Friday's Forgotten Books, Friday, April 4, 2014

 The next special Friday on FFB, listed to the left, will be on May16 and reviewed books will be crime fiction from the 1950s.  (written then, not set then)

Of course, any review is welcome. If you haven't read a book from the fifties recently, you may find one lurking in your archives.

Six years of forgotten books this month. It's been a privilege to work with so many great reviewers.

Set the Night on Fire by Libby Fischer Hellmann (2010)

This is one of the few books I’ve read in recent years that uses sixties’ radicalism in a crime fiction plot. And uses it to good avail. Hellmann tells an interesting story with just the right amount of attention to the climate of the sixties to anchor it. Her characters are fleshed out well, and we come to care about them in the past and in the present.

Dar Gartner is newly released from jail after serving a long prison sentence for an act of radicalism. In trying to put a new life together in Chicago, he also touches base with some members of his old group of friends. Friends who begin to die after his re-entry into their lives. His life seems in jeopardy as well.

One of the friends who dies is the father of Lila Hilliard. Hilliard, along with Lila's brother, perish in a house fire seemingly caused by faulty Christmas tree lights. Except Lila remembers unplugging the lights before she went out. As she investigates her father’s business affairs and the fire, her own life is threatened and she realizes there were things about her father and his tale of her long-dead mother that never quite added up. 

So Lila and Dar begin circling each other, Lila is wary at first until in desperation they collectively put the puzzle together. Both are at risk and neither knows precisely where the threat is coming from, but both eventually conclude it's coming from past activities of the group of friends. 

The reader travels back to the late sixties and watches the group of women and men living together, making the decisions that will affect the rest of their life. Through their circle, we're treated to insight into the types of young people drawn to radicalism and what price they were willing to pay to reform society. And also, what lengths they were willing to go to to cover their trail and how that history impacts the present.

The race of Lila and Dar to piece together the plot against them and act swiftly enough to save their lives makes this a thrilling read.

This was a very fine and compelling story.


Sergio Angelini, THE TODD DOSSIER, Robert Bloch
Yvette Banek, NOBODY WORE BLACK, Delano Ames
Brian Busby, OVERNIGHT ESCAPADE, Stephen Mark
Bill Crider, A CANDLE FOR THE DEAD, Hugh Marlowe
Martin Edwards, ROSE'S LAST SUMMER. Margaret Millar
Jerry House, STRANGE GATEWAYS, E. Hoffman Price
Rick Horton, A SPORT AND A PAST TIME, James Salter
Randy Johnson, TREACHERY AT ROCK POINT, Peter Dawson
Nick Jones, RUSSIAN ROULETTE, James Mitchell
Margot Kinberg, WOLF HALL, Hillary Mantel
Rob Kitchin, THE LONG GOODBYE, Michael Lister

B.V. Lawson, A DRAM OF POISON, Charlotte Armstrong
Evan Lewis "Hop Cargo" Robert Leslie Bellem
Steve Lewis/William Deeck, FOLLOW THIS FAIR CORPSE, Laurence Dwight Smith

Todd Mason, 100 GREAT FANTASY SHORT SHORT STORIES, edited by Terry Carr, Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg
Neer, MURDER AT THE PAGEANT, Victor L. Whitechurch
J.F.. Norris, THE CASE AGAINST MYSELF, Gregory Tree
Erica Obey,  THE RED CARNELIAN, Phyllis A. Whitney
James Reasoner, THE LONELY GUN, Gordon D. Shirreffs
Richard Robinson, FINAL NOTICE, Joe Gores
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang, TOO LATE FOR TEARS, Roy Huggins
TomCat, MY TRUE LOVE LIES, Lenore Glen Offord