Ben East Books

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  • The Blind Rooster Jumps to Paperback

    Preston Lang’s The Blind Rooster (Crime Wave Press) is now more pulpy than ever before. It’s recently been made available in paperback! Reading this dime-store crime tale is a lot like people-watching at the Laundromat: the major figures resemble coin-op types, people resigned to the vague indignity of paying to have their underwear tumble around in a public washer. And don’t Read more

  • The Veteran

    This quiet Vet passed in July ’15. He was 98. In ’43 he sailed west to Pearl, then onward through the Pacific: Tinian, Saipan, Iwo. He was a U.S. Army sharpshooter, an MP guarding Japanese prisoners of war. In ’45, weapons at rest, he traveled back east by train. He worked as a plasterer at the White Read more

  • Kingly Reads for the Throne

    Eight great books to get you through those lonely moments with the fan on. Presented in no particular order—the right book will depend on your mood, and the size of the job before you. 1. The Onion Ad Nauseum This is closest to reading the old classic: an actual newspaper. It’s a little heavy to Read more

  • Query Inquiry

    In the decade or so that I’ve been shopping novels around I’ve noticed a strong downward trajectory in agent response rate. I don’t mean passes vs. requests for manuscripts. I mean a high and growing degree of non-response, period. Yes, the query landscape has changed dramatically from paper to electronic in that time, increasing the amount of Read more

  • Review: C.S. DeWildt’s Love You to a Pulp

    C.S. DeWildt’s Love You to a Pulp packs two narratives, tight spirals driving like hammerdrills against the cranium til they breach the dark cavern beneath. You’ll know it when you get there underground with him. In the first narrative glue-nose dick Neil McGrath sniffs out a mystery involving the pharmacist’s daughter in a Podunk southern town. In the Read more

  • The Halloween Hundred

    Dragons Are Dangerous Mulridge interrogated the boy, chilled by his flat voice and steady hands. Twenty years in police psychiatry, he’d never met so cold a child. “You’re a knight?” Mulridge said. “Is that dragon blood on your costume?” “I’m a knight. Knights kill dragons.” “Did you know the dragon you killed was your brother?” Read more