Prepare To Meet Your Destiny

You are about to enter the mysterious...the unknown...the majesty that is....
KUNG FU FACTORY!

It is coming....Prepare....

Rawson's Top 5

Like most years since I turned 30, 2010 flew by for me. It was an exciting year, I met and interviewed more than a few of my idols, helped revive a magazine, and started writing reviews along with pumping out fiction. The other thing that set 2010 apart for me was that I read 80 novels this year. Don't get me wrong, I've always been a prestigious reader, but this year there didn't seem to be moment that went by when I didn't have my nose in a book.

I enjoyed most of them, but there were more than a few that left me shaking my head and performing a sky hook into the garbage can with them and even more that left me saying Meh. But there were some truly great reading moments with novels where time stopped moving and I was so absorbed by story that nothing existed outside of it. The following lists are the best of what I read this year.

Quick note, folks. I know I said I would be writing individual reviews for each of my picks, but time managed to sneak up on me and kick my ass. Plus I had a hell of a time narrowing down my choices and I liked so many different novels that I decided to include a top five of my non crime reads and five notable crime titles along with my top five.
Anyway, here we go


My top 5 Non-Crime novels of the year

Yes, I read a lot of non crime fiction. For every two crime titles I read, I dip my toes into another genre. With 2010, I found myself reading a boat load of Urban Fantasy and Apocalypse fiction. In case you didn't notice, there was tons of both.

5) Rut by Scott Phillips
Phillips told me about this book when I was conning--I mean arranging for him to contribute his 'Under the Influence' piece for issue #1 of Crimefactory. Phillips has been one of my favorite novelists for a number of years and I was chomping at the bit to read his take on science fiction. Rut is very much an apocalypse novel, but it's a realistic take on Armageddon, where the end of the human race is slow and drawn out over decades as opposed to a sudden blinding flash of death and chaos. And, of course, the book is hilarious.

4) The Stairway to Hell by Charlie Williams
When I received this novel, Russel Mclean commented on how brilliant he thought the book was. In fact, he called it 'genius'. And Russel, he was right, this is not only a brilliant read, but is Williams best novel to date. Normally I'm not a huge fan of novels about musicians or the pursuit of fame, but Stairway to Hell is so damn funny my predisposed prejudice towards the subject was completely shed. Highly recommended to fans of Neil Gaiman's more vicious novels.

3) Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey
Like I said of Victor Gischler, if there was a Kadrey fan club, I'd be the president. (Okay, vice-president, A.J. Hayes would probably be the president) I've put this book into the hands of more people this year than any other. And, yes, crime fiction fans will love it because along with being one of the best examples of Urban Fantasy released this year, it's also one hell of a hard-boiled read. Also on an only interesting to me note, Kadrey is the one author who I own entirely as e-books.

2) The Passage by Justin Cronin
This one got tons of ink this year, but there was a reason for it. The Passage is a fully realized, emotionally complex epic and outside of Charlie Huston's Joe Pitt novels, the Passage is one of the most original takes on the vampire novel I've ever read. It's also one of the most original takes on the Armageddon, where Cronin advances the remains of civilization not five or ten years into the future, but 80. Great read.

1) The Four Fingers of Death by Rick Moody
This was a bold move by a writer whose previous novels mostly dealt with the malaise of suburban America. Much like Rut, Moody portrays the end times as a slow burn, a culture ravaged by out of control consumerism, short attention spans, and bastardized politics has doomed us. This is a novel within a novel and both story lines are utterly compelling.

My Five Crime Fiction notables:

5) The Damage Done by Hilary Davidson
A slickly written, meticulously researched mystery with heavy noir elements. Davidson's first novel length effort is far from a perfect novel, but it is a highly enjoyable read and I'm looking forward to further entries in the Lily Moore series and where she takes her characters

4) Bad Juju and Other tales of Madness and Mayhem by Jonathan Woods
My favorite single author short story collection of the year. Woods is a master of the short form and each story in the collection is a insane nugget of desperation and over the top violence.

3) Broken Dreams by Nick Quantrill
What I like most about Quantrill's PI Joe Geraghty is that, yes, Geraghty's past life is fraught with tormented moments, but he is not over burdened by them. Geraghty has dealt with his pain and has moved on and is dealing with day-to-day life as opposed to letting it turn him into a self serving prick like most fictional PI's. Broken Dreams is a gripping, atmospheric read and like the Damage Done, it's not perfect, but it is highly readable

2) Print the Legend by Craig McDonald
My favorite ongoing series. Each entry in the Lassiter series keeps getting better and better. I can't wait for One True Sentence.

1) Requiems for the Departed edited by Gerard Brennan and Michael Stone
My favorite anthology of the year in a year over flowing with truly amazing anthologies.

I know this has been one long winded bastard of a post, but finally, here are my top five novels of the year.

My Top Five

5) Pike by Benjamin Whitmer
I commented on Facebook when I first started reading Pike that I felt like I needed to take a scalding hot bath every 50 pages or so. I still hold to this opinion. Pike is stripped down, working class noir. Each chapter is like a punch to the face and is one of the most carefully constructed novels of the year.

4) Expiration Date by Duane Swierczynski
This genre bender is classic Swierczynski. Whip crack plotting, near nonstop action, and some of the most intelligent, personal writing of Philly's reigning king of pulp's career. One of the few novels I read multiple times this year.

3) Late Rain by Lynn Kostoff and Johnny Porno by Charlie Stella (tie)
Kostoff and Stella seem to be attached at the hip this year and with good reason. Both authors have produced the two best and, far from easily defined novels, of their careers. Yes, both are crime novels on the surface, but there's so much more going on in each of them. Both are tightly drawn character studies without an ounce of fat on either of them.

2) The Wolves of Fairmount Park by Dennis Tafoya
Tafoya's sophomore effort can be easily compared to the best of Richard Price and George Pelacanos. Tafoya skillfully handles this weighty, character driven tome with the deft skill of a far more experienced novelist. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Tafoya is the novelist to watch in the years to come.

1) The Cold Kiss by John Rector

The moment I cracked the ARC of the Cold Kiss open, I knew I would be including it on my ten best of list. Two hours later as I turned the last page, I knew it would be my number 1 pick. The Cold Kiss is a perfect balance of character, plot, and action. No, the plot of a young couple coming across a shit load of dirty cash and then being hunted down for it isn't the most original, but Rector manages to make it fresh by combining it with an intense locked room style mystery. By the way, if I was a betting man, I'd put money down that five years from now, Rector will be ranked as one of the most renowned thriller writers in the states. The Cold Kiss is an amazing, can not be missed novel

The Best of Whatever—Cameron Ashley

The Top Ten things I love about Crime Factory founder Dave Honeybone:

• Dave is the world's tallest librarian. Fact. He hates when people point out his height, but sorry, it must be pointed out. Seriously, if I had to go collect money, I'd take Dave and Seth Harwood for back-up. Plus, he's always good for fucked-up library stories, like the time he caught a guy having a wank while watching porn on not one but TWO library computers. Dave had to tell the guy that masturbating in the library is not the done thing and see to it that he zipped up and left. Dave calls the guy a perv, I call him an innovator. Whatever. We don't always see eye to eye, Honeybone and me. Oh! And if you ever meet Dave, he may bust out his librarian voice – hilarious.

• Dave will lend you books with absolutely no need to ever get them back again. Seriously, he hands them out like Halloween candy. Not just to me but to CF reviewer Andrew Prentice and others. Dave has such love of crime fiction that he will share it with anyone who gets it, simply for the love of sharing it.

• Dave now loves comics. Took him some time to come around, but you will not meet a bigger SCALPED or UNKNOWN SOLDIER fan than The Honeybone. Dave: when are we writing our “Outback Scalped”?

• Back when Dave ran the Ned Kelly's (the Aussie crime fiction awards) with the awesome Peter Lawrence, the night was waaaay cooler, more enjoyable and held in a much more aesthetically-appropriate venue (a fucking jazz bar!). Now, co-opted totally by the Melbourne Writers Festival (at which barely any crime writers appear), they are kind of odd, detached from the spirit of the event, and filled with people who have barely read a crime novel in their lives. Basically, the Ned's lack the noir power of Dave.

• Dave recently threatened to move to Canberra, thus depriving me of a reliable drinking partner and one of the only people here who understands what the fuck I'm rambling on about. Fortunately, sanity prevailed and he and his family are staying put in Melbourne. Unfortunately, he is still not willing to bear arms with me in our fight with the Literary establishment. Ahh well. At least we can still have Hightail Ale with Jamie chasers.

• Dave has an idea for an Aussie crime novel that starts with a decapitated head floating in a cop shop aquarium. Yeah, I think he should finish it too.

• Dave could barely hear the interview he did with Peter Temple in CF 4. He had to sit there with his ear right up against the recording device, listen to the recording, pause it, transcribe and repeat and repeat and repeat. The interview was later significantly changed, much to Dave's amusement. Oh, prospective writers take heed: DAVE STILL MADE DEADLINE.

• Dave is under-appreciated by the country in which he lives and the genre which he loves. Fact. If he had moved to America instead of Australia, he'd be David Thompson (and I mean that with all due respect to the late Mr Thompson – that's just how special Dave is).

• Ken Bruen came over to dinner at Dave's house in 2003. I was there too. In Dave's backyard, we smoked and Ken told me that the secret to writing was to write every day for two hours a day, first thing in the morning and then...stop dead. Dave and I told this to Jason Starr a couple of years later. Starr laughed, called it “bullshit.”

• Dave gave CF to me when he realized that he could not participate in its relaunch, much to my own personal heartbreak. It's a scab he simply did not want to pick. Fair enough. I still like to think that one day he'll be back and we can dust off his desk once and for all and get some real shit done. We'll see. Remember: this is a man who single-handedly created CF (okay, he had a designer friend help), in Australia, back before massive internet exposure, print on demand, or any of the nonsense that the magazine so comparatively easy for us today. We had subscribers all over the world – including, no shit, Syria – and the mag was so highly regarded that the first person to reply to my tweets about the relaunch was none other than Duane Swierczynski. So, here's to Mr David Honeybone, Crime Factory godfather, pulp-fiend and my dear friend. Thank you for everything, Dave. We may do things differently in this newish factory, but everyone who works in it owes their shifts to you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Uuuuummmmm, yeah, it's Cam people. The picture on the left is his usual state