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Costello’s song titles alone confirm one of his preferred themes: “Accidents will Happen,” “American Gangster Time,” “Bullets for the Newborn King,” “Coal-Train Robberies,” “The Final Mrs. Curtain,” “Hetty O’Hara Confidential,” “Kinder Murder,” “My Thief,” “Shabby Doll,” “Shot with His Own Gun,” “That’s How You Got Killed Before” and “Watching the Detectives,” among them. His album titles include “Blood & Chocolate,” “Brutal Youth,” “National Ransom” and “When I Was Cruel.” You can just imagine the so-called pulp mysteries of the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s bearing identical titles accompanied by lurid, evocative cover art.

In Brutal & Strange, contemporary masters of crime fiction dig into Costello’s catalogue for inspiration. The marriage of Costello’s themes and these award-winning authors’ creativity will seem an inevitable match when you experience the results. Whether it’s Meg Gardiner and “Complicated Shadows,” Catriona McPherson and “Tramp the Dirt Down,” Alex Segura and “I Want You”, Mark Billingham and “Our Little Angels” or many other virtuoso interpretations, the stories match the composer’s high standards and suggest there’s even more stirring beneath the surface of his songs.

In his “Everyday I Write the Book”—explored here by Gar Anthony Hayward—Costello portrays an author as sinister, controlling and vengeful. That’s not to say the authors who contributed to Brutal & Strange are anything of the kind. But you will find their questionable characters engaged in unsavory events. One imagines Costello himself would approve.

A crime thriller, coming-of-age story and a family saga, THE PRICE YOU PAY is set in mid-1970s in a crumbling New Jersey city where violence and coercion reign. Mickey Wright is thrust into a world controlled by a powerful Teamster local linked to the Genovese crime family. The man who put him in jeopardy: his father, a free-wheeling policeman well-known to the city's politicians and drug dealers.

When a Black trucker is murdered, Mickey must choose between loyalty to family or to values he shares with Debbie Olsen, the love of his young life who is the daughter of a stable, solidly middle-class family. Memorable appearances by Mickey’s sister, who is broken by her father’s foul will, and memories of their late mother haunt the story. The question of whether Mickey can stand tall, break free and live a worthy life of his choosing isn’t answered until a final, shocking confrontation.

James Brown was all those things and so much more. Yet it can’t be denied his music impacted a generation of fans and influenced a grip of musicians who came after him—from David Bowie, Janelle Monae to Usher just to name three.

Includes Jim's “The Last Turkey in Tulsa”

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