Crime fiction isn’t afraid to get weird. Strange crimes, bizarre motivations, ritualistic killings, masked criminals, hidden agendas, psychopathic murderers, and outré settings and characters have always been a part of the genre. However, there are times when crime mixes with horror, science fiction, or bizarro fiction and becomes extremely weird. The results of that hybridization vary in terms of quality, but there are many books out there that merit attention because they offer something unique. In a literary landscape overrun with formulaic crime novels, these narratives offer a way out, a respite from the commonplace. More importantly, they look at the places the genre can go when talented authors decide to step into unexplored territory and ignore all the rules.
Repo Shark by Cody Goodfellow
Repo Shark is the quintessential crime/bizarro hybrid. In it, a repo man by the name of Zef DeGroot is sent to Hawaii to repossess a vintage Harley from a big-time local dope-dealer, but the job turns into a chaotic succession of fighting, guns, misunderstandings, and ancient deities that turn into sharks. Goodfellow is an accomplished author who’s made a name for himself in dark and weird fiction circles, but this novel shows he also has crime chops. If you want to see what pulp looks like when it’s taken to surreal extremes, don’t miss this one.
Embry by Michael Allen Rose
Sometimes weirdness doesn’t affect the core of the narrative, and this is a perfect example. Embry is an extremely strange tribute to 1950s sleuth pulp. There are fistfights, a mysterious murder, a lot of running and hiding, and a femme fatale that helps the antihero. In fact, the only difference between this and a Dashiell Hammett novel is that the characters are all chickens. Yes, poultry. Rose is obviously a fan of pulp, and the fun he had writing this is palpable in every page, every cracked shell, and every bloody feather.
ClownFellas by Carlton Mellick III
Clownfellas is an unusual take on classic Italian mob tropes. Imagine a Mario Puzo joke turned into a novel and you’ll begin to approximate what you’ll find in its pages. Mellick created a world where people inject themselves with a DNA-altering serum that turns them into clowns and they have peculiar tastes in food and drugs. The novel is a mosaic of loosely connected short narratives all dealing with the crime actions and tribulations of a plethora of characters. Between mob bosses, murder, drugs, and drama, this is a great novel…that happens to be about a crime family made up of clowns.
Haunt by Laura Lee Bahr
Haunt is one of those underground cult classics that should be read by everyone. It’s core is pure Los Angeles noir, but the rest of it is something special not found anywhere else. Even the way it came to be is legendary by now. Originally written as a choose-your-own-story book, splatterpunk maestro and editor John Skipp took the novel and helped Bahr turn it into a (somewhat) straightforward narrative. In the book, a dame who may or may not be dead pulls the reader through a narrative where the goals appear to change and everything is either crucial or inconsequential. Superbly written and as dark as Hollywood itself, Haunt is one of the weirdest and most engaging debut novels I’ve read.
Black Gum by J. David Osborne
Osborne’s work can’t be placed under a single genre. However, most of it deals with criminals, controlled substances, and people who have run out of luck. In Black Gum, a young man who has lost control of his life navigates a dark, depressing world of drug use, homemade tattoos, juggalos, and criminals. Any of Osborne’s novels could have made this list, but this one stands over the others because of its oppressive atmosphere. Like the best crime fiction out there, something in this book makes you uncomfortable, and that kind of visceral reaction is a testament to Osborne’s talent.
Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones
This was a very popular novel that is till making noise, but mostly among horror fiction devotees. It should be just as big among crime fiction lovers. A family of werewolves is at the center of the story, but everything they go through, the places they live in, the characters they interact with, and their constant cycle of crime/fear/escape is pure rural noir.
Destroy All Monsters by Jeff Jackson
I just read this one and it immediately made the list. Imagine if committing murder was something you did because you contracted a virus that pushed you to do it. That premise is at the center of this novel, which has two sides. There are a lot of bodies hitting the ground and many bullets flying, but the heart of the narrative belongs to music and loss. Enigmatic and profound, this is a novel that begs to be deciphered and interpreted.
I Miss the World by Violet LeVoit
This is the second LA noir on this list. The entire book is a conversation between siblings that the reader overhears. Something happened. Something bad. From that starting point, LeVoit deconstructs Hollywood, art, and nostalgia. Brilliant in the way it deals with a variety of topics and packed with crackling dialogue that rivals anything Elmore Leonard ever wrote, I Miss the World is as anarchic as it is brilliant.
The Killings by Wrath James White and J.F. Gonzalez
In 1911, a serial killer terrorized Atlanta’s African American community by preying on young bi-racial women. The killer was never identified. In the 1980s, more than twenty African American boys were murdered throughout Atlanta. Then, in 2011, the murders began again. Carmen Mendoza, a reporter working for Atlanta’s oldest newspaper, investigates the killings. She finds they are all connected, and there are more bodies than everyone thinks. The premise is pure crime, but the execution makes this a horror book. Gonzalez and White are two of the biggest names in hardcore horror, and this collaboration, done before Gonzalez’s untimely passing, is one of the goriest, grittiest slices of crime you’ll find in contemporary fiction.
Last Days by Brian Evenson
The only reason Evenson is not talked about whenever the greatest living crime authors are discussed is because he also belongs on the lists of greatest authors in horror, literary fiction, and science fiction. Brutal, weird, and unflinching, Last Days is a PI narrative pumped full of mystery, brutality, strangeness, religion fanaticism, and mutilation.
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The list could go on and on. From Lauren Beukes’ Broken Monsters to Jeremy Robert Johnson’s novella The Sleep of Judges (found in his collection Entropy in Bloom), there are many uncanny books in which crime’s DNA is altered with a variety of other genres. Thus, this list is merely a starting point, an invitation to explore. Crime fiction is usually about people breaking the rules, and it’s exciting when the genre is the going against the grain.
