February, 2022 ~ What are you reading?

Still reading Y is for Yesterday by Sue Grafton to my rotation.

I finished The Handle, the eighth book in Richard Stark's (a.k.a. Donald Westlake) guiltily entertaining "Parker" series. Parker is a psychopathic thief and all-round criminal who doesn't have any particular desire to kill you but will without compunction if you represent the slightest bit of trouble for him, the job he's in the midst of, or the security of his alias. In this short novel, Parker is brought in as part of a scheme to knock over a casino complex on an island sitting in the Gulf of Mexico several miles offshore near Galveston. It seems that everybody has a grudge against the casino's owner, from organized crime to the feds. The planning for the heist is meticulous, as it is for every job that Parker agrees to take part in. But there are always unknowns, you know? The writing in this series is very sharp and the plotting swift and enjoyable, but the protagonist puts the "ugh" in anti-hero, though this particular entry in the series goes lighter on the standard misogyny of the era than some of the others. I have to say, though, that I found The Handle to be the least enjoyable of the series so far. Nevertheless, I'll be continuing on in anticipation of a bounce back.

Mostly well written, and fascinating in a morbid way, but very disturbing and with a poor conclusion. Not a big fan of The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks.

Finished Y is for Yesterday by Sue Grafton. Enjoyed it.

A re-read today: McNally's Trial, by Lawrence Sanders.

Short stories: Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, January-February 2022 to be precise. :)

Next up in crime is The Moving Target, by Ross Macdonald.

Added In the Shadow of Power by Viveca Sten to my reading rotation.

After following Lew Archer around California, I'll be tagging along with Vera Stanhope in The Seagull, by Ann Cleeves.

Finished In the Shadow of Power by Viveca Sten. Really enjoyed this one.

Added Family Money by Chad Zunker to my rotation.

Starting to read through the most recent Edgar Award winners so beginning with:
The Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara

Almost finished with audio ed. of The Sentinel by Lee Child, a Jack Reacher adventure.
Started Mr Mercedes (King) for book club in March.

Finished Family Money by Chad Zunker. Meh.

Added No Way Back by J. B. Turner to my rotation.

I finished Flats Fixed - Among Other Things by Don Tracy. This is the 6th entry in Tracy's Giff Speer series, an obscure but enjoyable crime series from the late 60s into the early 70s. Speer begins the series as an operative in a super secret U.S. agency that handles cases that the F.B.I. and other domestic agencies cannot take care of. But somewhere around the series' 4th book, Speer has been cashiered from the agency for fudging the rules in order to hide the crimes of an old friend (though of course solving the case and busting the real bad guys). He spends a couple of books as more or less a private investigator. But in Flats Fixed, our pal Giff is brought back into the agency for, supposedly, a one-off. So off he heads down to a remote Florida county to try to break up a Mafia ring that has set up shop and in the process rescue the two teenage girls the mob has taken hostage, all the while keeping from public view the fact that the girls' grandfather, the head of a Federal drug enforcement agency, has been corrupted by . . . well, you get the picture by now. The whole thing adds up to being extremely far fetched, even more so than the series' earlier books. And yet, somehow, this is the series' most enjoyable entry, or at least it was for me. There are three more books in this series, and I'll be reading them all.

Book note: I am the only LT member with this book listed in his/her/their library.

Purpose In Passion by Amber Primus is the newest "Must Read" novel of the season. It really encourages readers to grow with every chapter and its available on Amazon via paperback, hard cover, ebook, and audiobook.

Next up in crime for me is The Quiller Memorandum, by Adam Hall. The front-cover blurb claims it is "the BEST of the new-style spy thrillers" (new for the 1960s, anyway).

In the midst of reading many other books I have been working my way back through Lawrence Blocks Matthew Scudder novels. I am about to start 'A ticket to the Boneyard', published in 1990 and the eighth book in the series. I already have the the Edgar award winning ninth book 'A Dance at the Slaughterhouse' on my shelf as well.

>14 rocketjk: Thanks for the nice overview of this novel. I am unfamiliar with the author, or Giff Speer, and both seem right in my wheel house. On the off chance you haven't run across the Lawrence Block Tanner novels, I recommend them highly. The lead character received a head wound in the Korean war and can no longer sleep, which leaves him with a great deal of time on his hands. The first two books 'The thief who couldn't sleep' and 'The cancelled Czech', both published in 1966 are great fun.

>17 skid0612: Oh gosh, I love the Scudder series! Really I love just about everything I've read from Block. The Hit Man series and the Burglar series are so different from Scudder (and each other) and all three are just terrific reads. Enjoy your re-read!

>18 skid0612: Thanks for the recommendation. I used to own a used bookstore with a very robust mystery/crime novels section, and I guess there was a shelf or so of Lawrence Block books. I never sampled any, but it's good to know that you like them. Perhaps one of these days when I'm looking for a new series. Right now I'm in the midst of three or four!

Regarding Don Tracy and Giff Speer, yeah, those Speer novels are obscure, all right. I have a habit of buying cool looking old pulp novels when I run across them. So I bought a Giff Speer book sometime or other based on the cover and then decided to read it, only then realizing I had a series on my hands! I did a little poking around online and found out that Tracy's books are (or maybe were), for some reason quite popular in France, and also that he had written an early "serious" novel about life in the Jim Crow South called How Sleeps the Beast which was considered too controversial for publication in the U.S., as it opens with a lynching (it eventually got a Cardinal Paperback pulp release). I ordered that one in the hardcover (I'm the only LT member with the book listed!) and have it on my "short" TBR stack.

Finished No Way Back by J. B. Turner. Meh.

Added The Cipher by Isabella Maldonado to my rotation.

Just started The Village of Eight Graves, by Seishi Yokomizo, translated by Bryan Karetnyk. This is a book in the Kosuke Kindaichi series and the third to be translated and published by Pushkin Vertigo.

Finished The Cruellest Month by Louise Penny and enjoyed it so much, moved straight on to the next Inspector Gamache A Rule Against Murder

MARCH THREAD: https://www.librarything.com/topic/339992