Hard Boiled Wonderlands
Posted by: Neil Hollands
Hard boiled detective novels and speculative fiction are not common subject matter for book groups, but that’s a dirty shame. Some of the best fiction being written these days is in the genres. A coincidence in my recent reading schedule has left me thinking about books in which these two genres coincide.
I just received Strange Cases by Jill H. Vassilakos and Paul Vassilakos-Long as a review assignment. It’s a guide to speculative mystery fiction, one of the increasingly specialized reference works that we librarians seek out because they help us advise readers in the ever-more-diverse book world. Readers’ advisory books are our secret weapons, and book group leaders ought to add them to their arsenals. I’m excited to see what these writers have to say; maybe more about that in a future blog.
I was already reading Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. I’ve wanted to try Murakami for ages, but only just now found time for him. I’m not disappointed. In just the last few chapters, he’s mixed in a profligate librarian who makes a sensual house call with reference materials about a unicorn skull; a wonderful description of a home-cooked Japanese meal; a prolonged comparison of the merits of Stendahl, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy; and a terrifying home invasion by a duo of mysterious and mismatched thugs. Perhaps the real wonder here is that despite using three kinds of weirdness–futurism, mysticism, and
quirkiness–Murakami still maintains compelling forward momentum in the plot. So far I’m on pins and needles.
This is not the only wonderful mixture of hard-boiled and speculative fiction awaiting readers. Try Jonathan Lethem’s Gun with Occasional Music, which combines genetic manipulation, dystopia, a classic wiseacre detective, and much other weirdness. Lethem’s dialogue is worth the price of admission alone.
Or race through Charlie Huston’s Joe Pitt series, a blitzkrieg of five lightning-paced novels featuring a tough fixer, New York gangs, and vampires. The adventure 
starts with Already Dead and will conclude with this month’s My Dead Body.
Another standout is Richard K. Morgan’s Thirteen (published as Black Man in his home country of Britain.) It’s another tale of genetics gone wrong, this time with healthy doses of racial justice and international politics thrown into the science fiction mix. Also consider Jim Butcher, or Mike Carey, or even Charlaine Harris, whose Sookie Stackhouse series has taken a decidedly tougher turn in recent editions.
That’s enough for tonight. Time to go back down the rabbit hole with Murakami.
