Over My Dead Body by Rex Stout

 

(pb;1940: seventh book in the forty-six book Nero Wolfe series)

 

From the Amazon site description

 

“Over My Dead Body. . . first appeared in abridged form in The American Magazine. By the time it was published, the Wolfe/Goodwin books had become an established series but Wolfe's background had never been explored. Here Stout starts to do clarify Wolfe’s youth by bringing in in a number of characters, including some from Montenegro.

“Carla Lovchen and Neya Tormic, two young women from Montenegro, come to Wolfe's office asking for help. Miss Tormic has been accused of a theft of diamonds from the locker room where she works. She claims the accusation to be false and cannot afford to pay Wolfe’s fee, but she has a document that shows Wolfe adopted her when she was an infant. Although he has never seen her since, Wolfe agrees to undertake the investigation. As Archie is dispatched to investigate, murder is discovered. In the end Wolfe gets the main characters together in his office and, in the manner typical of the series, he will expose the murderer and the motive.”

 

Review

As mentioned in the above description, Over expands on what has been previously revealed about the titular character’s past. Not only that, there’s a strong pre-WWII outbreak/political intrigue aspect which darkly underscores certain character motivations, murders and elements present within Over’s series-continuing storyline. Its middle section, as is Stout’s wont, is a bit chatty, but it—like much of Over—is mostly entertaining, often humorous, erudite (Wolfe) and sarcastic (Goodwin), or (in a word) worthwhile. Another great entry in the Wolfe series, it’s followed by Where There’s a Will.

Trailer Park Noir by Ray Garton

 

(pb; 2022)

 

From the back cover

"Welcome to Riverside Mobile Home Park, where there is plenty of shade but no escape from the heat.

"Marcus Reznick watched the love of his life blow her brains out and then dove to the bottom of a bottle of vodka. Now he’s living in Riverside Mobile Home Park and trying to pull his life together ... until a powerful temptation comes his way. Steve Regent is an internet pornographer who has moved to Riverside Mobile Home Park to work on a new website, Trailer Park Girls. He is looking for beautiful women ... but instead, he finds something very ugly.

"Sherry Manning is a drug addict living in the trailer park with her boyfriend, Andy Winchell, who is a dealer. When a friend of a friend ODs in their trailer and turns out to be the son of a powerful politician, the truth about his death is covered up in the media. But Sherry and Andy know that truth ... and she fears what might be done to silence them.

"Anna Dunfy is trying to make ends meet by doing temp jobs and stripping at night to support her mentally handicapped daughter, Kendra ... an astonishingly beautiful girl with a woman’s body, a child’s mind, and a dangerous urge to do something naughty.

"It is a run‑down little trailer park in northern California, but it could be anywhere in the United States. It is unassuming, unremarkable, and looks like a million other trailer parks. But do not let the sleepy appearance fool you. It is a nest of dark secrets, boiling lusts and murder waiting to happen."

 

 

Review

Trailer is an excellent, immediately immersive and tightly edited neo-noir with well-developed characters worth caring about and/or hissing at, a palpable-build-toward-tragedy-and-bloody-violence pace, and constant, vivid descriptions of locations, motives and especially near-X-rated sexuality. In short, it has all the makings of a top-notch Garton book. (Trailer, in its own weird, great way, put me in the mindset of William Friedkin’s 2011 film Killer Joe.)

The only thing that prevents me from listing Trailer as one of my favorite reads of 2025 (and of Garton’s work) is the near-third act transformation of one of its key characters, who goes from being a decent character wrestling with his personal devils and tragedies to an unrepentant exploiter/blackmailer. It feels forced (even with all that character’s baggage and stuff that’s going on); this hard turn into pitch-black darkness stands out all the more in Trailer because of everything else that works in this otherwise stunning-in-its-execution tale. Worth owning, despite that minor character-shift nit.

Tribe of the Dead by Gary Brandner

 

(pb; 1984)

 

From the back cover

“Quintana Roo means death.

“Ignoring this grim warning, Johnny Hooker plunges deep into the tropical jungle in search of a missing millionaires. And then the horror starts.

“For Quintana Roo means danger from venomous snakes, lethal jaguars, alligator-like caymans—and a thousand different lurking insects.

“Above all, Quintana Roo means the lost city of Iztal, and tales of human sacrifices. . . and walking dead.

“But, as Hooker discovers, the terrifying reality surpasses the worst legends.

“For Quintana Roo means far worse than death.”

 

Review

Tribe, a fun, hard-to-set-down jungle adventure novel, set in 1939. It's a relatively fast, sometimes spooky read, with its bar-loving hero (Johnny Hooker) and a few of his adventure-sharing friends facing off against Indios sublevados (rebellious, deep-in-the-jungle and possibly cannibal tribesmen), dysentery and muerateros (undead) and, of course, Nazis.

The prose is tight, its action, barely-there character development and twists are solid and fun, with its eve-of-WWII Men’s Adventure inspired storyline. Great subgenre book from a consistently entertaining writer, both worth reading, possibly owning if you need to own your thrills.