Crime Report: Murder by the Book, a Review

Three women, Addison Comstock, Alecia Cookson, and Casey Mitchell. Different ages, different goals, and different social statuses but they’re drawn together by tragedy, stolen dreams, and tortured pasts.  Two of them are on a hunt and the third has no idea.

Trigger Warning: the following review subject deals with child-abuse and sexual assault.

However, Murder by the Book author, J.L. Campbell respectfully and maturely. There are no graphic or salacious details here. By no means a “cozy,” MbtB is not gritty pulp, either.

 

When we meet international best-selling author Addison Comstock, she is hip-deep in problems. She has a deadline galloping up on her. The editor supervising her team of ghostwriters has just died. Worse, the police have detained one of her ghost writers. Worst of all, her public continues to question the provenance of her pageturners. 

But Addison Comstock didn’t claw her way out of poverty and abuse to turn-tail and run. The abuse she suffered as a child has left her with an iron will. Her success and the price she has paid for it has honed her ambition to a razor’s edge. Still the questions unnerve her.

Alecia Cookson has had it. Her “situationship” with Quentin Young—always on the edge of collapse—is more aggravation than ecstasy. Mostly because she strongly suspects he is messing around. Her work for Addison is one-part pay the bills and two-parts emotional torture. All the while she searches for the truth about her family. More than fame, more than fortune, Alecia wants to know the truth.  

With her own history of childhood abuse Alecia needs to know the truth about her mother and what happened to her. Lie, cheat, steal, Alecia will not stop until she gets the answers she wants. No matter who she has to step over—or step on—to get them.  

More than Addison, more than Alecia, Casey Mitchell is determined to succeed. After years of childhood horror, she is on a mission for justice for her mother and her sister. Buoyed by her determination and the experience of serving justice once already, Casey is unencumbered by Addison’s fear or Alecia’s emotions. 

Casey will see justice done. She will get what is owed to her family. Even if it costs her everything.

“Mark my words, yuh wickedness will catch up to yuh one day. The God I know will see justice served. You will never be happy.”

Like Campbell’s previous crime novel, Flames of Wrath, (reviewed in 2023) there are no “heroes” here. These are three women who have crawled out of generational poverty and abuse. All three have used questionable means to achieve their ends. And all three are locked in their determination. 

None of the three intertwined paths lead to a “happily-ever-after.” But as with FoW, MbtB is a delight in execution. When the twist (which won’t be spoiled here) lands, it’s not so much a shocker as a worth-the-price-of-admission show. 

That’s J.L. Campbell’s strength. She has a true command of reality and how her story fits within a brutally real world. Her violence is visceral, her pain is wincing, and her victory is a hard-won triumph for her character and the reader.

Murder by the Book is a lot of fun. It is also available for pre-order, here. Check it out!

Essential Crime Films

 

This week we’re discussing crime, specifically in movies. Movies are great examples of compact, concise writing within a genre. Crime movies are a study in miniature.

Caveat: I have indeed seen The Godfather and Goodfellas. Both are masterpiece films and if you haven’t seen them—do, go, now, run-run-run. 

Neither film makes my list of essentials for one reason, neither are crime movies. The Godfather is a family epic of cultural and civic identity against the violence of 20th century capitalism. Goodfellas is a sweating-to-the-oldies fable, complete with ABC-Afterschool-Special ending. I passed over the Bogart and Cagney films for similar reasons.

I also omitted Casino, Miller’s Crossing, and Once Upon a Time in America—all exceptionally good movies with crime elements but not crime movies. Truly, I love Miller’s Crossing with shameless abandon but it’s not a crime film, it’s the Cohn brothers’ wink and a smile to the crime genre. And probably Reaganism.

So, without further ado...

  

5. Devil in a Blue Dress

From Walter Mosley’s groundbreaking book, Devil in a Blue Dress is the rare movie that improves on the source material. Ezekiel “Easy” Rollins, (Denzel Washington) is a recently unemployed war veteran willing to do anything legal to keep his house in 1947 Los Angeles. Daphne Monet, (Jennifer Beals) is a Creole woman passing for white who is engaged to a Los Angeles mayoral candidate. Throw in systemic racism, murder, and a stone-cold killer from Louisiana called Mouse, (Don Cheadle) and you have an absolute masterpiece of crime.

4. Hell or High Water

David Mackenzie’s new western is a master class in crime. Full. Stop. Two brothers, (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) beaten down by abuse and tragedy rob banks to save the family ranch. Jeff Bridges steals everyone’s lunch money as a Texas Ranger, (real-deal bigoted and deadly) days from retirement who is obsessed with hunting down the duo. Hell or High Water is nearly perfect and proves you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to tell an original, compelling story. Side note: there is a metric ton of heart in this film and the only reason it doesn’t rank higher is because of groundbreaking nature of the other films.

3. Thief

When we meet master thief, Frank, (James Caan) he’s dancing as fast as he can to stack up enough money to get out of the life and truly live with the years he has remaining (after half of his life in prison). Then Frank stumbles into a meeting with Leo, (Robert Prosky) an organized-crime boss who brags of “box-car sized scores,” and Frank thinks he’s found a shortcut to the finish line. Thief is based on a book by cat-burglar Frank Hohimer who served as a consultant on the film—while dodging a murder indictment. That informed perspective was previously unheard of in crime cinema and it is part of what sets this film apart. Thief is also the director at the top of his game. Michael Mann’s legendary attention to detail is hitting on all eight cylinders here, right down to the difference between retail and what the thief actually gets. Attentive viewers will see some elements from Thief recycled in Mann’s 1995 film, Heat but Thief is leaner, meaner, and with none of the exposed squib-trigger wires.

2. Winter’s Bone

Ree Dolly, (Jennifer Lawrence) is the oldest of three children and dreams of escaping Ozark poverty by joining the Marines when she graduates from high school. But Ree is also the family caretaker. Her little brother is too tender to hunt for their food—yes, this is 21st century contemporary—her sister is still too little for anything, really, and their mother is mentally ill/ heavily medicated. Then Ree learns that her meth-cook father put up the family home for bail and is purportedly dead. To save her home from the bail bondsman, Ree runs a gauntlet of scary men—Ree’s sociopathic uncle Teardrop, (standout John Hawkes) who even scares the local sheriff—and scarier women to find her father, dead or otherwise. Debra Granik’s film, (based on Daniel Woodrell’s book) transports crime from the dirty city streets to desolate dirt roads. Winter’s Bone is broken-teeth honest and the shadow of poverty is even scarier than the specter of death. 

1. Fresh

Fresh, (Sean Nelson) is a drug courier, lookout, and safeguard for his friends. He is also 12-years-old. We never see or hear from his biological mother but razor-sharp scenes with his father, (Samuel L. Jackson) hint at why he’s in foster care and why his sister, Nicole, has surrendered to a deadly-abusive relationship. While working out a plan to free Nicole from the clutches of TWO creepy-assed dopemen, Fresh runs heroin for one drug boss and then works as a lookout for a crack dealer. Ambition and/or talent is terminal in this world and Fresh lives in mortal fear of either drug dealer getting wise to him. When two classmates are gunned down, Fresh knows his time is running out and he must execute his chess gambit or die a pawn in the game. Like Winter’s Bone, Fresh is crying-while-stabbed intimate and painfully truthful. There is no “happy ending” here and Boaz Yakin’s film will haunt you long after the credits roll.

The movie posters are promotional materials and are the property of their respective movie studies. They are used here for illustrative purposes only and covered by the Fair Use Doctrine.

Crime Fiction Essentials

 

Every genre, literature to space opera, has its essentials. Essentials are the stories that shape, define, and/or mark the evolution of a genre or the progression of society through the lens of genre. Of course essentials are subject to each person’s taste, values, and development. Fan debates are fun, (Regency Romance folks throw elbows, yo). This is my list. As they say in the Army, it's easy to use, easy to clean. I’d LOVE to debate my picks. Just no elbows. I’m a bleeder.

  

5. The Hunter

The late-great Donald Westlake, (writing as Richard Stark) took traditional noir into an alley, mugged it. You will not find a more developed, completely understated anti-hero than his master-thief, Parker. In movies, Parker has been played by everyone from Lee Marvin to Jim Brown to Jason Statham. None do justice to the baseline sociopath who only truly comes alive in action.

A note on detail: through Parker, Westlake linked sexual dysfunction to heisters about three decades before criminal psychologists made the connection. 

4. Devil in a Blue Dress

Devil in a Blue Dress established Walter Mosley as the master of modern PI fiction as well as a master of place in fiction. His Los Angeles, Houston, and New Iberia are not simply backdrops, those places haunt Mosley’s characters like congental illness. His hero, Easy Rollins is a masterclass in what makes a gumshoe: smart, driven by an innate sense of right/wrong, and tough. He is also a black man in 1940s Los Angeles, facing racial violence and exploitation that we still flail to address today.

3. Carlito’s Way/After Hours 

Retired Judge Edwin Torres’ literary career only spans three novels. Of the three, Carlito’s Way and After Hours, are the best. You MUST read them together—as tight, terse studies of crime, bookended by one life. Carlito Brigante is relentlessly and compelling in his determination to beat the streets. Older, world-weary, (but no less compelling) ex-con Carlito fights to escape the prison of his past. Torres’ prose is as rich as the Spanish Harlem culture Carlito springs from. You’ll have to dig to find these gems but you’ll be glad you did.

2. The Talented Mr. Ripley 

Patricia Highsmith’s brilliant psychopath, Tom Ripley is a killer but only incidentally. His is yearning for a life beyond his stagnant existence. Like Hannibal Lecter, Ripley is a cultured intellectual with a taste for life’s finer things. If Ripley lacks Lecter’s education, OCD-levels of focus, and self-possession he makes up for it in grueling envy, paranoia, and ruthless determination. In short he’s far-more one of us than Dr. Lecter. Highsmith uses suspense, dread, and yearning to hammer Ripley in a psychological crucible. She hammers the reader too. I can’t tell you when I went from disdain, to grudging respect, to outright rooting for Ripley. That’s how light her touch is. Side note, with Ripley’s world-wide acclaim, a whole generation of LGBTQ folks got an anti-hero who reflected the persecution and dread they live with on a daily basis.

1. The Friends of Eddie Coyle 

George Higgins wrote over two dozen books from crime to baseball to politics. The Friends of Eddie Coyle was his first novel and remains his best. Like the United States in 1970, (the year of publication) Eddie Coyle is at a crossroads. In his own words, he’s “listened to the stories, eaten the hotdogs, and drank the bad coffee,” as a sideman and small-time hood. But Eddie is facing the downhill with little to show for his life as a “stand-up guy.” After a conviction for running stolen freight, Eddie is trying to dodge prison by giving up small-timers like himself to a tooth-chipping ATF agent. All the while he’s shielding a crew of heavy-hitters, (his customers in a gun-running hustle). There’s a reason why writers from Robert B. Parker to Elmore Leonard name check The Friends of Eddie Coyle in their books, Eddie is the hood we’re most likely to meet on the street, if not in our own family.

I own none of the photos above. All are used for educational/illustrative purposes as covered by the Fair Use Doctrine.