Joe’s Book Club: Chapter 36, Books in Play

Joe’s Book Club appears on Sunday this week because yesterday was World Photography Day.

Today’s Post by Joe Farace

From Statista: The U.S. book industry has faced challenges ranging from the increased popularity of digital media to the hardships faced by retail bookstores, but books remain an important part of consumers’ daily lives. Print book sales figures have improved and unit sales now consistently surpass 700 million per year. Print also remains the most popular book format among U.S. consumers, with 65 percent of adults having read a print book in the last twelve months.

I think the above data is good news for the book reading public and was surprised and pleased that so many adults have read a print book during the last year. That number includes my wife Mary, who during her convalescence from hip joint replacement surgery—she’s doing fine but it’s a long haul—has embraced the books of Erin Hilderbrand.

Mary started her marathon with The Perfect Couple then moved on to Ms. Hilderbrand’s 2022 novel The Hotel Nantucket. While she awaits the arrival of her library reservation for the author’s newest book, The Five-Star Weekend, she is reading the trade paperback of Beautiful Day that like The Perfect Couple is about a Nantucket wedding. On deck is the hardback of Summerland. Ms. Hilderbrand is known as a writer of romance novels but these books don’t seem to follow the cliché format of being a bodice-ripper populated with uber-masculine hunks like Fabio. Based on my conversations with Mary, the books seem more like the literary equivalent of Rom-Com movies And who didn’t enjoy Sleepless in Seattle?

What I’m reading now

In case you lost count, the current book I’m reading is number 38 in my “books read in 2023” scorecard. That book is.Secrets Typed in Blood by Stephen Spotswood and you may remember this author and book series as having been selected as Book Club Pick of the Week way back at the second ever Joe’s Book Club.

A big thank you goes out to fellow book lover Barry Staver who reminded me that this book was now available from the library. He and I are both reading it now and I’m guessing he’s enjoying it with me since we both liked the previous two entries in the series.

Like the other book in the series, this the book is about our intrepid 1940’s female private detectives, Lillian Pentecost and Willowjean (Will) Parker, who are on the trail of a serial killer who is following a number of murders that appeared in pulp magazines. While I feel this particular trope has been used before in another book or maybe a movie, I can’t, for the life of me, remember which if, any of these media used that exact concept, Maybe it’s because I watched too many episodes of Criminal Minds. Stephen Spotswood’s handling of the story and characters is masterful and he turns the plot on its head by NO SPOILERS. His effortless style of writing makes it look—and read— easy; this is slick writing at its best. In my review of Murder Under Her Skin, I said how much better I thought it was than Spotswood’s debut novel Fortune Favors the Dead, which was a great read. I’ll say it again about this new book: Even though I am only part way through Secrets Typed in Blood, it is even better than both of his previous, excellent books.

When I originally wrote my review of Murder Under Her Skin, I likened the main characters to “female versions of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin or maybe even Holmes and Watson.” Heck there is even a Mrs Hudson character with a splash of Mrs. Doubtfire who is most unlike Wolfe’s Fritz Brenner. There’s also a Moriarty in the person of Dr. Olivia Waterhouse, who kills people with only the best of intentions. (In her machinations, she’s not unlike the redoubtable Serge Storms in Tim Dorsey’s hilarious Florida-based novels. If you are not already reading Mr. Dorsey’s books, like his most recent The Maltese Iguana, you are denying yourself a treat.) With my recent obsession, if you will, of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe books, I am noticing more of that influence in Spotswood’s books, especially his new one, but they seem (to me) to be more like an homage than simply being a copycat.  But the influence is clearly there..,

Lillian and Will live in a New York, brownstone, like Nero and Archie. Lillian has Multiple Sclerosis while Nero’s agoraphobia (although it’s never called that, as I recall) require the service of a leg-man, or leg-woman in Will Parker’s case. Archie and Will are both wisecracking narrators of the stories, In both series, more detailed descriptions of food gets mentioned than you might find in other mystery novels. Both series are period pieces set in the 1940’s, while Nero Wolfe novels were, at the time, contemporary, they are now delightfully “period.” But maybe it’s all just in my head and I’m suffering from my recent Nero Wolfe Obsession. If so, apologies.

Questions from Readers

I have received several question from readers about the recent lack of reviews of books about photography.. After all, Joe’s Book Club is part of a “how-to photography blog.” Right now, my book buying budget is limited and I’m only buying used books on eBay and getting books from the library. (I just purchased a thirteen paperback lot of Nero Wolfe novels for $12.50.) I used to receive a lot of photo books to review when I wrote an annual book oundup for Shutterbug’s print magazine but for the most part, photography book publishers haven’t sent me any books in a while. I recently received an email from Quarto Books about a new book on Street Photography and expect a review copy real soon now. This is a subject that I’m really interested in and hope that you are too. Car book publishers, on the other hand, are much more forthcoming so you may see more of these in the future