• half-page half-tone snapshots
• a purported multi-page e-mail* thread between Handler and her siblings
• a purported multi-page letter of complaint from a tenant of her father’s rental property
• whining (in multiple chapters) about the need to write another “stupid book.”

Otherwise it was sometimes amusing and often offensive. And of course it’s been solidly lodged in the bestseller lists since its release.

* I live in Boston.

needs more demons? here’s what’s needed: if I show signs of reading another one of these, I need somebody to stage an intervention.

I liked My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands much better than the other one, partly because it’s raunchier, but mostly there’s something approaching character development. I also thought it was funnier.

needs more demons? I do find it kind of amusing to imagine a smallish demon horde materializing at one of Chelsea’s parties and giving her more significant challenges to overcome than a shortage of Ketel One vodka*. And you know what? I think she might think it was funny, too. That is, if it happened to somebody else.

Hopefully she got some free cases for all the product placement.

Initially I found The Séance a bit too similar to its predecessor, but it eventually reveals itself to be significantly different. Without wanting to spoil it too much, it pays homage to a different set of earlier works than The Ghost Writer, and it introduces a handful of genuinely surprising notions into the maybe-ghost trope. One particular device seems so appropriate — and so creepy — I can’t believe dozens of other writers haven’t exploited it. Maybe they have, but I’ve never read a work using quite the same trick.

Unfortunately, although the climax proper is appropriately hair-raising, the novel finishes rather weakly, with a hard-to-digest expository lump.

Despite my reservations, I recommend the book unhesitatingly to fans of a good old-fashioned spook show.

* Séance is actually set in the latter part of the Victorian era, and Harwood evokes the milieu far more successfully and convincingly than a great many writers who set fiction in the time period.

needs more demons? no.

The first few chapters and that foreknoweldge, in fact, gave me the impression that ths was going to be Huston’s misguided pander-to-the-fanbase book, like those Irving Welsh and Chuck Palahniuk novels I didn’t actually read, but always assumed from the reviews recapitulated themes from their breakthrough books while cranking up the gross-out quotient.

The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death does bear superficial resemblance to Caught Stealing, and it leads with basically all of the commonalities: like Caught Stealing’s Hank Thompson, Web is a kinda naive but more-than-a-little-disaffected smartass with a complicated and somewhat dark past who gets involved way over his head with some rough stuff. And the first few pages make it plain that Huston’s lack of squeamishness is not at all diminished, while the sharp and salty dialogue seemed pushed almost to the point of parody. I was plenty willing to be onboard for a Hank Thompson retread, mind you, but steeled myself for disappointment after the more complex and satisfying The Shotgun Rule.

I needn’t have worried. Web turns out to be a very different sort of protagonist from Thompson, and the novel’s respective plots become much less similar as they progress. Like The Shotgun Rule, The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death displays greater thematic depth than the Thompson books (while still delivering action a-plenty). Anything that seemed gratuitious about the opening was utlimately pretty well supported. And while it took The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death a few more pages to sink its hooks in me, they eventually went deep; I finished the novel in two sittings. Since finishing it, I’ve been trying to figure out if it is my new favorite Huston novel, or if I still like The Shotgun Rule a smidge better. The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death didn’t have any 80’s music gaffes like The Shotgun Rule, but it did have a couple gristly lumps of exposition. Really, I think the two novels are a little too apples-and-oranges to make a clear call, so I’m declaring it a tie.

needs more demons? no. But Huston aficianados may be interested to note that this novel features past-tense narration and even a handful of literary devices like metaphors.

Instead, I think it’s fairer to accept that no baseball book can be comprehensive, and ask two things of Hemple’s book: that it deepen the reader’s understanding of (if not appreciation of) the game, and that it be entertaining along the way.

For me, it succeeds on both counts. I came late to baseball fandom, mostly through riding to band rehearsal with avid Sox fan singer Dave Kichen. I initially learned about the game from Dave, and from Jerry Trupiano and Joe Castiglione’s play-by-plays. I pestered Dave with endless questions, but there’s still a lot I don’t know. For instance, Hemple spends a lot of time on why lefty/righty matchups matter. This isn’t something you pick up on so much when your game education comes from the radio, since it’s mostly about sightlines and which way a throwing arm points. The acid test: the first time I watched a game after finishing this book, I really did feel I had a significantly better grasp of why certain base running, stealing, and position substitution decisions were made.

And Watching Baseball Smarter was an enjoyable, if not exactly compelling read. I have the impression that Hemple worked hard to avoid offending readers while still trying to let some of his personality shine through. Probably the most important aspect is that Hemple makes a real effort to portray both sides of baseball’s many debates, e.g, “The new [interleage] matchups, though limited to just a handful of games each year, boosted attendance but angered purists who felt that the World Series should have remained the only meeting between the leagues.” Sometimes he expresses forceful opinions, but usually uncontroversial ones like calling “Minute Maid Park,” “Coors Field,” et al “hideous names.” Hemple steers clear of outright team favoritism, although there’s a discernable amount of National League bias.

needs more demons? nah. but an index would have been helpful.

This was almost completely wrong. Huston is not a writer who chooses the easy, predictable path. He does revisit aspects of the previous books: some of the survivors of the previous novels make appearances, Hank’s ambivalent passion for baseball reasserts itself, and the central macguffin of the series continues to haunt Hank in surprising ways.

As I’ve come to expect from Huston, it’s hard to say whether funny or grim dominates; it’s both, not just alternately but sometimes simultaneously. It made me laugh out loud at least once, and probably made me cringe, too.

I still think Six Bad Things is the weakest of the three books, but this novel places it squarely in its context as a middle act. A Dangerous Man is pretty much a non-stop adrenaline surge.

needs more demons? noway.

Club Dead was fast moving and fun (also sometimes funny), and I still think Harris is fundamentally a better prose stylist/dialogue author than Laurell Hamilton (or her many imitators), but I can’t help being disappointed that the series is moving in a more standard direction.

needs more demons? metaphorically, perhaps.

The other Huston novels I’ve read so far have all had first-person narrators. The Shotgun Rule is structurally much more ambitious; it uses a third-person voice that intermittently lets the reader inside the head of a kaleidoscopic array of characters. It’s set sometime around 1983 or ‘84 and centers around four teen boys with an appetite for trouble. The trouble they get into winds up being shaped by lingering animosities from their parents’ generation in ways they can’t anticipate. One of the kids, Hector, reminded me of Jaime Hernandez’s “Locas” stories in Love and Rockets, but mostly The Shotgun Rule just reminds me of Charlie Huston: his characteristic breathless pace, intricate but mostly credible plotting, and unfllinching approach to physical and emotional harm befalling his characters are all on display. I generally think it’s an unpardonable sin to call a book “unputdownable,” but I literally did finish this book in almost a single sitting.

Two quibbles: Ozzy’s deceased guitar player spelled his name “Rhoads,” not like Fender Rhodes, and Face Dances was a crappy Who album, not a crappy Stones album (maybe Huston meant Tattoo You?) But these gaffes are forgiven, because, like Hector, I still remember the furious joy of dropping the needle on the first Suicidal Tendencies album for the first time, and Huston gets massive cool points for namechecking deep cut “Memories of Tomorrow,” instead of the more obvious (if still awesome) “Institutionalized.”

needs more demons? nuh-uh, nohow.

Still, it certainly kept me flipping pages. And it turns out to be a great book to read when laid up with minor injuries, because pretty much however badly hurt you are, you are bound to get a “well at least that didn’t happen to me!” lift at some point.

needs more demons? maybe

Huston’s fast-moving noir has a lot more going for it than its possible ability to induce chest pains. It’s also very funny, thanks to narrator Hank Thompson’s singular outlook on life. (Not least of his charms is that even when he’s in fear of his life, he’s preoccupied with the San Francisco Giants struggle for the wild card. The structural divisions of the book reflect Hank’s concern, e.g., “Part One: September 22-28 2000 — Eight Regular Season Games Remaining.”)

Caught Stealing is the story of a more-or-less regular guy (although he has an interesting and unusual backstory) who is suddenly finds himself the target of a nasty clutch of heavies. Hank is an intermittently unreliable narrator in fine noir tradition, but mostly I think Huston’s game is to see how far he can push Hank’s situation and the reader’s sympathies. I was pretty far into this book before Hank took action that I couldn’t justify with some sort of “if I were in that crazy, amped-up situation, I can see how that might look like a reasonable option to me” logic. And by that point I had no problem with “I can how that might look like a reasonable option to Hank,” even if it also made me think, “whoah, waitaholdit I couldn’t go there.”

If you need further endorsement, I had to start reading the second (of three) Hank Thompson books, Six Bad Things more-or-less immediately after finishing Caught Stealing, even though there are already about a gazillion books in my to-read queue.

needs more demons? nuh-uh.