Hardcore Hardboiled

From the introduction written by Otto Penzler: The contributors to this volume are mostly young (even conceding that nowadays everybody seems young to me), writing in a style as colorful as Elton John's laundry. It is mostly vulgar, nasty, obscene, violent, and sewer-mouthed. It is visceral, unadorned and crueler than a puppy juggler. Lines that you could quote to your mother are harder to find than Amelia Earhart. And that pretty much sums up this book. The language is graphic, the action is graphic as well as often intense and very messy and the characters are, well, for want of a better term, graphic. They also are usually messy, obnoxious and would rather cuss you out and step over your body as you lay in a pile of vomit (your own or anyone else's) and no doubt would laugh if you hurt yourself accidentally and rather painfully. Most of the folks in this book you don't want knowing your family and you sure as heck don't want them knowing where anyone you care about lives. That is, unless you want somebody you care about or are still saddled with dead. Simply put, you can't see the land of cozy style novels from here. If cozy style novels were one extreme, this book is as far as you can get away from there in the opposite direction. Cats don't solve crimes here. If any cats were involved, they would be fired off on catapults while still alive because a screaming target to shoot at is always more satisfying than some chunk of clay. This dark and often twisted anthology of twenty-four stories written by twenty authors is a good one and features what Editor Todd Robinson aka "Big Daddy Thug" felt were the best from the year of Thuglit.Com. You'll recognize some names you know from elsewhere and most likely have no clue about a bunch of other names. If you check out the end of the book you will find a salute to those involved with thuglit which include those names that you know and others you don't that didn't make the print edition. Packed in this anthology are twenty-four powerful and dark stories so there are way too many to go into depth at all on them. Instead of trying to cover all of them, here are a few personal favorites of mine to give you some idea of what is in the paperback book. It opens with "Ten Dimes" written by Mike Toomey. A customer in a bar is looking for a fence because he wants to move some merchandise. Not ordinary stuff by any measure. This legendary stuff and he wants a fence on the Vegas Strip bad. "Johnny Cash Is Dead" according to Jordan Harper who weaves a tale of a man on a mission of justice. If he planned things right then the stairs will be the hardest part of the job. Tim Wohlforth in his story "Juanita" tells a tale of dealing with the stinking mess the best she can. Sure, she is very glad that somebody got the [...], but they could've cleaned up the mess for her too. J. D. Smith in the story "False Alarm" points out how worthless car alarms these days because anything sets them off and nobody pays at

I've been looking forward to this one for quite awhile now. HARDCORE HARDBOILED is the first anthology from Todd Robinson's online crime fiction mag THUGLIT, which is easily one of the best venues for original fiction on the internet. What we have here is a sorta "best of" type anthology from Thuglit's first year. Two dozen stories from both heavy hitters in the crime fiction biz and some names that I'm hoping make a lot more noise in years to come. If you, like me, are pretty darn tired of weak pseudo sensitive crime and mystery fiction that reads like it was penned by Don Henley fans, Thuglit and Hardcore Hardboiled are for you. Honestly, each and every one of the 24 stories in this sucker are quite good at the very least. Some personal favorites of my own are Duane Swierczynski's darkly hilarious 'The Replacment'; Mike Toomey's flat out awesome 'Ten Dimes'; 'Johnny Cash Is Dead' by Jordan Harper; Hana K. Lee's 'Burning Ring Of Fire'; 'A Sleep Not Unlike Death' by Sean Chercover; the stellar 'McHenry's Gift' by Mike MacLean; a Tommy Burns story from the modern master of crime fiction Charlie Stella called 'The Milfinators'; and 'Kill Posse', yet another hoot of a story from Victor Gischler. For the price of this trade paperback anthology, you get more than a bang for your buck, you get the whole Fourth Of July, pal.

Todd Robinson, award-winning writer, has gathered under one "roof" a stellar cast of hardboiled writers to bring you the print version of his hard-hitting webzine, ThugLit Presents: HardCore Hardboiled www.thuglit.com The amount of talent (from award-winner Bill Fitzhugh, Edgar-nominated Victor Grischler of GunMonkeys fame, the Don of crime-fiction himself Charlie Stella, Best American Mystery Stories winner Tim Wohlforth, Duane Swierczynski of The Blonde and Moonknight-Marvel Comics-, Award-winner Ken Bruen and other suspects who names shall be changed to protect the innocent) between these pages is explosive! This book was full-on in your face, no appolozies, fast'n'hard fiction never seen before, and I doubt even after. Landmarks in fiction are few and far between given the soft-boiled tastes of the current industry. With a foreword by Otto Penzler (if you don't know who he is, then forget reading this, or for that matter, burn your eyes out!)and an opening by the Big Daddy Thug himself, the book marks itself as a contribution to the sometimes underground & under appreciated world of truly hardboiled crime & noir. Am I being vague? Not enough details about what lies between the pages? Then buy the book and you'll see what I mean. Besides, when's the last time you read a story with a Monkey that could take you out! Literally! -Dash C. B!AM