Joshua Leonard and Andy Dick are pitch perfect in Larceny
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Underwear salesman Nick Peters, played by Joshua Leonard (The Blair Witch Project, Scorched) who is brought to LA because his Cousin Chris, played by Andy Dick (Hebrew Hammer, Tv's NewsRadio) thinks that The Collarer Killer has put him on his list and out to kill him and so Dick locks himself in a garage and Nick winds up going undercover to try to find out who the killer is, posing as a painter artist in which he cant paint or do art and when he finds this Collarer Killer, he can go back to home in New Jersey. Along the way, Leonard meets reporter Kiki, played by Bellamy Young who is investiagting the Killer. Funny dark comedy with funny situations but the end is kinda forced. Joshua Leonard delivers a good performance and what a perfect actor like Andy Dick to play Chris...I don't think anyone else would of done a better job. Also starring Michael Lener (No Way Back, The Mod Squad), Dwight "Heavy D" Meyers (Big Trouble), Kate Jackson (Tvs Charlies Angels), Roselyn Sanchez (Rush Hour 2, Chasing Papi) and Tyra Banks (Halloween: Resurrection) who was the weakiest and wasted of all the cast members. Some people will probably not like this movie but I certainly enjoyed it for its time...it was worth the look and I aint complaining.
1484592
It's the first time readers will have had the enormous satisfaction of meeting Meg and Peter Kaplan in a Larry Shames novel. I hope it won't be the last time we see them. In their eccentric and delightfully engaging banter, both among themselves and the cast of crooks and cops they encounter, Meg and Peter put me in mind of another stellar crime solving couple -- Nick and Nora Charles in Dashiell Hammett's, The Thin Man. While all the zany antics that Shames's readers have come to expect are in abundance here, the Kaplan's add a nice point counterpoint, along with their infectious charm. And you can't beat the description of a New Jersey dump site. It's worth the price of the book just for the first paragraph of chapter seventeen.
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I have never been disappointed with Elmore Leonard and though some books are better than others they are all fives. If one has read any of Leonard's older Westerns you can,in these three books, his morphing over to modern day crime from early westerns, that directly links the good and evil of crime,  and the consistancy of psychopaths, past and present.

Good guy, bad guy, threatened heroine and a plot, that's it.

Leonard always creates an original and believable plot. His books are not mystery's they are the development of characters, portrayed in pitch perfect dialogue, that come together in believable random ways. You know roughly how they will end, good wins and bad loses, but the trip, with meandering and fascinating building block incidents, are a pleasure.

The psychological depth that he gives his characters always ring true.
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I purchased CHASING AMY, directly after another great Amazon.com purchase -- a short novel called THE LOSERS' CLUB by Richard Perez -- and the similarities are mind-boggling and eerie. While THE LOSERS' CLUB centers on an unlucky writer addicted to personal ads and his infatuation with a bisexual woman CHASING AMY is about a successful "indie" comic artist who falls in love with a purported "lesbian" (if labels mean anything). CHASING AMY, like THE LOSERS' CLUB, also centers on downtown New York City clubs and deals, quite hilariously, with "relationship issues" that extend way beyond gay and straight issues. Both have a grungy, gritty quality that marks them as "indie" products, produced on the sly.

In CHASING AMY, the "fool" is actually played extremely well by Jason Lee as Banky. This actor has never been better. Those of you who have seen him in MALLRATS will find him even funnier here. In some ways, he practically steals the show as the foul mouthed, easily riled "best pal" of Holden, the main character of the flick (played very well by Ben Affleck).

This film was made for very little money -- and this "low rent" quality actually seems to help the movie. The movie pulls no punches and tries not to be "politically correct," which makes it all the more real and funny, full of unexpected turns and surprises. It may infuriate some who believe that "gay" and "straight" labels are locked in concrete. This comedy is highly recommended, Kevin Smith's best film to date. A classic 1990s flick. This is the kind of independent film I wish Miramax would produce more of. And the opening credit film score kicks ass, too!

MAKE THIS FLICK PART OF YOUR DVD COLLECTION!
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If Dave Barry teamed up with Elmore Leonard to write comic crime novels about the dumb, inept, and down-right stupidest end of the criminal continuum, with the most eccentric characters on the cast list of not-so-innocent by-standers and good guys, you would get the typical Hiaasen novel. Since Hiaasen writes about the "real" Florida, his stories are always colorful, exotic, entertaining, hot, humid, but always highly amusing. "Nature Girl" is no exception. Just how many bad guys are wiped into this souffle is hard to say--even the good guys are pretty edgy. You basically can tell who's who by IQ. Bad guys: belt-size IQ. Good guys: too clever by half. In the end truth, justice, love, and the American Way--Florida-style win out, and once the sun is really setting, and Margarettas finally just perfect, this novel will give you a warm, sweet glow, like a $500-a-night Palm Beach hotel tan.
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This is a glorious romp of a detective story.

We are introduced to Barry Tunyadevsky, a detective hero (and electronics retailer) who is righteously self-satisfied; with his lustiness, with his delicate digestion, with being Jewish, and with knowing Brooklyn is the best place in the world. Barry is yanked out of his natural habitat because of a life-threatening attack on his sister, a high-flying financial whiz who lives and works in Boston. In the course of Barry's solving the mystery of his sister's attack, we are treated to a very funny view of Boston, medicine, high finance, patrician entitlement, and egregious misbehavior. Barry's snarky comments will delight any reader who has ever been a medical patient or visited Boston during the winter.

Barry the self-satisfied stud undergoes some interesting changes over the course of his adventure. While he surprises himself, we the readers are not so surprised - we see through his blind spots and know that this guy has a huge heart. His simmering anger is always directed at bullies, whether they are in the boardroom or the bathroom. It is satisfying when Barry metes out justice according to his own sense of rightness and skips over the finer points.

I recommend this fast-paced detective story to anyone who wants to learn a few new words (English and Yiddish) and laugh out loud in the process. The running gags (such as huge scary black security guards sporting Ivy League degrees) and variations on detective tropes are entertaining. This is a sexy, smart and funny read. Can't wait to see what Barry gets up to next.
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Haders stories are filled with casts of eccentric characters and intermingling plot lines.  WEST BOUND Guarantees readers the chance to return for more adventures with yet another set of BAD REPUTATIONs quirky characters that have, over time, become more like friends.
WEST BOUND is Haders latest installment in his over-the-top entertaining series of interconnected stories in the comedy crime genre.  He writes about small-time criminals and their eccentricities.

Take Dwayne Bowling for example.  Dwayne eagerly accepts John Cauls proposition to return five-thousand dollars of stolen money (John is the anti-hero of Haders first novel, Bad Reputation) that John Caul had actually stolen.  Dwayne accepts the offer, calls the cops on himself, and claims to be the Baby Face Bandit.  Dwayne is arrested and sent back to prison, to the very place he longs to return.  Dwayne prefers prison to life on the outside.  His only real concern is the quality of the food in the local prison compared to other prisons hes been sent to.  But things go awry for Dwayne and he finds himself quickly released from prison and handed back the five-thousand dollars along with his other belongings.  He is met at the prison gate by, Tubby Turner, who has sworn to kill him.  During the confrontation Tubby reveals that Dwaynes long lost love, Waynelle Stidham, is preparing to get married two thousand miles away in Northern California.  Dwayne evades Tubby, buys a used motorcycle, and heads out West to search for Waynelle.

Another crackling good read from Matt Hader that keeps us begging for more.
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Johnny Shaw is the editor of Blood and Tacos, an e-Zine that contains hysterically funny send ups of the kind of pulpy paperbacks that flooded newsracks in bus stations during the 1970s and 1980s. One of those bad boys and a pint of Muscatel and you were easily good for an entire trip from Oakland to Bakersfield.

He is also the author of a trio of very funny books featuring an Imperial County shitkicker named Jimmy Veeder and his chum, Bobby Maves. These stories are full of low-life crime, drunkenness and blind drunk carousing, but Shaw doesn't call them mysteries or thrillers -- he calls them Mavescapades in honor of Bobby, but they are fiascoes, pure and simple, because damned near every one of them ends in one.

In Plaster City, Veeder joins Maves in a search for Bobby's runaway daughter, Julie, who has taken up with a gang of young thugs. The circuitous search leads them to the desert, the suburbs, even the home of a porno entrepreneur who is trying to break into an even more unsavory business -- cat fights between runaway teenaged girls.

There is plenty of high- and low-jinks in this riotous action tale, which sees Veeder on the verge of ending his partnership with Maves forever because the alcohol-sodden search for Julie is keeping him away from his new family and farm.

Suffice to say that there at least a chuckle on every page -- and an entire gastroenterology clinic full of belly laughs on many of them. Join the Veeder/Maves partnership for one book and you will be hooked like a junkie with a pickup full of heroin. And that's just fine, because then you can check out Big Maria and Dove Season, the other two fiascoes in the series...
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Karen Delaney has found the perfect way to retrieve $300, 000 dollars from her ex-boyfriend, Samir Fakir. When Karen and Samir were dating back than, she lent him the $300, 000 to invest but than they broke up a few months later and he never returned the money to her. Karen and her current boyfriend's house is broken into by two men by the names of Robert "Bobby" Gal and Lloyd Diehl. They demand the usual...money and jewels. Karen has a plan in mind. She proposes to Bobby and Lloyd that if they will break into her ex's place and fletches the money than she will split the money with them.

Things don't go as smoothly but this bumbling gang gets the job done. Karen pulls a sneak attack and makes off with the money. The question is can she hold on to it or will she and her Benjamin's be parted?

Trust Me is the second novel by talented author Peter Leonard. I have been anxiously awaiting to read Mr. Leonard's next novel, ever since I read Quiver. I have to say that I was happily surprised by this book. The cast of characters were so bad that they were good. It was a wonder that Bobby, Lloyd and the rest of the bad guys kept locating Karen. I still believe it was pure luck. They were so clueless. On the other hand, Karen may play the airhead but she has smarts about her. This book was a pleasure to read and so refreshing. Mr. Leonard can Trust Me to read his next novel.
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What do a phony priest, an addled hit-man, an ex-con/comedienne, and an  aging Mafia don with prostate cancer have in common? To find out, you'll  just have to read this latest bit of lunacy from Elmore Leonard. I don't  want to give away any of the sometimes convoluted plot, except to say that  it kept me reading, and in stitches at some of the dialogue. Where Leonard  dreams up these characters is totally beyond my comprehension, but I hope  that he keeps doing it for a long, long time.
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Joe R. Lansdale's Savage Season is the first novel in the "Hap Collins/Leonard Pine" series and clearly demonstrates the path to be taken by these utterly outrageous, yet definably noble characters.

As the novel begins, Hap Collins and Leonard Pine are doing okay.  They have steady jobs in the rose fields and are taking a day off to shoot some skeet in the field behind Hap's house.  Yep, everything is going pretty good until trouble walks around the corner of the house in the form of Trudy (Hap's ex-wife).

Now, I don't know if Mr. Lansdale ever met my ex-girlfriend, but his description of Trudy fits her like a tight pair of spandex pants.  Every time Trudy steps back into Hap's life and then leaves him again, it takes several months for him to recover.  Needless to say, Leonard hates this lady for the way she treats his best friend.

Anyway, Trudy has what appears to be a sweet deal for her loving ex-husband.  It seems that one of her other ex-husbands, Howard, was in jail with a man who'd helped rob one million dollars from a bank.  All of the robber's cohorts were killed during or after the crime, and he almost bought the farm himself when he crashed his getaway boat into a submerged tree stump somewhere along the Sabine River.  The money was never recovered, and the bank robber got life in prison.  He gave Howard a general location of where he thought the sunken boat might be, hoping that if Howard were able to find the money, he'd share some of it with him to make his stay in prison a little easier.

Since Hap knows the Sabine River like the back of his hand (well, maybe not quite that good), Trudy enlists his help in locating the boat, offering him $200,000 for his services.  Knowing Trudy as well as he does, Hap gets Leonard to join in so they can watch each other's backs.  It isn't long before our two East Texans find themselves caught in the middle of a betrayal that surprises neither one of them.  The only real question is whether or not they will live long enough to see who actually ends up with the money.

Savage Season, though not as long or rich in detail as the other novels in the series, is still a fun, fast-paced read.  The bantering and interaction between Hap and Leonard is what hooks you.  These two characters come alive in ways that other authors should take a look at.  There's a lot to be learned here about great character development.

Also, this novel offers a good deal of background information on both Hap and Leonard.  This is stuff I didn't know because I started reading the series from the middle, then worked forward, and finally finished with the first novel, when I should've started with it.  To tell you the truth, it sounds like something Hap and Leonard would do.

Anyway, I enjoyed finding out why Hap had gone to prison as a young adult, how Trudy came into his life (she's referred to in a number of the other books), how he and Leonard met, and Leonard's background as a Vietnam vet.  This information filled in a lot of blanks.

Last, Mr. Lansdale's prose was smoothly written, offering a glimpse of how he would later develop into the author that he is today.  All in all, this was an excellent read, and I was sorry to have the story end.  This series is now being developed for a TV Cable network.  I sincerely hope everything goes through, and that I'll be seeing Hap and Leonard on television before much longer.

Written by Wayne C. Rogers from Horror Novel Reviews. Horror Novel Reviews does not receive payment for reviews. All books are promotional copies.
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Okay guys, listen up. Because it's time to Man Up. And who better to teach the finer points - the ins and outs if you will - of being a "man's man" than veteran mob guy character actor Frank Vincent?

You may not know the name Frank Vincent, but you'll know the face the second you see him smoking a cigar on the cover of his new book. You see, Frank Vincent has played more wise guys in mob movies than you can shake a loaded gun at.

As Billy Batts in Martin Scorsese's mob classic Goodfellas, Vincent infamously tells fellow wise guy Joe Pesci's character to "Go home and get your shinebox." More recently as Johnny Sack's captain Phil Leotardo on HBO's The Sopranos, Vincent is the perennial thorn in Tony Soprano's ass.

Tony Soprano himself, James Gandolfini, repays the favor to Vincent here by writing the introduction to Vincent's book, the ultimate how to guide to achieving true manliness in an Alan Alda world. There are also some great interviews here with Vincent's "man's man" pals like Steven Van Zandt, James Caan, and Vincent "Big Pussy" Pastore. Frank Vincent doesn't just "talk the talk," he "walks the walk" - both on and off screen.

Here he schools you in all aspects of being a "Man's Man." Now if you are already a graduate of "Man's Man 101" (and what real man would admit otherwise?), not to worry: A Guy's Guide To Being A Man's Man, at 250 pages, is also a very quick and often hilarious read.

It's all here. Like the right movies for a "man's man" to watch, including lists on the best westerns, war, sports, and of course, gangster flicks. There's even a section on "chick flicks." It simply reads, "I don't think so."

From winning big in Vegas to getting past the Velvet Rope of "King" the Doorman at that exclusive New York nightclub, Frank Vincent reveals that being a "man's man" is all in the attitude.

In the section on music, Vincent rates a top 15 "man's man" musicians which include the usual suspects like Sinatra and Tony Bennett, as well as such unlikely inclusions as Bruce Springsteen and Aerosmith's Steven Tyler. ("His lips have been a helipad for some of the most beautiful women in the world.")

Vincent also rates the best driving songs, the best drinking songs, and - of course - the best (Chris Issak's "Wicked Game") and worst (Jimmy Buffet's "Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw") songs to make love by.

Vincent doesn't miss a trick here. From what a "man's man" eats, smokes, and drinks (real men prefer martinis and only imported beer) to the way he dresses, accessorizes, and grooms himself. (Be sure to get those nails clipped and manicured fellas.)

He covers all of the bases in A Guy's Guide To Being A Man's Man. And speaking of bases, you'll never make it past the first one without reading the essential advice here on how to get her digits. For instance, when approaching a group of girls in a club, a man's man will never say "You should tell me your girlfriend's name before we have the threesome." Even if that's what he is thinking.

Oh, and guys, here's another piece of advice: If you do get that "special someone" home after a night of partying at the nightclub, don't leave this book out on the coffee table. Probably better to hide it in a safe place. Like right next to that secret porn stash of yours.

Seriously though, A Guy's Guide To Being A Man's Man is a great and very fun read. Now go home and get your shinebox.
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True to its cover, Ten-A-Week-Steale is a pastiche in the style of an old fashioned crime novel. It's fast-paced, hard-bitten, and witty with breezy language often reminiscent of a Kaufmann and Hart play or the Thin Man Movies. Set in the roaring twenties, The plot concerns corruption in high places, with our hero, Walter Steale, squeezed and set up by everyone from the governor of California to the L.A. Police chief.  Steale, would today perhaps be termed a victim of PTSD. A troubled WWI veteran, he does "security work" for his Lieutenant Governor brother for a measly Ten Dollars/week, has relationship problems, trouble integrating into society and proves a perfect patsy for people in high places, possessed of nefarious designs.
 A guy like Steale in a spot like that, though he has an abundance of brains (or at least cunning) and brawn, needs some help. It comes in the person of movie star Virginia Joy. Gin. And the book crosses back and forth between politics and show business until it's impossible to tell one from the other. Sound familiar?
 Jared has done an admirable job of recreating this world of L.A. in days gone by--language, scenery, geography, movies, elections. But all of this would avail nothing without a strong story to keep us absorbed and a cast of characters to  tie up our feelings. Ten-A-Week-Steale has all this and more.
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1992, small time thugs Thomas and Rosie Uva are tired of knocking over convience stores for peanuts, so one night they come up with an idea, a crazy idea. While scouting locations, Thomas accidentally stumbled upon a mafia owned bar and realized, there's a whole lot of money there and not much protection. For the next year, the duo ripped off the mob without consequence, until they took something that made them both the biggest targets in New York. This is another unbelievably true story, that has been brought to the big screen and the public eye, because of our on-going fascination with organized crime. Mafia movies do so well at the box office, that writers are scrambling to find any story they can turn into a film and it's the audience that has benefited the most. Some people say these movies glorify crime, and maybe they do, but to me, anything Mafia related is just fascinating. Watching these films and hearing these stories, you think how could that have happened? Then you go to Wikipedia and find out it's all true! Rob The Mob is the latest in a bunch of these little known Mafia stories to hit the big screen and it does not disappoint. Who plays a Mafia don better than Andy Garcia? Add to that the intense, Michael Pitt, straight off a successful run in Boardwalk Empire, and you have the makings of a terrific cast. The bottom line, Rob The Mob isn't Goodfellas, but it's a hell of a story, with a cast that's experienced in these types of films. It's pretty much what you'd expect from a Mafia movie, but if your like me, that doesn't matter much, it's the story and personalities that you're really interested in.
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It's darn clever plotting, too. Organized crime had its filthy mitts all over professional boxing in the 1950s and, appropriately, it plays a major part in this tightly written retro-pulp novella.

Characters will make or break a work of fiction, and author Dundee ("Tunney") scored a decisive win with the Duke, here. He's tough, brave, streetwise and yet a good joe to his very core. To paint it in crude brush strokes, he is similar to a Louis L'Amour western hero, only in a gritty postwar urban setting.

I have great appreciation for the classic pulps, and admiration for the pulp writers. But frankly, those guys were meeting deadlines and worried about bills most of the time; so even some of their great works weren't as carefully polished as this novella. And yet Counterpunch maintains a vintage pulp fiction flavor from cover to cover.

All the Fight Card books are great reads, and this one is exemplary.

Henry Brown is the Two-Fisted Blogger, and chief/cook/bottle washer at Virtual Pulp Press. He is author of some pulpy fiction of his own, and the military thriller Hell and Gone.
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One of Andrew "The Fugitive" Davis' few non-suspense movies, this comedy recieved terrible reviews and zero box office upon its theatrical release--but it would be well worth seeing for many.  Full of terrific character actors and sporting a jumbled chronology, the film tells the story of identical twin brothers (Andy Garcia, once again a naturally joyful presence) at war with each other over their adoptive mother's bountiful estate.  The more selfish of the two siblings may have a lot of politicans in his pocket, but his generous opponent has a few tricks up his sleeve as well.  Though essentially a "dramedy" in tone, there are occasional detours into slapstick that treaten to tip the balance.  On the whole, however, this is the kind of fresh and highly moral piece of entertainment that comes out of Hollywood pretty rarely.  It's so much more popular, it seems, to be smug and ironic.  "Steal Big, Steal Little" doesn't go that route and leaves me feeling positive and optomistic.
1994356
Part-time sheriff's Deputy Toby Sawyer gives new meaning to the word "hapless." He's given the simple task of keeping his eye on the body of a local tough who turns up murdered. Somehow, he manages to botch even that. His efforts to set his mistake right send him lurching from one life-threatening situation to another, uncovering more and more secrets and corruption with every lurch.

Let's face it, Jack Reacher this guy ain't. But Victor Gischler keeps the action moving so fast, and makes the bad guys so bad, that you end up pulling for the poor schmuck with the tin badge pinned to his Weezer t-shirt.

Fast-paced, tightly plotted, and darkly funny, this is Gischler's best book since his debut, GUN MONKEYS.