Better Than Never

I know posts have been rather sparse lately, and I hope to rectify that, but in the meantime here's a brief one to fuel a point I made earlier. Sometime in the not too distant past I've made some kind of case for popular fiction of days gone by being of a better level of quality than that of today's.

As another form of proof/argument, I offer this: Stark House will be releasing another two-in-one edition of the Peter Rabe books "Anatomy of a Killer" and "A Shroud for Jesso." Rabe is always good but these two books blew me away. "Anatomy" was wonderful but "Jesso" is art.

Rabe was a psychologist and that probably goes a long way to explaining the unique depths of character that he paints on a page. He writes about bad guys, usually bad guys getting caught up with other bad guys, and while you can empathize with his protagonists, it's difficult to actually sympathize with them.

I don't want to say too much about the books other than to say BUY THEM AND READ THEM. Stark House Press's edition will be out in April of 2008 and carries a list price of $14.95. And this is for two books, folks.

I feel like Robert Conrad in those old commercials daring viewers to knock the battery off his shoulder. "Go ahead," I say. "Buy these books and tell me they're not at a level above what's on the racks at Wal-Mart today. Go ahead. I dare you." If they were written and published today they'd be carrying cover blurbs like "Rabe is a new and original voice" and "Rabe is the best new voice in crime fiction in the past ten years." Crap like that. The point is, read this stuff and then argue with me. Please. Or I'll have to knock a battery off Bob Conrad's shoulder and I don't know how old he is but he'll still probably kick my ass.