Today’s Post by Joe Farace
The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.—Albert Einstein
Here’s some interesting facts about books for you to think about: One third of Americans never read another book after they graduate from high school. 42% of of college graduates never read another book after college. 80% of American Homes don’t buy one book a year. That’s just another reason why we need to support Read a Book Day.
Mary’s Book List
Back in the early days of our marriage—we’ve been married 43 years—Mary would stop by The Tattered Cover’s former basement bookstore and pick up books she thought I was interested in reading. That process of hers continued when the bookstore moved into a multi-story store that was the best book store I’d personally visited. That store is, alas, long gone and these days it’s not as convenient to visit The Tattered Cover’s current three locations, although we do stop by the store in Aspen Grove from time-to-time. Instead of visiting book stores, Mary has been ordering books when they’re on sale from Barnes and Noble’s website and has recently taken to raiding our local library. She recently came up with four books for me that you saw me carrying in the door in avatar for the last Book Club. I’m reading one of them—The Silver Bone—at left and a review of two others is below.
Here Comes The Judge
The first book I read from Mary’s Library List was The Judge by Peter Colt. This book is a terrific read for fans of the classic private eye genre. Colt’s protagonist is Andy Roark, a Vietnam vet and since the book is set in 1985 Boston there will be inevitable comparisons made to Robert B. Parker’s Spenser. I read my first Spenser novel, The Godwulf Manuscript. in 1973 when I picked it up at Heathrow airport and read it on my return trip to the USA.
To me, Roark seems more like an amalgam of Phillip Marlowe—he smokes a pipe—and Spenser, who in the earliest books is a little bit of Marlowe himself. And if you’re wondering how smoking is part of the story, being set in the eighties makes it, to my way of thinking, more interesting. There’s no Internet, cell phones and people are still using answering machines and pay phones—remember them?
The case Roark is investigating, as in all the best mysteries, appears simple but never turns out that way. In this case, a judge is being blackmailed and instead of asking for money the crooks want him to throw a case that’s before him. The judge hires Roark to stop the blackmailers and along the way he runs into lots of interesting characters and situations and even, at two points in the book, cooks up some meals with recipe details that will make Robert B. Parker fans sit up an take notice. The big finale has a not-so-surprising twist, one semi-expected one and one that’s totally not expected while wrapping up the ending in a Marlowe-esque way. Think the ending of The Long Goodbye—the movie not the book. I loved everything about The Judge and look forward to reading more of Andy Roark’s adventures in the future.
Her Comes The Sheriff
I enthusiastically recommend A Lonesome Place for Dying by first time author Nolan Chase. I’ve said it before but it’s worth repeating: There are storytellers and there are writers and seldom do they combine in one author. Nolan Chase is one of those rare writers that knows how to do it and he does it in a distinctly low-key way that you immediately don’t know that you’re reading such as well-written, intriguingly plotted book. but when it sinks in—you are.
A Lonesome Place for Dying is part of what might be called an emerging “Sheriff” genre in which the Sheriff, usually located in some out-of-the-way (and fictional) small town solves crimes. Typically, the sheriff is new at the job having replaced a beloved previous sheriff who has retired or passed away and his reception by the town, especially the city council is less than hospitable. He’s divorced (or separated) so it’s kinda like the Jesse Stone novels but Ethan Brand is more like Andy Taylor.
The story revolves around the discovery of body of a young women who was murdered near some railroad tracks but surveillance video on the train shows the woman was alive at the time, even getting off the train many stops after which a body—her body?—was discovered. Hovering over the incident is a family of ne’er-do-wells that’s right out of Elmore Leonard’s Justified, with its leader already in prison as part of an interesting backstory that’s happened before the book opens. At the beginning of the book, Sheriff Brand meets a coyote who visits him at his home, uncovering a subplot of death threats against him that’s (surprisingly) solved when Brand encounters the perpetrator pointing a gun at him. How the sheriff solves this particular dilemma is an incredible piece of writing and is quite moving.
As Chase starts to tie up loose ends of the story near the end of the book, there’s a bit of a shootout with an enigmatic hit man, all the while the author is keeping you guessing as he unveils one plot twist after another, culminating in a final twist at the end that nobody—I couldn’t anyway—have anticipated. If it is seems that Chase has put elements of many different mystery novels and stirred them in a blender, he has also assembled them in his own unique and beautifully crafted way. If you haven’t already guessed, I really loved this book and it’s one of the rare genre novels that stuck with me for many days after I turned the last page.
I Updated my Movie List
I’ve been watching lots of movies lately and recently made some updates to My All-Time Best Movies List. I added a new movie The April Fools—it makes me laugh, it makes me cry—that’s only available as a DVD. I didn’t bump anything from the list of 100 favorite films. There was a duplicate on the list that I removed and replaced with The April Fools.
Since there were some really good films that have had some not-so-good remakes, I started putting the dates on the original, recommended movies next to the film’s name so you don’t get the execrable remake of Sabrina (1995) instead of Billy Wilder’s1954 original, for example. I plan on revising the list in some detail making sure I haven’t changed my mind about some of movies films and will let you know when a more complete update is finished,
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