I’ve had a lovely pre-Christmas cold find me towards the end of this week, which has left me without the energy to do much but lay about and read. I’m hoping to shake it soon, but as things stand I’m most definitely not in the Christmas spirit. In an attempt to get a little bit festive, I did watch the new Netflix movie ‘Check-In’ which has a decent concept (tiger kidnapping to force a TSA agent to turn a blind eye to a dodgy bag going on a plane) and was enjoyably suspenseful once it got going.
Not featured below, as I’m still reading it, but I’ve also been spending time with Patricia Highsmith’s Diaries this week. It really is a fantastic book – raw, moving, gleeful and insightful. A fascinating glimpse into the mind of a great writer ( I say glimpse, but it’s a thousand pages, so maybe that isn’t quite the right word).
Cheerio!
Books I’ve Read This Week
Ask the Parrot by Richard Stark
Incredibly (some might say shamefully), I’ve reached my 50s without ever having read one of Richard Stark (aka Donald E Westlake)’s Parker novels. This probably wan’t a great one to start with as it’s late in the series and (I believe) continues the plot from the previous book. Despite that I had a really good time with it and will definitely be going back for me.
Parker is a thief (albeit a reasonably honourable one) and in this book he rolls off one botched heist straight into another, when a stranger finds catches him on the run and pressures him into helping out with a longed for big score.
It’s an enjoyable ride, humorous, hardboiled and tense, with a great cast of characters in its small-town setting. Parker is great central character, amoral enough to be convincing and interesting, but sympathetic enough to not just come over as a sociopath.
Captains Outrageous by Joe R Lansdale
Joe R Lansdale’s 6th book in the ‘Hap and Leonard’ series doesn’t quite measure up to the best of them, but it’s still a fun ride. In this adventure, Hap saves the daughter of a millionaire from a brutal attack, gets a big payout as a result and takes his buddy Leonard on a Mexican cruise. Needless to say, things go badly wrong.
The appeal of these books is the banter between the two leads and trying to figure out how they’ll get out of the scrapes they get into. This one delivers on those fronts, but the plot felt a little bit too convoluted to me.
The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud
‘The Strange’ is a wonderful, page turning sci fi adventure, that blends western tropes, horror and a coming of age narrative into a very satisfying whole. It’s set in Mars in the 1930s, humans are mining the planet. Teenage heroine and narrator Annabelle helps her father run the town diner and gets pulled into a quest across the planet when robbers attack their business.
Annabelle is pure Mattie Ross (the heroine of Charles Portis’ excellent western ‘True Grit’), but no worse for that. She’s smart, determined, funny and a joy to read. The events of the book and the background to the occupation of Mars are ridiculous in just the right way. It’s pure pulpy entertainment, with monsters, robots and peril.
A very enjoyable read from an author I’ll definitely be revisiting
This week’s videos
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