If you’re living in an area experiencing “April Showers” and find yourself indoors a lot, here’s some books to keep you company. If it’s beautiful out, these books can keep you company outside too. That’s the beauty of books, they’re versatile.
Ride the Pink Horse — Dorothy B. Hughes
Dorothy B. Hughes, the late, great, hardboiled mystery author wrote a few books that went on to become classic Film Noir movies. Ride the Pink Horse is one of them and it’s pure pulp. In it, we meet Sailor, a lackey for a corrupt Chicagoan Senator named Willis Douglass. Douglass isn’t a Senator anymore, and Sailor is no longer shoveling his shit. But he’s not the only one with revenge and blackmail on his mind. This book is a classic, as are all of Hughes’ novels. We’ll have to write an article about her.
Savage Son — Jack Carr
Reading list frequent flier, Jack Carr’s third book in the James Reece saga has the former Navy SEAL sniper taking on the Russian mafia. If you’re like us and you love the Mack Bolan Executioner series, you’ll love this book. Jack’s work has the kind of tradecraft you’d expect in a Tom Clancy novel and the action from a Don Pendleton book.
Sidebar: If you’re into this series, Jack has a podcast you’d also enjoy.
Men’s Adventure Quarterly — Robert Deis, Bill Cunningham, with Paul Bishop as guest editor
Robert “Subtropic Bob” is a frequent flier on our monthly reading list, he’s been featured on all three of them. We wrote about the MAQ in this previous article. In it, we said that if we taught a college course in Pulp Fiction this would be required reading. We’re not wrong in that sentiment.
Practice to Deceive — Ann Rule
If you’re into true crime, Ann Rule is one of the best in the business. This book is about Russel Douglas’s Christmastime murder on picturesque Whidbey Island in the state of Washington.
Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway’s Secret Adventures, 1935-1961 — Nicholas Reynolds
I love Hemingway’s books and wrote about how, on my honeymoon we went on a bit of a Hemingway bar crawl in Paris—because my wife is awesome and totally humored me there. So as a nerd for both Hemingway books and real life espionage, this is obviously up my alley.
I had no idea, Hemingway was an agent during the Spanish Civil War. Or that he helped the OSS liberate Paris during World War II. His work in Cuba during World War II, and China are very interesting as well, and backed up with evidence. However, Reynolds kind of speculates Hemingway’s spying for the NKVD which undercuts the portions written about his NKVD involvement. I’m not saying he wasn’t a Soviet Agent, I’m just saying he doesn’t have evidence to back that up. That aside, this is a very interesting read if you’re into Papa Hemingway like I am.
Open Season — C.J. Box
The first novel in the Joe Pickett series. Joe Pickett is a Wyoming game warden who stumbles across a dead body, and then a few more. But he uncovers more than just dead bodies, he finds a species thought to be extinct in the area. If word gets out, the natural gas company InterWest’s pipeline—and all the money it’d bring to the area—won’t materialize. And when there’s billions of dollars and a few murders, that usually spells bad news for the protagonist.
You can find all of these books in our online bookshop, where we have other collections like Hardboiled Crime novels we love.
