08/18/11 Mulholland Books — My Top Ten Noirs of the Last Ten Years (or so), Brian Lindenmuth
Part of the power of Pike is that it is a black novel to the core without resorting to cheap trickery such as unearned nihilism or excessive violence. This isn’t to say that Pike isn’t a violent book because it is but the cheapest noirs tie themselves up in a Gordian plot then use death-to-all as the blade to cut it.
05/02/11 Spinetingler Magazine – 2011 Spinetingler Award Best Novel: New Voice – WINNER
Spinetingler would like to congratulate all of the nominees and thank all of the voters. Just a reminder that a summary post with all of the winners will be available after the winners are announced.
The winner of the 2011 Spinetingler Award for Best Novel: New Voice is…
Pike by Benjamin Whitmer
02/03/11 Galleycat — Big Tents & Conflation: Noir Manifesto Revisited
Noir hasn’t gone away, but it isn’t a popular form of fiction. It requires some diligence to track down. Here are some examples of noir/dark crime novels that HAVE done it right:
Bloody Women by Helen Fitzgerald
The Devil’s Staircase by Helen Fitzgerald
Late Rain by Lynn Kostoff
The Long Fall by Lynn Kostoff
A Choice of Nightmares by Lynn Kostoff
Pike by Benjamin Whitmer
2/2/11 Spinetingler Magazine — Fireball Award Winners
After a couple of hundred votes we actually have a tie for the first annual Fireball Award. Not only that but it’s a three way tie. Rather than bust up the tie like a Pinkerton Agent at a union strike we decided to let it stand and declare all three winners.
Without further ado (Latin for bullshit) the winners are…
“The night they were hijacked, Roxy Palmer and her husband, Joe, ate dinner with an African cannibal and his Ukrainian whore.” — Wake up Dead by Roger Smith
“The kid’s left arm angles out of the dirty snow like a stick of broken black kindling.” —Pike by Benjamin Whitmer
“So she walks in, trying to look cool, trying to look like nothing has happened, like nothing has gone wrong, but it’s difficult because she still feels the ghost of the revolver’s handle pressed against her palm and the scent of gunpowder in her nostrils.” – Katja From the Punk Band by Simon Logan
01/04/11 Spinetingler Magazine — The Best Mystery/Crime Fiction of 2010
Brian Lindenmuth:
7. Pike by Benjamin Whitmer
Pike, and by extension Whitmer, doesn’t fuck around and just gets right to it. Simply put Pike is stark and powerful with a directness that others don’t match. Pike also has one of the most troubling endings of the year, one that really demands to be grappled with.
The Nerd of Noir:
Pike by Benjamin Whitmer
Many of us were bowled over by Benjamin Whitmer’s debut this year and with good reason. Pike is punishingly violent and incredibly bleak, yet the stark poetry of its prose and earned moments of grace make it oddly hopeful in the end. A wonderful book we’ll still be talking about for years.
01/01/11 Day Labor — Rawson’s 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.
12/31/10 Ransom Notes: The BN Mystery Blog — The Crimes of 2010
Pike by Benjamin Whitmer. A concrete-hard criminal and a brutally bent cop on a collision course in twenty-first century Cincinnati – it only feels like the Wild West, and that’s no accident. The pitiless world is coming after twelve year old Wendy, and she may be better off without the help of her cold-granite grandfather or the ruthless policeman who both seem more interested in the demise of her junkie-prostitute mother than her well-being. Harsh, bleak and without remorse, this modern day western is a ridiculously confident debut.
12/30/10 Things’ I’d Rather Be Doing — Best books of 2010 (that I read)
It was too difficult to narrow things to a top 10 in this, my first attempt at a best books of the year list. So, I offer instead a dozen, 12 books that were a cut above in 2010 (in alphabetical order):
Room – Emma Donoghue
A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan
Daddy’s – Lindsay Hunter
Next – James Hynes
Print the Legend – Craig McDonald
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet – David Mitchell
The Wagon – Martin Preib
A Lesser Day – Andrea Scrima
Super Sad True Love Story – Gary Shteyngart
Just Kids – Patti Smith
Pike – Benjamin Whitmer
Savages – Don Winslow
12/28/10 Beautiful Trash — My Top Ten Crimewaves in ’10
Is it right to call Pike noir? I’d say no. It’s dark pulp, too explosive and lurid to make it as noir. But that’s no slight; Pike is brutal good fun, with more interest in the beauty of hard language than any other recent crime fiction that I’ve read. Pick it up.
12/26/10 Signs and Wonders — 2010 “YEAR IN REVIEW” & Random Thoughts
3. Pike by Benjamin Whitmer
12/24/10 Temporary Knucksline — Knucks’ best 2010s … Knucklespeare …
My favorite read of the year was Pike, by Benjamin Whitmer.
12/21/10 Day Labor — The Best of Whatever–Jason Duke
Pike by Benjamin Whitmer, The Underbelly by Gary Phillips: two I picked up from the PM Press booth at Bouchercon. Gary never disappoints, and Ben’s first book Pike will knock you on your ass.
12/21/10 Day Labor — The Best of Whatever–Jedidiah Ayres
Great debuts: Jack Clark – Nobody’s Angel, Benjamin Whitmer – Pike, John Rector – The Cold Kiss
12/18/10 Day Labor — The Best of Whatever–Chris La Tray
11. Pike by Benjamin Whitmer. Look, I can’t gush over this book any more than every other reviewer who has praised it all up and down. It’s truly great, even if it probably isn’t for everyone. That’s part of what makes it so awesome. I’d like to hang with this dude. I figure any guy who can pull a blurb from Ward fucking Churchill has got to be a guy worth rousing rabble with.
12/16/10 Day Labor — The Best of Whatever–Chris Deal
1. Pike by Benjamin Whitmer. This book scared me. There’s no horror here, no monsters or demons or ghosts but man at his worst, or maybe his best. Digging through the evil done to reach catharsis, the writing is a beautiful frame holding a horrible painting. Sharp and to the bone.
12/14/10 Day Labor — The Best of Whatever–Jimmy Callaway
1. Pike by Benjamin Whitmer–A slimy, heart-wrenching chunk of rural-noir, this really is as good as everybody has been telling you.
12/14/10 Day Labor — The Best of Whatever–Matthew C. Funk
It’s not the flagship of the fledgling PM Press, the new bad boys of noir, but it’s the fire ship for sure. Pike illuminates the literary potential of a genre that too often resorts to formula and punches pulled. This is proof that ink is still explosive.
12/13/10 Day Labor — The Best of Whatever–Steve Weddle
Reading a good deal of noir fiction, I’m kinda hardened to the idea of the good guy in the book being a bad guy. Oh, a tough guy with a heart. How fresh, right? So when I read Pike and the idea of good and bad started to lose all meaning, I found myself reading the story on a whole new level. From the discussion we’re having at the DoSomeDamage Goodreads book group, this book is a favorite of many.
12/12/10 Day Labor — The Best of Whatever–Nigel Bird
I came across this via Keith and an interview he’d done with Ben for Spinetingler – I knew immediately it was a book for me. Its characters are all fucked and the world they live in screwed, but the story is gripping in a way that means it’s hard to let go of. Something to behold.
12/12/10 Day Labor — The Best of Whatever–Nigel Bird
I came across this via Keith and an interview he’d done with Ben for Spinetingler – I knew immediately it was a book for me. Its characters are all fucked and the world they live in screwed, but the story is gripping in a way that means it’s hard to let go of. Something to behold.
12/10/10 Day Labor — The Best of Whatever–Naomi Johnson
I haven’t finished Benjamin Whitmer’s PIKE yet, but I won’t be surprised if by book’s end this one makes the list, too.
12/08/10 Day Labor — The Best of Whatever–Kieran Shea
Another kind of Pike would be, of course, PIKE by Ben Whitmer.
11/19/10 Nigel Bird’s Essential Noirs
My memory for names has never been good. I have to beat around the bush to get to where I need to get. ‘That book, you know, the one where god comes down to earth as a human and they nail him to one of those wooden things…’. It’s something I’ve had to get used to. My top 20 noir novels, then, includes those titles that are unforgettable even to me. I’m not the most widely read of individuals, but I’m going to give it my best shot. I do this in the knowledge that my pile of To Be Read novels looks so good it there are definitely going to be a few that would have made the list had I got to them earlier. I’ve also tried not to pick a list of the obvious in a bid to keep the series interesting and in doing so I’m stretching both the definition of ‘noir’ and of ‘novel’ in some cases.
11/18/10 The Pulp Primer — The Best of 2010
6. PIKE by Benjamin Whitmer: Dark, dangerous, tragic, beautifully written debut. The story of a small town in Ohio where pain is a way of life and redemption doesn’t come cheap, PIKE cuts the human condition open and puts it on display for the world to see. Take a look.