available on Netflix is related to this book with the author’s assistance.
Saw the documentary- can’t recall seeing any of this stuff covered.

Hard to put this down. Although the author ends too many sections with “?”.

So far, better than average true-crime reading.

So far it’s about a journalist who investigated the effects of the Manson orchestrated mayhem on the Hollywood film and music industries for Premiere Magazine in 1999. But one line here just kills me.

The author quotes a threat made by an alleged “connected” one time smuggler:
”Dead white men will pull your tongue out if you tell this…”
Straight outta James Hadley Chase.

Put down the Scott Wolven anthology to “temporarily” peruse a few pages of this very, very weird account of the Manson orchestrated massacres and the U.S. military’s use of mind control experiments with LSD.
I was immediately hooked after 20 pages accusing Vincent Bugliosi of fraud and of suborning perjury.

How do I know what page I’m on? Who’s counting?
Bought the Kindle edition.
Started this Monday.
The stories I’ve read have truly impressed me.
They’re almost Harlan Ellisonesque and faintly tinted by Charle Beaumont like depictions of human fallibility.
Truly moving speculative fiction occasionally involving situations with nonhuman entities or devices dealing with moral dilemmas caused by careless humans.

Had a family emergency. Hospital visit via ambulance for my wife at 3 in the morning.
Had to put the book down for 6 days. Rejoined -action in progress- last night.

This new one by Jason Bovberg is such a compelling read. Not a wasted line to be found. Super tight writing.

Jason ain’t no amateur. This is exciting stuff!

I was all set to reread a bunch of Dan Marlowe thrillers and a couple of Donald Hamilton non-Matt Helm standalones.

I needed to read something featuring a remorseless protagonist operating outside the bounds of law and then I received this new one by Jason Bovberg.
Can’t express enough my gratitude for a new thriller reminiscent in tone to the lethally professional loners of 60s paperback originals.
Brilliant.

I can’t finish this.
Life is too short.

I’m not rating this book because it would be unfair.
Not for me.

I can’t understand why I am NOT enjoying this novel yet. Might be a hangover from a high caliber, fast-mover of a crime thriller I just finished a couple of days ago.

Riveting.

Hard to put this sucker down. Man -I’m hooked into this one bigly.

It’s really hard to express how good the first hundred pages have been.

Willeford’s only Western - to my knowledge.

Originally published as Hombre From Sonora this is Willeford’s original tale and original title.

So far?
Lots of dialogue between a couple of the characters.
Our protagonist might possibly be one of those psychotic “unreliable narrators” -

Too soon to tell.

Had to take a break from the despair I find all but inescapable in this disheartening history of the Bluff Town, founded on booze, Blues, dope, and high-stepping backsliding heifers & the not-so-square johns who enabled if not empowered them.

It’s the 20’s & old Boss Crump has seized more power than he’d ever imagined. He’s buffalloed the whites into thinking he’s anti-vice. He’s the Baron of Bullshit.

Exhausting account of Memphis’ shady origins. Great anecdotal color by the author as he relates the growing pains of Memphis as she moves from a an 1860’s Mississippi river port to a growing metropolis by 1915.
All thanks to booze, dope, wild wild women, and barrelhousing.

I have found Real Horror tales imbedded in the history of the United States. Especially during the era between the end of the war against slavery and the Gilded Age in America.

There were some genuine heroes -brave men and women- of various races who valiantly fought injustice and inhumanity and I’m proud to read that many resided in the city of my birth - Memphis.

Took a few days off to watch a war or two. Two more clever tales down I found a bit too clever for my enjoyment. Beautifully written, though.

These tales reverberate throughout the mind once you come to the end.
It’s like one sustained “wow!” upon finishing each story.

These little twist endings Kersh adds to his vaguely ominous tales are absolutely delightful.

The characters - Mona Lisa and an ape, circus freaks stranded on an island, a giant from out of time - are haunting and unforgettable.

Brilliant.

Purchased this recent reprint (Valancourt Books) of the original paperback anthology containing some of Gerald Kersh’s unsettling tales as chosen by Harlan Ellison who also supplies the introduction.

Truly marvelous stuff!

Entertaining throwback to mid-20th century hardboiled paperback originals.