Category Archives: Book Reviews

2021 mid-summer reading report back

Posted on February 1, 2021 by Andrew Nette| 4 Comments

I’m conscious that I did not do a post on my top 10 reads at the end of last year, as is my usual habit. To make up for this, here is a quick update on what I’ve been getting into, reading-wise, over the first half of summer in Melbourne.

Shore Leave, David Whish-Wilson

Shore Leave is the fourth book to feature the character of ex-Perth cop turned PI, Frank Swann. This latest instalment is set largely in the Perth seaside suburb of Fremantle. Swann is battling poor health from a mystery ailment and is involved in a variety of complications arising from a US aircraft carrier, Carl Vinson, that has docked in town. These problems include the disappearance of a cache of M16 rifles from the ship that may have found their way into the hands of a local neo-Nazi group, and the murder of two women by what could be a serial killer among the crew. To top things off, as has been the case throughout the entire series, Swann has to deal with problems arising from his chequered past as a cop. Nothing in Shore Leave has dissuaded me from my oft stated opinion on this site that Whish-Wilson is the most underrated crime writer working in Australia today.… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime fiction, Book Reviews, Crime fiction, David Whish-Wilson, Neo Noir, Noir Con, Noir fiction

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Book review: Blacktop Wasteland

Posted on October 5, 2020 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

If you spend any time in the social media circles concerned with crime fiction, in all likelihood you will have heard of S. A. Crosby and his book, Blacktop Wasteland. It has been out in the US for ages, during which time I was reading a tonne of positive commentary. Then I stumbled across the little publicised fact that an Australian edition has been released.

Beauregard ‘Bug’ Montage is a hard-working mechanic with a wife and two young sons, who wants a happy marriage, for his kids to get more that he has out of life, and his auto repair business to do well. Unfortunately, said business is just a few weeks from going under financially. On top of this he needs to find a large amount of money to keep his embittered mother in aged care, where she is dying of cancer (seriously, the US health system is a crime story in itself). He also has to somehow also rustle up college tuition fees for his teenage daughter from an earlier relationship.

Beauregard has a previous criminal life he is trying to leave behind. This is hard because he was very good at what he did – driving. The ghosts of his former life also hang around him in the form of his late father, a charismatic criminal in his own right who disappeared to parts unknown when Beauregard was a child, leaving his son with a lifelong love/hate obsession for him.… Read more

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Posted in Book Reviews, Crime fiction, Donald Westlake aka Richard Stark, Heist films, Neo Noir, Noir fiction

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Cover reveal: Dangerous Visions and New Worlds – Radical Science Fiction 1950 to 1985

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Andrew Nette| 6 Comments

Here’s the cover for the upcoming book I have co-edited with my friend, Iain McIntyre for PM Press, Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction 1950-1985. It follows on from Sticking it to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular fiction l950 to 1980, and Girl Gangs, Biker Boys and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fictions and Youth Culture, 1950 to 1980. Dangerous Visions and New Worlds contains some terrific writing and a heap of great SF cover art. Some of the authors covered in the book you will know. Others, I hope, won’t be so familiar. The book will around mid-2021, by which time my main concern is that the fiction featured in it will not appear nearly as dystopian the real world around us. More information as I get it. … Read more

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Posted in Book cover design, Book Reviews, Dystopian cinema, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp fiction set in Asia, Pulp paperback cover art, Science fiction and fantasy

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Ghosts of Stories Past: Roachkiller Redux

Posted on April 27, 2020 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

I am very pleased to welcome back New York writer Richie Narvaez to Pulp Curry. Richie is a friend and he is also a hell of a writer, a fact I discovered when I read his first publishing effort, an anthology of noir stories entitled Roachkiller and Other Stories. It is a top notch anthology of noir stories, ranging from hardboiled crime pieces in the vein of Edwin Torres to dark dystopian tales. So when Richie told me recently that he had updated the anthology, I invited him to visit and talk about the process of revisiting old stories. Roachkiller is available at Amazon here. And while you are picking it up, can I suggest that you also get a copy of Hipster Death Rattle, he debut crime novel against the backdrop of the gentrification of Brooklyn, published by Down and Out Books. Both books are the perfect antidote to any lockdown spare time you may currently find yourself having.

Most of us, given a chance to go back in time to change something from our pasts, would do it. Besides obvious revisions to world history, we might save a loved one, reverse a career path, avoid that pub that one night. I recently had a time travel opportunity of sorts, although on a very mundane scale.… Read more

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Posted in Book Reviews, Crime fiction, Noir fiction

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Book review: Thailand’s Movie Theatres – Relics, Ruins and the Romance of Escape

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

I can’t remember when I first stumbled across Philip Jablon’s wonderful website chronicling the decline of the stand-alone movie theatre in Thailand, The Southeast Asia Movie Theatre Project. I think it was soon after I arrived back in Melbourne after a year in Cambodia, during which I spent my own fair share of time tracking down and photographing crumbling Khmer movie theatres (I also nearly broke my neck photographing the inside of an abandoned cinema in the Lao capital, Vientiane, but that’s another story).

My efforts, however, pale in comparison to Jablon’s painstaking work. His book, Thailand’s Movie Theatres: Relics, Ruins and the Romance of Escape, which emerged from his website, is a detailed, perceptive, beautifully rendered examination not only of the rise and fall of Thailand’s stand-alone cinema industry, but of a once powerful part of the country’s public culture which has now almost completely disappeared. As Jablon writes, ‘In Thailand, the standalone movie theatre represents a form of public entertainment that has all but slipped through the cracks of memory into the abyss of time.’

The first stand-alone cinema was established in Thailand in 1905. They proliferated rapidly, with the country boasting as many as 700 at the industry’s peak. Often established by local entrepreneurs, these movie theatres were usually a dynamic part of their community and deeply enmeshed in their economic and social life.… Read more

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Posted in 1990s American crime films, Book Reviews, Cinema culture

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