Mike Shea on the month’s new releases
Craig Clevenger
MacAdam/Cage
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Dallas native CRAIG CLEVENGER burrows deep into the sordid and paranoid realm of illicit recreational drugs with his second novel, DERMAPHORIA(MacAdam/Cage), a fictional crash course in the where and how of designer-drug manufactories. Eric Ashworth’s gruesome tale begins with his regaining consciousness cuffed and chained, covered with bandages, and knowing only one name: Desiree. The twisting narrative reveals clues that Ashworth might be the laboratory wizard behind a popular superhallucinogen (street name Skin—yech), his radical chemical experimentations the cause of the explosion that landed him in his present circumstances. Dermaphoria is sometimes cleverly obtuse and other times just muddleheaded, but it offers a full ration of contemporary grit for those who prefer their noir with a high intelligence quotient.
William Ash
Thomas Dunne Books
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When the United States dallied unforgivably long before entering World War II, young Texan WILLIAM ASH forfeited his American citizenship to join the Royal Canadian Air Force and fight Hitler. UNDER THE WIRE (Thomas Dunne Books), co-authored with Brendan Foley, captures Ash’s short but impressive career as a Spitfire fighter pilot and his longer stint as a prisoner of war. He acquired a well-deserved reputation as a serial escape artist, springing himself from various prison camps, including Stalag Luft III (of the legendary Great Escape). Ash maintains a wry perspective whether recounting the olfactory horrors of a secret tunnel dug from a latrine or the misery inflicted by the Gestapo. Post-WWII, he settled in London, and now, at age 87, he offers a memoir that summons both nostalgia for the adrenaline rush of combat and revulsion at the tragedies of POW camps.
Elmer Kelton
Forge
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ELMER KELTON has been recognized by the Western Writers of America as the best western author of them all, and he shows no signs of slowing down with SIX BITS A DAY (Forge). Set in the 1880’s, his latest novel visits the cowboying origins of Hewey Calloway, Kelton’s popular character played by Tommy Lee Jones in the made-for-TV movie The Good Old Boys. Hewey (the reckless one) and brother Walter (the practical one) abandon their East Texas homestead for adventures in the West; for all their trouble, they gain hard work and meager pay driving a herd from San Antonio to the Two Cs Ranch, on the Pecos River. Six Bits a Day is short on plot but long on color, like this description of a potential cowhand’s knowledge: “He knows where the feed goes in and where it comes out.” Has it ever been said better?
