What I'm Enjoying Right Now (Cool Crime Edition)

FATALE - The continuously brilliant, enthralling and gorgeous series Fatale is coming to an end soon. Issue twenty was released this week and the run will finish with issue twenty four where Josephine's tale will come to a close. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips just signed a nearly unprecedented five year, produce-any-fucking-thing-they-want-to deal with Image and will be focusing on some new things. Fatale is so great because it brings together two of underground literature's most interesting and underutilized genres, H.P. Lovecraft-style horror fiction and crime noir. Josephine is a cursed woman with unknowable forces chasing her through time and across the country. Simply put, she's a woman men will kill for. They literally can't help themselves around her. The femme fatale character archetype can be troublesome if not fully fleshed out but when she's written with such depth and care, you can't help but keep turning the page to see what happens. Even as just a 2D character on the page, she still seems to have some kind of a pull on me, which means kudos are in order for Brubaker and Phillips. Jo will be missed but we'll have those two around for a long time to keep making quality stuff.

HARD CASE CRIME - Charles Ardai was sitting at a bar in New York one day and over drinks, he got to talking with a friend and fellow writer Max Phillips about how they loved the old violent, sexy pulp crime novels of yore and how nobody publishes those anymore. What could have easily been a drunken late night idea forgotten by morning, it turned into Hard Case Crime, the finest purveyor of the sort of hard boiled detective, noir, crime and horror novels that nobody else puts out anymore, at least the way HCC does it. HCC puts out reprints of classic, lost and/or out of print novels from some of the titans of the genre (Mickey Spillane, Donald E. Westlake, Michael Crichton, Cornell Woolrich) in addition to new stuff from a stable of writers keeping the tradition alive (Max Allan Collins, Ken Bruen, Allan Guthrie, Stephen King) complete with hand painted on canvas art and log lines like FOR WHAT SHE WENT THROUGH, SOMEONE HAD TO PAY and DID HE WANT HER ENOUGH TO KILL FOR HER? It's the kind of stuff that if done badly can end up corny but it's all done out of pure love and a nod to what a select few of us love about the good 'ol days of crime fiction (even if we weren't around for it all in the first place). Hard Case briefly fell prey to the same bug that had decimated the publishing industry but they came back from the grave recently and expanded their output to include trade size and even full size hardcovers, a long way from the pocket paperbacks they put out for years. One of HCC's biggest fans is Stephen King who has created two original novels for Hard Case, The Colorado Kid which is the basis for the Syfy Channel show Haven and the more recent Joyland which brought Hard Case Crime and it's signature hand drawn logo to shelves of supermarkets and big box stores around the country. Juxtapoz just did a great piece in their November 2013 issue complete with an interview with Ardai and a selection of art from the series. I have about half of the entire HCC catalog which boasts almost 100 titles by now and they look mighty fine on my shelf.

BOSCH - In their attempt to jump into competition with Netflix, Amazon started making their own original shows and posted all the pilots for viewers to watch and rate. The second wave of pilots, released this month, included the potentially great Bosch, starring Titus Welliver (The Town, Gone Baby Gone, Sons Of Anarchy, Lost), an east coast guy so good in Ben Affleck's Boston crime films, stepping into the shoes of Michael Connelly's iconic Los Angeles detective Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch, an empathic detective who stalks the streets of LA avenging those who are unable to do it themselves. Bosch is a firm member of the old school, perpetually hounded by Internal Affairs and both respected and loathed by his fellow officers. Welliver's Bosch is noticeably different from the Bosch of Connelly's 16+ novels featuring the character but with Connelly in from the start as creator of the show, he becomes something new and fresh while keeping with everything that makes him such an iconic character. In the pilot, Bosch is simultaneously on trial for the murder of a serial killer and investigating the murder of a small boy who was mercilessly abused and whose bones were found in the hills of Griffith Park. Working the Homicide table isn't just a job for Bosch, it's a calling. Seeing Harry Bosch looking out over Dodger Stadium at night or having a drink at Musso & Frank or investigating a suicide with the Hollywood sign on the hill in the background is something to behold after just reading it on the page for so long. The supporting cast is nothing short of amazing and more than a dozen familiar faces popped up in the hour long pilot. The show so far is only available as a free stream on Amazon and will eventually (hopefully) be picked up for a full season and be available to stream through Amazon Prime.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
TRUE DETECTIVE - That shit is getting crazy.
JUSTIFIED - The penultimate season is in full swing and is as good as ever.