I just finished Jim Thompson's Pop. 1280 and loved it.  It's a weird and funny version of Thompson's usual grim noir writing and, altho it does bear a resemblance to his more popular The Killer Inside Me, I do think it still stands on its own.  Altho no real specifics about time and place are given, it takes place in the American South around 1920 ( Read more... )

Just finished The Killer Inside Me, by Jim Thompson, and, altho I'd read The Hours and The Voyage Out in the middle of this to get away from the grim subject matter, I found myself returning to the grimness with relief after the unrelenting flittiness of the Woolf books.

The Killer Inside Me is the story of a psychopathic killer, told from the ( Read more... )

Some times I get in a mood to re-read books, and most recently that's been the five books that make up Charlie Huston's Joe Pitt Casefiles series.  A wonderful series about a very different breed of vampire -- those without a single speck of the supernatural about them.

No fangs (despite the cover art), no coffins, no immortality, no shapeshifting ( Read more... )

These must be the dog days of Summer because I am definitely feeling dogged out, dog tired and pretty much like the hound dog that lies on the porch and doesn't move for days on end.  And it's not even that hot yet.

I'm at a reading stand-still as far as new books are concerned -- can't make my mind get off that porch and read a new set of words, ( Read more... )

About 30 years ago, I thought I first made Jack Ritchie's acquaintance thru his Cardula Detective Agency series in the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.  It's exactly as the name suggests -- Count Dracula done as a private investigator.  This may well be among the first of the vampire PI stories, and its certainly one of the best done and funniest ( Read more... )

Just started two new books:  Los Angeles Noir (short mystery stories set in and around LA, including Belmont Shore in Long Beach) and For You Mom, Finally (Reichl's memoir of her mother).  The latter is so short (a essay between two covers and sold as a book really) that I'm sure it'll be done by today or tomorrow at the latest.

I also have ( Read more... )