There is an odd fascination with End-Of-The-Year lists as if it is rather easy to divide a year in review in the good, the bad, and the ugly. Admittedly, I have never fully embraced the concept myself, but I am more than happy to jump on the bandwagon now. Those are fun, right? 2015 was a good year, reading-wise, and there were more awesome moments than less stellar ones. Still, tough choice to include books as my perception of them changes occasionally. There are a few books I keep coming back to, thinking about them months after having read them, so I guess those are the ones I want to include in my own "best of" list. Your mileage will wary, as those are highly subjective as we all know, but you´re still wrong. :-) In no particular order but since I have to sort them somehow... It goes without saying those books were not necessarily published in 2015, but rather I have read them this year.

Peckerwood - Jedidiah Ayres

Peckerwood is the book that started it all, that is my new found love for crime noir stories. I can´t even remember how I found this one, but I remember I picked it up because I loved the cover so much. Anyway, it made me laugh a lot as the hillbilly characters are nothing short of cray-cray but there is something touching about their nonsense that made me smile a lot too. Told from three different main POVs it is incredibly tight and extremely smart. Interwoven stories of losers and drunkards, who nevertheless are very comfortable in their skins, where blackmail and booze and crime are part of their lives.

My review of Peckerwood

Brother, Frankenstein - Michael Bunker

Brother, Frankenstein falls a bit on the philosophical side of the fence, even it is still fiction, as the main character is an 11-year-old autistic boy who is transformed by a borderline sociopath/genius doctor into an artifical intelligence and deadly weapon. A rather uncomfortable social commentary on the question of makes us human.

My review of Brother, Frankenstein 

The End Of The World As We Knew It - Nick Cole

Nick Cole is the only guy who made me cry this year. Here I said it, you´re welcome. While on the surface it is a zombie apocalypse/end of the world tale it is as much a romance about two lovers hoping to find each other again when most of the population has ceased to exist. Audio transcripts and diary entries fill in the gaps where history has erased their stories. My personal Redemption Song.

My review of The End Of The World As We Knew It

Zero Saints - Gabino Iglesias

Zero Saints was the biggest surprise for me. A novel about an illegal alien in the USA who has to flee his homecountry and is pushed into the criminal underworld of Austin. A large chunk is written in Spanglish but those feels as natural as the supernatural elements, the superstition and loneliness, the crime and violence Iglesias describes. It isn´t about someone taking revenge, even it is, but the transgressive powers of violence all around us and how we deal with it.

My review of Zero Saints 

The Bastard Hand - Heath Lowrance

Apparently a cult novel, who ever made it into one. It wasn´t me, pinkie swear. Psycho preacher plus slightly naive drifter, who has problems to adjust to reality after he gave psychological care the slip, in a small town full of skeletons. The Reverend is abusive and manipulative, taking over a vacant spot as a pastor in Cuba Landing, while Charlie is his sorta right hand. Lowrance dissects the small town bubbles which are about to burst and mocks the abyss under the surface of their lives until old testamentical judgement is spoken, hellfire and all. I am not quite sure what I adore more in the book, the storytelling skills of Lowrance, his fine craftmanship on a sentence-by-sentence basis or the darkly humorous but perfect dialogue.

My review of The Bastard Hand 

Country Hardball - Steve Weddle

A novel-in-stories that follows different characters around in another small town where a failing economy has taken its toil a long time ago on everyone. Weddle uses sparse, almost reluctant, language and comes from unexpected angles to talk matter of factly what is happening. There are simple, even every day events like a busted check, a woman fighting cancer, even some petty crimes but those events are less important than how they deal with it. That is what shapes those characters in Country Hardball. It often reminded me of the visual language of old westerns, and I imagined the book in black/white. No reason, really, just the visuals are reminiscent like that. The atmosphere, the vibe and feel of the place and time are breath taking.

My review of Country Hardball 

Medium Talent - Forbes West

As some may know I was heavily invested in the Apocalypse Weird metaverse (RIP, sort of) and while there were three books I especially enjoyed - The Serenity Strain by Chris Pourteau and Texocalypse Now co-written by Michael Bunker and Nick Cole being the other two - Medium Talent has left the biggest impression. The aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, a halfcrazed main character, time travel, Hemingway, this book has it all. I still hate the book for how it made me feel though. Mainly I´ve included Medium Talent exactly for that reason, and maybe, but only maybe because Forbes West is the most talented of the lot. He is insane, alright, but fucker knows what he is doing.

My review of Medium Talent  

As the story trilogy by Jordan Krall is a different beast as opposed to all those standalone novels I have added it on the bottom. No judgement call about it but more for organizational reasons even personally I see it as one, single unit and entry.

False Magic Kingdom Cycle - Jordan Krall

aka False Magic Kingdom; Bad Alchemy; Your Cities, Your Tombs

No list of mine would be complete without the False Magic Kingdom Cycle. A three part book "series" where traditional or established means of story telling are abandoned in favor of a looser form of interconnected thoughts and surrealistic events. A 9/11 novel, deeply personal in a larger context of the good guys vs the bad guys, who are not always so very different. It is hard to explain what makes this stories so exciting. It is a challening work, emotional too, but how Krall defines metaphors or sounds, while creating an untypical tale of hyperawarness and an odd estrangement to and by his characters - and to the text itself - is nothing short of impressive.

My review of False Magic Kingdom

My review of Bad Alchemy

My review of Your Cities, Your Tombs

Jedidiah Ayres is a freak. Like in freaking brilliant.

If you ever thought country noir isn´t a thing, it is.

Peckerwood *giggles* Okay, the title and the cover artwork should give a hint or two that the book is of the weird kind, but since I am always fascinated with the oddballs and outsiders it´s exactly my type of book I love to read.

Set in deepwater backward hillbilly country, sort of, where arguements are resolved with the shotgun or a good asswhuppin, Terry Hickerson has a pretty damn good life, except when he doesn´t. Blackmail, robbery, a best friend and a teenage son to drive him home when boozed out in a watering hole. That´s a life worth dying for.

All the characters are losers, really, but there is something touching about them that it is impossible not to love them. They are low-life criminals for the most parts, and kicking other losers around for sports is perfectly acceptable as a way to spend their time. Works for me.

Nevertheless none of them feels pictured as some kind of "white trailer park thrash", but people who try to get by without putting all that much effort into their lives. Of course there is a lot of typical cussing going on, which isn´t a cheap shot, but used to bring the likes of Terry to life in a way that seems authentic. They are not the most literate kind, but mainly lazy folks, stupid too, alright, and it is clear they will never go anywhere. Not that they want to. Everyone is perfectly fine in their skin, which adds to liking the characters even more. They don´t pretend to be someone they are not, and if that means they piss themselves when drunk then so be it.

Ayres fucks around with his characters alot, though, and he seems to be that kind of guy who loves to kick them around like puppies. Which obviously adds to the fun in this case, since they are indeed losers and nothing is ever going to change that.

Partners in crime Sheriff Mondale and Chowder Thompson run the small town of Spruce. Mondale has some sort of moral excuse he tells himself since Thompson is not only a meth dealer but also a respectable business man on the surface who brings in the most tax dollars to keep the town running. So a killing or two when needed to keep outsiders from mengling does not hurt anyone (except those who turn up later in some shallow grave, but that´s a different story altogether). Better the devil you know and everything. Chowder, however, is a hardcore criminal and whatever serves his own interests best is good enough for him.

The prose is magnificent, and the humor dark, dry and almost always inappropriate. Witty too. Of the WTF kind and where the hell did that come from sort. Haven´t laughed so hard in a while. It´s the how Ayres punches his lines around that makes Peckerwood such a joy to read. It is crisp, and grim and yeah, brilliant.

Narrated via multiple POVs Peckerwood gives every main character a chance to shine, while it feels like a puzzle to be solved. Several subplots are intertwined into a bigger picture. Very appropriate with the small town setting where every one knows every one´s else dirty laundry and business. One piece at a time comes to light, and life, or as it is a buried body coming up too, even not exactly to life again.

Every chapter, seen through either Terry Hickerson, Sheriff Mondale or Chowder Thompson, adds to the story, and only when deep down inside some things from the very beginning actually makes sense. But once used to the constant shifts it is obvious Peckerwood is just perfect how it is constructed, and could not have been told any other way. it is crime fiction alright, but the mood and vibe focus a ton on the characters, so it does feel like a bit as I am looking over their shoulders, laughing at their stupidity, shaking my head in disbelief in what kind of mess they have brought themselves again.

Peckerwood is one of my fave books so far this year, and a keeper, no doubt.

This stories of Fuckload of Shorts by Jedidiah Ayres, which includes the stories that inspired the short film Fuckload of Scotch Tape, are the best kind of short stories. Each one takes an idea that, realistically should make for a horrible, shock-driven story, and instead delivers amazing noir fiction with beautifully rendered characters. Ejaculating a dead man? Yep. Selling corpses to a dog foot plant? Yep. In the hands of a lesser writer, these ideas would amount to nothing more than throwaway snuff fiction. But in the hands of Jedidiah Ayres, these ideas are simply climaxes of and catalysts for truly compelling stories.This video book review examines one of those scenarios in-depth: how exactly, logistically speaking, can one ejaculate a dead man? Yes, there is a whiteboard and drawings included.