So Barbara Peters of the Poisoned Pen told everyone in a recent newsletter that we should all read at least one book a year out of our comfort zone. This one is mine, as recommended by Pat King, also of the Poisoned Pen. Short version of the plot: Aliens squish flat every structure on the…
Read more “And once I do have eyes on me, I might get a loot box with toilet paper in it.”
Around about 2005 expat British author Richard Grant decides to drive the 900-mile stretch of the Sierra Madre Mountains in northern Mexico. The Sierra Madres, a rugged, comfortless and dangerous place, are home to drunks, druggies, marijuana growers, meth cookers, drug lords, bandits, rapists, murderers, Mormons, mestizos, cave-dwelling Indians and entire companies of corrupt Mexican…
Read more The type of men who pride themselves on their willingness to kill.
Des is back! As in Desmond Aloyius Limerick, a Renaissance man slash wetwork guy, what a Korval Scout would call “first-in” as in first in to any dicey situation where someone he likes needs help. He’s officially retired from being a gatekeeper, the guy who can open any door, but friends of his keep getting…
Read more “They chased me out of the goddam sky with a flare?”
Two detective inspectors from Glasgow, one of them recently back from sick leave (possibly too soon?) are sent to investigate a death on Eilean Eadar, a very tiny, very remote Scottish island. The island’s inhabitants have lived and fished there for generations, they aren’t welcoming to mainlanders, and they resent the fact that the only…
Read more The wood on the island is dark and deep but it is not lovely
A reread after many years, which holds up well. Not much style but a lot of substance—settlers fleeing a dying Earth emigrate across the stars to a planet in orbit around Rukbat. A story for our times for sure. Only—uh-oh—until…after they’ve landed and moved planetside they discover that an erratic body that transverses Rukbat’s solar…
What if FDR sent a twenty-one year old JFK to Europe on the very eve of World War II itself in order to find out if and how Hitler is smuggling money into the US to influence the next election? “I’ve been turning it over in my mind, Jack—this trip of yours,” the President was…
Read more To the Nazis, you’re just the American ambassador’s son. But to me, you’re a perfect spy.
My review: The twelfth in Martin Limón’s Sueño and Bascom series, featuring two CID agents in South Korea in the early 80s, and I think his best by far. Three GI’s have gone missing, all of whom have abused Korean women, and Command sends Sueño and Bascom to find them. It’s a solid whodunnit, a…
Read more I’d never known anyone who cared less about the opinions of others.
…Younger sons cannot marry where they like. …“Is this,” thought Elizabeth, “meant for me?” –Jane Austen At the time she had wondered whether the remark had held a warning and the suspicion had caused her some embarrassment which she had attempted to hide by turning the conversation into a pleasantry. But the memory of the…
Read more James obtrudes bloody murder into the pleasant, ordered world of Elizabeth and Darcy
I’m sort of surprised I finished this book, as I am not a fan of the Earl of Essex, and I almost put it down anyway when the story opens with the hero coming off a month-long drunk. Yawn. But I persevered, and John Lawley is a fun character to follow around, in spite of…
I’ve been doing a considerable amount of research into life in the American West in 1890, which reminded me of these two great reads. I simply disappeared between the covers of this book. Hilarious, heart-breaking and oh so real, this isn’t just a story about a cowboy and the cowboying way of life, it’s about…
