Aural Noir – Page 25

Aural Noir Review of The Fabulous Clipjoint by Fredric Brown

Aural Noir: Review

[This audiobook was created by Wonder Audiobooks which is owned by SFFaudio contributor and a past reviews editior Rick Jackson]

SFFaudio Essential The Fabulous Clipjoint
By Fredric Brown; Read by William Coon
Audible Download – 5 Hours 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible.com / Wonder Audio
Published: 2009
Themes: / Crime / Mystery / Murder / Alcoholism / Noir / Carny / Chicago / Janesville /

You’ll hear the soft, lazy voice of a dame who’s been around, and you’ll meet up with a beautiful heller. You’ll learn the lurid secrets of a man’s locked past, and you’ll prowl dark alleys with two men–two men turned hunters. And you’ll wonder–why Ed and his Uncle Am didn’t level with the cops; what business a gang would have with Ed’s dead father; and where the killer thought the hunters would go wrong. Here are your answers, in this fast-spinning, two-fisted mystery about thugs, molls, and carnival folks.

Ed Hunter is 18, an apprentice linotype operator in 1940s Chicago. He works with his father. One morning Ed gets up to work only to find his father missing, having not come home the night before. This can only mean one thing – MURDER! The cops aren’t too interested, his alcoholic stepmother and oversexed step sister aren’t up for it, so it’s up to Ed to get justice. But to get the job done he’ll need help so For he enlists his uncle, a carny with more brains and experience than any man Ed knows.

Rick Jackson, the man behind Wonder Audiobooks, is a good friend of mine. It’d be hard to say I’m 100% objective about reviewing his stuff. The problem mostly being that he and I have such similar tastes in audiobooks and fiction that to praise one of his audiobooks is very much like saying how cool I am! But he is cool damn it! And more importantly this is a truly awesome audiobook. I will stake my reputation on you loving it. If you’re twice as apt to like an old crime novel as a new one, then you’re three times as apt to love The Fabulous Clipjoint. The mystery is not hard to follow, the story is told in first person, but conversely it was devilishly hard to solve. I pride myself on being an excellent armchair detective, but I was happily baffled right up til the big reveal. That’s really saying something. William Coon sounds like a wise teenager. But then whenever he’s tasked with another character’s voice he switches: Falsetto, gruff, kindly, Coon does them all. Highly recommended.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Aural Noir Review of Drive by James Sallis

Aural Noir: Review

Drive
By James Sallis; Read by Paul Michael Garcia
Audible Download – 3 Hours 26 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
Provider: Audible.com
Themes: / Crime / Noir / Los Angeles / Hollywood / Arizona /

“Much later, as he sat with his back against an inside wall of a Motel 6 just north of Phoenix, watching the pool of blood lap toward him, Driver would wonder whether he had made a terrible mistake. Later still, of course, there’d be no doubt. But for now Driver is, as they say, in the moment. And the moment includes this blood lapping toward him, the pressure of dawn’s late light at windows and door, traffic sounds from the interstate nearby, the sound of someone weeping in the next room…”

Drive starts with an important dedication. “To Donald Westlake, Ed McBain and Larry Block.” If an author is going to choose any three modern crime writers as inspiration for a book they could pick no better three than these dudes. Drive starts off with an opening sentence that could have been written by Richard Stark (a pen-name of Donald Westlake), proceeds to punch-out clean and clinical prose like McBain’s 87th Precinct novels and punches the story along like Lawrence Block at his best. Drive stars “Driver”, a nameless Hollywood stunt driver by day and a criminal getaway driver by night. We get how he started in the business of stunt-driving, a few scenes of him pulling off those incredible feats of automotive control, and how he got involved in the punishing business of criminal getaway driving. It’s fast, but it ain’t furious, it’s more of a simmering sizzle.

Blackstone narrator Paul Michael Garcia, who I last heard as the reader of Starman Jones, has a young voice – I knew I’d enjoy his reading of something in this genre. Garcia’s narration made it an incredibly solid listen. What’ll keep it from being a classic of the niche is that same anonymity of the protagonist. I enjoyed the ride with the guy, the “driver”, he has an incredible story to tell, but it was like I got hypnotized by the road somehow – I got to the end, refreshed and exhilarated but not particularly aware of what route we took. Perhaps this makes Drive the ideal summertime, top down, high-gear audiobook? It’s a novella so it’s short and you’ll zip through it practically before the commute is over. I think its worth giving a try.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Free @ Harper Audio: Richard Matheson, Neil Gaiman, Marcia Talley

SFFaudio Online Audio

Harper Audio, as part of their “Summer of Books” promotion, is giving away three must download short stories from their recent and upcoming audiobook releases. These are “limited time” releases, so download them right away.

Duel (from Road Rage)
By Richard Matheson; Read by Stephen Lang
1 |MP3| – Approx. 63 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Harper Audio
Published: February 2009
“Driving to San Francisco, a businessman finds himself the victim of a deadly game being played by the driver of a huge, mysterious truck. Later to become Steven Spielberg’s classic 1971 film.”

A Study In Emerald (from Fragile Things)
By Neil Gaiman; Read by Neil Gaiman
1 |MP3| – Approx. 50 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Harper Audio
Published: September 2006
Alluding to both the Sherlock Holmes canon and the Old Ones of the Cthulhu Mythos, this Hugo Award winning short story will delight fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, H.P. Lovecraft, and of course, Neil Gaiman. A Study in Emerald draws listeners in through carefully revealed details as a consulting detective and his narrator friend solve the mystery of a murdered German noble. But with its subtle allusions and surprise ending, this mystery hints that the real fun in solving this case lies in imagining all the details that Gaiman doesn’t reveal, and challenges listeners to be detectives themselves.

Can You Hear Me Now (from Two Of The Deadliest)
By Marcia Talley; Read by
1 |MP3| – Approx. 20 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Harper Audio
Published: July 2009
“Need can make men desperate, but greed, in my experience, makes men stupid.” – From a new collection of short stories featuring “Lust, Greed, and Murder from Outstanding Women of Mystery”

[via Mary Burkey’s Audiobooker blog]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Hard Case Crime’s December 2009 release

Aural Noir: News

Hard Case Crime Ribbon Hard Case Crime has a near stranglehold on my paperback budgeted dollars. One reason is that they’ve got so many great titles that never get audiobooked. Another is their choice of cover art. A Hard Case Crime cover never fails to please. This is probably why I’m doubly excited to see they’re doing one book that is already an audiobook! Their choice for a December 2009 release, a classic reprint, surprised me and made me laugh.

Check out this accurate (but very misleading) description from HCC editor Charles Ardai’s email:

“It’s the very hard-boiled story of a man murdered by a blast from a sawed-off shotgun to the face at point-blank range; of a criminal on the run from Chicago who comes to a dirty Pennsylvania coal-mining town and winds up locking horns with the corrupt Masonic lodge that runs the town; of a Pinkerton detective who sets out to clean up the town; and of the doom that pursues a man across an ocean and leaves him at the mercy of the world’s most ruthless criminal mastermind. It’s a story narrated by a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, whose partner in investigating the twisted plot is a drug addicted private investigator with a brain like a steel trap.

And wait till you see the cover — Glen Orbik has really outdone himself here, with his portrait of a gorgeous, bosomy dame in a transparent negligee watching with horror as a man with a brand on his arm appears in her doorway.

And the author — it’s one of the best-selling authors in the world. His books have been made into movies, computer games, comic books; they’ve sold tens of millions of copies. He’s not someone you’d think of as a Hard Case Crime author in a million years!

Now, I can hear you out there, saying, ‘Come on, Ardai — if you’re gonna spill, spill already. What’s the name of the damn book?'”

Did you guess it?

Awesome!

The Valley Of Fear
By A.C. Doyle (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Publisher: Hard Case Crime
Published: December 2009
ISBN: 084396295X

-The legendary classic re-presented, Hard Case Crime style
-Edgar Award winner Leslie Klinger on The Valley Of Fear: “The first real hardboiled detective story.”
-By the best-selling author of The Lost World
-Inspired by a true story!

Here’s my own review of this book (from a now unavailable podcast version):

The Valley Of Fear is one of the least adapted of the original Sherlock Holmes novels, it has only appeared on screen three times, as opposed to the eighteen adaptations of The Hound Of The Baskervilles. Likely much of the reason for the disparity lies in the structure of The Valley Of Fear, which breaks the traditional narrative mystery to go into a massive backstory that preceded the crime in question, this backstory includes neither Watson nor Holmes and so when adapted it would have the primary characters off-screen for more than half the film!

Looked at as a novel and a mystery on its own The Valley Of Fear works very well. There are in fact two mysteries in it. The first mystery I was able to ratiocinationalize quite satisfactorily but the second which took me by surprise, it was by means of a clever misdirection. The story itself is set in 1888 London and in the USA a few years prior to the extended flashback sequence. In the first half of the novel Holmes and Watson employ their typical inductive detection strategy, then after solving the primary crime we are treated to a lengthy explanation as to how the murder they have solved came to happen in the first place. The second half, was inspired by true events and is quite enjoyable once you get into the change of pace.

Here are just a few of the audio versions currently available:

Posted by Jesse Willis

New Releases – Bradbury, Knight, & Brown – from Wonder Audiobooks

New Releases

Ray Bradbury’s fantastic tale of hyper-accelerated life spans of forgotten humans on an alien world.

The Creatures That Time Forgot
By Ray Bradbury; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
1 hr, 48 min.- [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audio
Published: 2009

Available at Audible & iTunes

Mad! Impossible world! Sun-blasted by day, cold-wracked by night – and life condensed by radiation into eight days! Sim eyed the Ship – if he only dared reach it and escape! … but it was more than half an hour distant – perhaps the limit of life itself! From the author of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man. Originally published in the Fall 1946 issue of Planet Stories. It was later reprinted under the title Frost and Fire.

And part of the Noir Masters series and the author of The Fabulous Clipjoint:

The Wench is Dead
By Fredric Brown; Read by William Coon
57 min.- [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audio
Published: 2009

Available at Audible & iTunes

Howard Perry has become a drunk – a skid row bum. It wasn’t always so, and he has hopes of returning to be a respected university student. But now he spends his days washing dishes to buy enough booze to hopefully blackout at night. His only friend is a prostitute name Billie the Kid. But Billie is just a working girl, and it would be stupid for him to care too much for her.

Of course Perry isn’t exactly making the smartest choices as he continues his downward spiral. And when he goes to borrow a drink from Billie’s neighbor, who soon turns up murdered, things are looking even worse for Perry.

A wonderfully bizarre tale by SF Grand Master, Damon Knight.

Rule Golden
By Damon Knight; Read by William Coon
3hr- [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audio
Published: 2009

Available at Audible & iTunes

As a newspaper publisher, Robert James Dahls found the news disconcerting; in fact, inexplicable. News items like two boxers simultaneously knocking each other out, prison guards sick and unable to guard the prisoners, policemen shooting fleeing culprits and collapsing themselves, battered wives with husbands suffering the same injuries that they inflicted.

Dahl catches wind of a large experimental facility that is being led by the U.S. Department of Defense. His suspicions coincide with the strange, beyond-coincidental behavior that he’s been observing. For what’s on the grounds of the facility is much more radical than anything that was claimed to be found in Roswell. Not just an alien but one that has a strange effect on the human race, where the Golden Rule works in reverse: Be done by as you do to others.

How can we get along without conflict? What will happen to the human race? Dahl soon finds himself a fugitive helping a bizarre alien save or destroy the Earth!

Did you know you can get either of these titles, as well as any other Wonder Audio title for just $7.49? Just sign up at Audible.com/WonderAudio

Posted by Rick Jackson

BBC R7: Chandler, Daly, Wells, Matheson, King!

SFFaudio Online Audio

The coming week on BBC Radio 7 is chock full of must listen content. These are all re-runs so you’ve probably heard at least one or two of them before. Myself, I’m most excited about hearing Anton Lesser’s reading of the Wells story. I’ve only known his work in one series, that FALCO radio drama series I’m always telling everyone about. Also, this 1970s by Wally K. Daly “Scream” series could be good. I’ll check it out, as this week sees its first two (of three) stories airing. Likely next week will see the rebroadcast of the final chapter. So which of these draws your interest?

The Little Sister
Based on the novel by Raymond Chandler; Performed by a full cast
1 Broadcast – Approx. 90 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 7
Broadcast: Saturday at 1pm and 1am
The search for a missing man deepens into an investigation of several brutal murders. Philip Marlowe’s enquiries take him to a Hollywood film set where he wonders which of the suspects is putting on the best performance. Ed Bishop stars as Raymond Chandler’s quick-witted, sharp-talking private eye in a 1977 production dramatised by Bill Morrison and produced by John Tydeman.

Before The Screaming Begins
By Wally K. Daly; Performed by a full cast
3 Broadcasts – [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 7
Broadcast: Monday to Wednesday at 6pm and Midnight
When Tom Harris is abducted by aliens whilst celebrating his wedding anniversary, the police are understandably sceptical of his wife’s account. But the disappearances continue. Stars
Hannah Gordon, James Laurenson, Patrick Troughton, Jennifer Piercey and Robert Trotter, First broadcast in 1978.

The Silent Scream
By Wally K. Daly; Performed by a full cast
2 Broadcast – [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 7
Broadcast: Thursday and Friday at 6pm and Midnight
James Laurenson returns as Tom Harris in the sequel to Before The Screaming Begins. The threat from the aliens increases. First broadcast in 1979. Martin Jenkins production co-stars Hannah Gordon, Donald Hewlett and Colin Douglas.

Fantastic Journeys: The Door In The Wall
By H.G. Wells; Read by Anton Lesser
1 Broadcast – [UNABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 7
Broadcast: Saturday at 6.30 pm and 00.30am
On the eve of great success in public life, Lionel Wallace is troubled by the vision of a lost childhood paradise behind a mysterious door in a wall. Will he concentrate on his career – or succumb to the temptation to pursue this vanished world? First heard earlier this year (2009). The first of a five part series of short stories.

Duel
By Richard Matheson; Read by Nathan Osgood
1 Broadcast – Approx 20 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: BBC 7 / 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Saturday at 6.30pm and 12.30am
“Driving to San Francisco, a businessman finds himself the victim of a deadly game being played by the driver of a huge, mysterious truck. Later to become Steven Spielberg’s classic 1971 film.” Previously broadcast in 2006 and 2007.

I Am Legend
By Richard Matheson; Read by Angus McInnes
9 Broadcasts – approx 5 Hours [UNABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 7
Broadcast: Monday to Friday at 6.30pm and 00.30am
“Taking place in New York, it’s a tale of vampires and a man immune to the plague that has decimated most of the population.” Adapted by Scott Stainton Miller.Produced by Eilidh McCreadie. Previously broadcast in 2006 and 2007.

Rita Hayworth And The Shawshank Redemption
By Stephen King; Read by Clarke Peters
5 Broadcasts – [UNABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 7
Broadcast: Monday to Friday at 1.30pm, 8.30pm and 1.30am
In a brutal American prison, wrongly-convicted Andy Dufresne develops an ingenious method of survival – and conceives an even more resourceful plan of escape. This was the story that inspired the film The Shawshank Redemption.

Posted by Jesse Willis