Cooper, Seamus. The mall of Cthulhu. San Francisco: Night Shade, 2009. 235pp.

Seamus Cooper's The Mall of Cthulhu is a seriously strange and funny book.

Okay, here goes. A decade before the main action, Ted, a regular college kid, saves his lesbian best friend, Laura, from a horde of vampires trying to initiate her into their sorority; he's traumatized by having to massacre the whole nest of vampires (including a recently turned frat friend). Ten years later, she's joined the FBI as an analyst while he's unable to overcome his past and is following her from city to city as her career progresses, all the while working a series of McJobs.

Now, he stumbles on a Lovecraftian conspiracy. A bunch of white supremacists are working to bring the Great Old Ones back from their dimension. Ultimately, Ted and Laura work together along with a shadowy yet underfunded government agency to fight them back.

Light-hearted yet still a bit scary, this is a fantastic first novel. Good adventure, engaging characters, some self-deprecating insights into slacker/nerd culture, more-or-less tight plotting, tons of Lovecraft and other pop culture in-jokes not to mention a whole lot of winking and nudging – this is an entertaining melange. I certainly hope Cooper will bring Ted and Laura back for more supernatural adventures.

Maberry, Jonathan. Patient zero. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2009. 421pp.

If the vampire novel is slipping down into the realm of the bodice ripper, it seems to me that zombies are the new vampire – able to actually embody horror without romance or any kind of soft and fuzzy feelings. Zombies mostly evoke fear and terror and a almost fatalistic wonder at the randomness of the universe.

In the hands of a great up-and-coming horror novelist, zombies can be gold. Jonathan Maberry is just such a writer, the award-winning author of the Ghost Road Blues series of horror novels. Patient Zero is another real winner from Maberry, if anything even better than his earlier trilogy. It's a combination zombie horror and medical thriller – a very good example of the kind of hybrid science fiction horror genre that's bound to become more and more popular.

Basically, the idea is that a Baltimore cop is recruited by a secretive government agency to help stop what seems to be a Middle Eastern terrorist plot to flood the world with a plague of zombies that spread quite easily via victims being bitten. The action is non-stop, the main character, Jack Ledger, is quite well drawn, the plot points are a bit of a stretch but well within thriller limits.

One of the most interesting aspects is that Ledger's best friend, who also gets drawn into the fight, is a therapist who helps cops deal with the stress of their jobs, especially when they are forced to shoot someone. Throughout the novel, he's talking both Ledger and us through what it means to be a human being caught up in a whirlwind of violence and death, helping his friend and the other agents cope with what they're going thought at that basic human level. Very interesting and very well done.

Overall, an exciting and surprisingly thoughtful read. Highest marks in the summer reading sweepstakes. I anxiously await sequels.

(Yeah, I know. Zombies and humour. Zombies are strangely funny, it seems. Argh.)

Frost, Jeaniene. Destined for an early grave. New York: Avon, 2009. 355pp.

Anne Rice, Joss Whedon and the makers of the Underworld series of films certainly have a lot to answer for – turning the vampire genre from a true subset of the horror genre into a rather lame subset of the romance genre. Not that I have any problem with romantic vampires – as long as they're part of a larger field of vampire fiction that also includes evil, predatory vampires. My problem is that the dark supernatural romance seems to be edging out all the rest.

This brings us to Jeaniene Frost's Destined for an Early Grave. Not normally the kind of book I would read, a review copy just happened to land on my desk just as we were leaving for the cottage for a couple of weeks of R&R. So, I took it along. I also read it. Mind you, there were several times in the first 50 pages that I was sorely tempted to hurl it across the room. The romance stereotype characters drove me crazy. The sexy, feisty and tough yet strangely goofy and insecure female lead; the tall, dark, brooding and yet strangely sensitive male lead. The tall, dark, brooding and yet strangely deranged villain. Yeah, they're all there: Buffy, Angel and Spike. The plot and setting also hit all the highlights in the feudal gothic hit parade. Hereditary ruling classes, byzantine rules and regulations that you must just die for, a heroine with secret powers that happens to be the key to everyone's plans.

In the end, though, I did end up finishing the book – as stereotypical as the characters were, the plot had enough twists to keep me turning the pages even if the ending was dead predictable. Of course, it didn't hurt that initially I wasn't quite sure I'd brought enough books at the cottage so I more or less felt I had to read it. In different circumstances I might not have made it much past page 10 much less 50 or 350.

Sort of recommended. Barely.

And speaking of evil vampires, I have enjoyed David Wellington's work and I do look forward to reading the new Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan book, The Strain. It is out there, I just wish the proportions were a bit different.

Slaughter, Karin. Blindsighted. New York: HarperTorch, 2002. 389pp.
Slaughter, Karin. Beyond reach. New York: Dell, 2008. 573pp.

I don't have too much to say about the two books at hand, both by the aptly-named Karin Slaughter. Blindsighted is a fairly typical serial killer novel while Beyond Reach is a fairly typical crime thriller. Although they don't necessarily have high body counts, the violence and mayhem is intense and brutal, earning the author both her name and her crime writer stripes.

Both are well-written and exciting, with a common cast of characters which Slaughter carries from book to book in a couple of vaguely overlapping series. The plots are clever, the pace is breakneck, the characters well drawn, the action at times shocking and surprising. I've read three of her books (Triptych last summer) and I think I'll be reading a whole lot more.

Sawyer, Robert J. Mindscan. New York: Tor, 2006. 370pp.

Robert J. Sawyer's Mindscan is a pretty decent philosophically-based science fiction novel, a real exemplar of old fashioned sf that's idea driven rather than character or plot driven. The novel is basically a wire frame for Sawyer to explore ideas about consciousness, identity and even some legal issues. And that's fine – he's not really trying for a novel of character here. A weakness of this approach, of course, becomes readily apparent. In my mind, any time a novel gets bogged down in a bunch of long, drawn-out court scenes basically to give the various characters the chance to explain their take on the philosophical issues at hand, well, you know you're in trouble. And yes, the novel comes to a screeching halt when that happens.

The issue? If you download your consciousness into a cybernetic version of your body, is it really you or just some other being (which may itself be a fully conscious and deserving of it's own personhood) that just thinks it's you. The complication here is that the old meat version of you isn't destroyed after the download, it essentially transfers legal personhood to the new being and then retires to a resort on the Moon. What happens if the Moon version wants it's life back?

For all the word salad, data dumps and mind melds that Sawyer presents, in the end I have to say that I did enjoy the book and found it thought-provoking. I just wish the characters and plots were a little more in the forefront.

Summer 2008 reading

A bit late on this, I know, but I'm about to start posting some more detailed reading notes from summer 2009, so I thought I'd clear some of this really old stuff out of the "to be posted" pile.

Here goes:

Clancy, Tom. The sum of all fears. New York: Putnam, 1991. 798pp.

Last summer I read A Clear and Present Danger and it was starting to show some of the signs for Clancy's patented literary bloat. This summer, it's The Sum of all Fears and the bloat has pretty well set in. Overall, it's a solid novel, telling the story of Jack Ryan's involvement in some pretty exciting standard Clancy thriller elements like terrorists, submarine tactics, lost nukes, scheming politicians and incompetent and naive liberals. Mostly pretty good stuff, exciting and involving. However, at nearly 800 pages, the book is easily 200 pages too long. Whole sub-plots could have been removed with no difference to the story. The big, explosive climactic event happens around page 600 with 200 pages to go but should have happened at page 200 with 400 to go.


Turtledove, Harry. End of the beginning. New York: Roc, 2006. 519pp.

Last summer's cottage reading included the first part of this two part series, Days of Infamy. Like with Tom Clancy, summer reading always seems to include a Harry Turtledove novel for me. They're quick and easy to read, light but very involving. The large cast of characters and multiple viewpoints make for quick and lively reading. This one is no different.

To quickly set the stage, Japan invaded Pearl Harbor in December 1941 rather than just attacking the American base there. Days of Infamy told the story of the invasion and initial stages of the occupation. End of the Beginning picks up where Days of Infamy leaves off, following the same diverse cast of characters, both American and Japanese, over the next couple of years, until the US bounces back and re-invades.

A bit slow-starting, I did ultimately enjoy the novel. It does a good job of showing the brutality of the Japanese Imperial forces in WWII, something that's certainly not as well known as Nazi brutality. POW camps and comfort women brothels are among the aspects that are well portrayed. If Turtledove's narrative seems somewhat boilerplate, well, that's the nature of what he does. He churns them out pretty quickly, all using the same basic plan. Knowing what to expect, he doesn't disappoint. On the other hand, I do often wish he would be a bit more ambitious.


Now for some super-capsule reviews:


Clapton, Eric. Eric Clapton: The autobiography. New York: Broadway, 2008. 344pp.

Entertaining, frank and surprisingly humble autobiography of guitar hero Eric Clapton. I enjoyed this one a lot, as would anyone interested in guitar players or the classic rock period.


Smith, Scott. The ruins.New York: Vintage, 2007. 509pp.

Good and creepy, a high quality horror novel with a great ending.


Hill, Joe. Heart-shaped box. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. 354pp.

Very good first novel by Stephen King's son. A quick read with some good characters.


Hassel, Sven. Comrades of war. London: Cassel, 2004. 362pp.

War is hell. Dirty, messy, ugly, violent, not for the faint-hearted, not Hollywood at all, this is a provocative read from a controversial author. Supposedly based on his real experiences in WWII, Hassel stretches credibility quite a bit, but much of it rings true.


Latimer, Jonathan. Soloman's Vineyard. London: Xanadu Blue Murder, 1990. 160pp.

A good period hardboiled noir novel. Snappy dialogue, dangerous dames, perverse plotline, at least for the 1940s when it was written. It's all there.


Slaughter, Karen. Triptych. New York: Dell, 2007. 480 pp.

Yikes. This is one violent and intense thriller. A solid cast of characters, tons of action, good suspense, lots of twists and turns. I look forward to sequels -- and must more Slaughterific summer reading. Yes, the aptly named Karen Slaughter is the perfect summer thriller reading.

Depp, Daniel. Loser's town. Toronto: Penguin, 2009. 339pp.

I must admit I had pretty low expectations for this one. In fact, very low.

Daniel Depp, you see, is the half brother of Johnny. The prospect of reading a novel, not by a Hollywood star but by a relative of a Hollywood star certainly set off the alarm bells.

Serves me right for jumping to such conclusions. Depp's Loser's Town is terrific. It's basically a Hollywood hardboiled PI noir, set amongst the fakes and phonies of the film industry. The potential series character, David Spandau, is well drawn and believable -- a tough guy, smart, heart-broken and sensitive, has a lot of potential. The voice is strong and assured. I look forward to futher novels in the series, not because it mentions that another is coming, but because you have to believe that Depp won't be allowed to leave it at one.

The plot is appropriately convoluted but not improbable at all. It's dark enough by the end to keep even the most cynical reader happy.

Good stuff. Give it a try.

(Uncorrected proof supplied by publisher.)

Catch Up Post August -- December 2007

I haven't been posting for a while, so I thought I'd catch up by listing the books I've read since the last post here with a one or two sentence comment. Trying to do real reviews at this point would be too time consuming and I'd rather get up to speed fast and resume regular posting than risk falling so far behind that I don't bother to start posting again.

1. Pohl, Frederik. The Boy who Would Live Forever. New York: Tor, 2005. 384pp.

   Pretty typical late period Pohl. Kind of rambling and discursive, a bit weak on plot but full of lots of heart and enjoyable characters. Worth it for fans of Pohl's work or the Heechee books but probably not for the casual reader.

   
   
2. Hamilton, Donald. The Wrecking Crew. New York: Fawcett Gold Medal, 1960. 176pp.

   Another short sharp shock, the second in the Matt Helm series. Lots of twists and turns, hardboiled and noir, violent and cruel. Good stuff.

   
   
3. Wellington, David. 13 Bullets. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007. 336pp.

   Over the top horror at it's finest. A modern vampire vs. copy tale, violent and bloody, no refugees from Anne Rice-land either. the vampires are deliciously evil and demented.

   
   
4. Dozois, Gardner, ed. The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty Second Annual Collection. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2005. 704pp.

   Self-recommending. Full of great stories. Read it and it's brethren from previous and later years if you care about science fiction at the shorter lengths.

   
   
5. Stracher, Cameron. Dinner with Dad: How I Found My Way Back to the Family Table. New York: Random House, 2007. 256pp.

   A heart-warming tale of a type-A workaholic dad who tries to slow down a bit and cook dinner for his family more often. A story of overwork, overstress, long commutes and crazy schedules. Mostly, Stracher makes it work.

   
   
6. Stephen Jones, ed. The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror: 16. New York: Carroll & Graff, 2005. 512pp.

   Another can't miss collection. I've been reading these for 10-plus years and I'm not sure if there's been an over all better selection than in this edition.

   
   
7. Scalzi, John. The Last Colony. New York: Tor, 2007. 320pp.

   A bit of a disappointment. A bit too talky and slow-moving compared to the previous installments with not enough emphasis on the action that has made Scalzi famous. Also, he really needs to expand this palette of characterization. Not everyone wise-cracks constantly. Also, the Perry/Jane/Zoe family unit is way too transparently Scalzi's own family for my liking. Again, to get to the next level as a novelist, he really needs to work on his characters.

   
   

Maberry, Jonathan. Ghost road blues. New York: Pinnacle, 2006. 472pp.

A great read, a fantastic first novel full of great action, spooky treats and gonzo villains. Basically, there's this hick town which has turned Halloween into a kind of industry, with specialised boutiques and rides. But, little do we know that the town is haunted by an ancient evil that is reawakening after being defeated 30 years before. The good guys are not really aware of what is going on as the bad guys get all their forces in order for the first cataclysmic encounter. The good guys win, of course, but not without some losses. However, this is the first book in a projected trilogy so I imagine that there's lots of carnage to come.

There are some first novel issues here, including a slightly flabby page count, overly precious and smug characters and an over reliance on snappy dialogue. Crow, for example, is far too obviously an idealized version of the way the author sees himself, while Val is equally obviously an idealized version of his adolescent dreams of a powerful, sexy kick-ass women who somehow totally loves the complete goofball main character.

Overall, though, I have to say that there are far more positives than negatives for this novel and I'm looking forward to reading the sequels.

Malmont, Paul. The Chinatown death cloud peril. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007. 367pp.

Now this is a cool book! A phantasmagorical postmodern pastiche-orama, a 1930s pulp plot involving 1930s pulp authors as the main protagonists!

Walter Gibson (Maxwell Grant/The Shadow) and Lester Dent (Kenneth Robeson/Doc Savage) are the main ones, with significant contributions from L. Ron Hubbard, Chester Himes, John W. Campbell, Orson Welles, H.P. Lovecraft, Cornell Woolrich, E.E. “Doc” Smith, Stan Lee, “Otis Driftwood” (I'm not giving that one away...), Blackstone the Magician, even Joe Kavalier gets a mention and Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster get a cameo! And that's not including the ones I don't recognize!

Crammed full of colourful action sequences, daring escapes, dastardly villains with evil plots, weird science, zombies, magicians and evil, cruel editors, it's actually a bit short on plot sanity and cohesion, but it's definitely long on atmosphere and good old pulpy fun. I can't recommend this novel enough. I really enjoyed it, despite a few first novel failings.
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Scalzi, John. The ghost brigades.. New York: Tor, 2007. 343pp.

My Scalzi habit seems to be forming. Last summer I read Old man's war at the cottage, exploring a new author, and enjoyed it a lot. This summer, I did the same thing, this time reading Scalzi's second book in his OMW series, The ghost brigades. And guess what, I loved it too. This guy fits as much plot into 343 pages as a guy like Harry Turtledove fits into an entire seven volume series. Action, adventure, romance, intrigue, loyalty, honour, lively smart-ass dialogue, blood and guts. Military sf with brains and a heart, the courage to ask big questions, to challenge easy assumptions about good guys and bad guys. And I'm not even that big a fan of military sf, most times. Habit forming. I hope there's another Scalzi coming out in paperpack next spring/summer to take with me on whatever travels we get up to. Highly recommended. Scalzi has rocketed to the front of the line of my favourite authors.

Turtledove, Harry. Days of infamy. New York: Penguin Roc, 2005. 520pp.

A pretty typical Turtledove alternate history novel, nothing more, nothing less. Interesting premise, large cast of viewpoint characters on both sides, lots of plot threads to make room for a bunch of sequels, a fair amount of padding in the text itself in the form of endless repetitions. And most of all, not much plot for a lot of pages.

This one is set in the Pacific theatre of WWII, with Japan invading and occupying Pearl Harbor in December 1941 instead of just mounting a surprise attack. The occupation that Turtledove presents seems suitably brutal, mostly in sync with what we know about the Japanese military during the war. Since Turtledove always has some characters conflicted by their situation in his alternate histories, this one is no different. This time it's the substantial population of Hawaiian Japanese, with the older generations tending to favour their homeland and younger siding with the USA. Of course, the Yankee characters are generally fairly arrogant and self-assured about their innate superiority and it's nice to see them taken down a peg by the superiority of the Japanese forces, leading me to at times root for the Japanese (if only temporarily, the occupation is truly brutal). I imagine that we'll see the American forces get the upper hand in later volumes.

Armstrong, Kelley. Stolen. Toronto: Random House, 2002. 399pp.

What's the demographic for this novel? I really felt that this novel was squarely aimed at a certain type of fan, the fan of Laurel K. Hamilton & those other spooky sexy romance novels. But could it transcend its demographic and find interest for a 44 year old guy? (Or is a 44yog part and parcel of the demo for a sexy horror novel?)

When you get right down to it, it's all adolescent wish fulfillment, to have power in a world that doesn't recognize your specialness, to have secret powers, to be above the morals of mere humans. Even the good characters are more or less amoral killers, I find the Clay character particularly annoying and smug, even the main character, Elena, seemed a bit of an idealized awkward, gawky adolescent goth: tall, skinny, plain, poor fashion sense, not very accomplished in “real” life, snarky and sarcastic but somehow powerful, sexy, ultra-competent and poised. Not to mention, still somehow able to win the affections of the smartest, most competent, best-looking male character.

A quick outline of the plot: the secret werewolf society becomes aware of the larger world of supernatural beings, including witches, half-demons, vampires and others. The attend a meeting of leaders of these groups to assess the dangers of a group of humans that seems to be hunting and capturing various members of the races. Ultimately, Elena is captured and imprisoned by the humans, financed and lead by a rogue billionaire software geek. Eventually, she escapes with some of the other captured supernaturals, and, well, you can guess the rest.

There's some stuff that's wrong with this novel, mostly that it needed to grow up a bit, to get to adulthood, adult characters and adult situations. The series has a lot of potential, potential I would like to see fulfilled. I liked the first episode of the loose series quite a bit, but this one not quite as much. I do look forward to reading more installments to see how the series and the characters grow, even if the series shifts to the less interesting witches rather than the werewolves. A bit of a sophomore jinx is nothing to abandon the series for.

Clancy, Tom. Clear and present danger. New York: Berkley, 1990. 688pp

Good ol' Tom Clancy. A bit of technophilia, some serious obsessiveness about “competence” and honour and duty and gadgetry. On the other hand, there's also a strong emphasis on camaraderie, the vital importance of mentors, relationships with friends, the centrality of families – you would almost call the guy sentimental. Every character needs to have a background, a context, an explanation for their strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes it feels like he's taking a stock character out of central casting, but sometimes it hits the right note. Clancy is also oddly pragmatic or even liberal about a lot of traditional right wing issues, like that drug problem as much about demand as supply, women in the military or US involvement in Central America and other developing nations. His characters also always ask questions about what they're doing, ponder moral rights and wrongs of their actions, the nature of good and evil, the nature and purpose of government action. You don't always have to agree with the characters' conclusions, but it's interesting that Clancy feels the need to have them asked and not always even answered completely. There's a lot of grey in a novel you expect to be black and white.

So, what's the big picture plot outline. The novel opens with a horrific execution at sea of a US businessman and his wife and kidson a South American fishing trip. This spins out with the President getting the CIA to launch a real War on Drugs, more no-holds-barred. It gets a bit out of hand with some semi-rogue elements in the government. Some CIA good guys like agent John Clark and new acting Deputy Director Intelligence of the CIA, Jack Ryan, and a whole bunch of army super-grunts need to save the day and get the Agency back on a more legal and ethical track. There's lots of explosions and miscellaneous derring do. I also find it odd that the whole War Against Drugs plot line feels almost like a historical novel. It's a good thriller, but it almost feels like it's about Berlin in 1950. It's worth noting that we don't even see Jack Ryan much until after page 100, and even then he's peripheral to the main action until the very end.

And how does it compare to the movie starring Harrison Ford? The movie more or less successfully mixes and matches some of the characters and plots, extracting some and adding others, figuring out a way to make Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) more completely integrated in the action. Pretty good but since it leaves out all the crazy detail that make Clancy novels so much nerdy fun, it seems a bit bland in comparison.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Breakfast of champions. New York: Dell, 1973. 295pp.

Vonnegut died a little while ago and I thought I'd dig up one of his novels I'd never read and give it a try, and Breakfast of champions was the one I found first in the vast recesses of my personal library. Now, I never discovered Vonnegut as a teen, the time that most people who are most passionate about him seem to clue in. Vonnegut, like Dick or Ellison or Lovecraft, seems to speak most directly to the emerging adult, the insecurities, the cynicism mixed with idealism, the smart-aleciness. I certainly remember one of my best friends back in the late high school, early college era really catching the Vonnegut bug and endlessly spouting quotes and aphorisms. For some reason, thought, it didn't happen to me with Vonnegut -- although in spades for Dick, Ellison and Lovecraft, of course.

I have read a bunch of Vonnegut novels since leaving my teen years, and mostly liked them quite a bit if not quite with that all-consuming passion of the real devotee. Breakfast of champions is mostly considered middle range Vonnegut, not his best but not his worst either. And I have to say that's my opinion too. Loosely plotted around his signiture character, sf author Kilgore Trout, traveling to a conference to accept an award and the various other characters directly and indirectly involved, it's an amusing romp, full of Vonnegut's trademark gentle humour and biting satire. A kind of world-weariness mixed with optimism, if you will. Good stuff, if not quite gripping or compelling.

Farmer, Philip Jose. The fabulous riverboat. New York: Berkley Medallion, 1973. 256pp.

This is the second book in Farmer's Riverworld series, the first of which, To your scattered bodies go, I reviewed about 18 months ago. That one was quite a good book, really deserving the classic label. As a reminder, the Riverworld series takes place on a giant planet where everyone from all human history has been reincarnated along a hugely long river.

This one, however, was a bit of a disappointment. The story revolves around Samuel Clemens' (yes, Mark Twain) attempts to build a river boat to explore the river and discover the secrets of the mysterious aliens that have created this bizarre scenario. First of all, the book was mostly political wrangling until the very end, the boat project didn't really even get underway until the last 100 or so pages. The story never really grabbed me like the first one.

The third in the series is about exploring the Riverworld, so I will probably end up giving that one a try. On the other hand, the extended series rule of diminishing sequel returns may not favour that option. We'll see.

Preston, Douglas and Lincoln Child. Still life with crows. New York: Warner, 2004. 592pp.

I love the occasional seriously over the top thriller and this series by Preston and Child fits the bill perfectly. This is the fourth in a loose series, the first being Relic, then Reliquary and Cabinet of curiosities. There are three or four more that I haven't gotten to yet.

Gonzo, grizzly and gruesome, the three g-words that describe this great novel. The setting is a microscopically small town in Kansas where a series of increasingly bizarre and violent killing take place, potentially disrupting a hoped-for economic biotech spin off in the town. The killings draw the very stange FBI Agent Pendergrast who teams up with a local teen misfit to solve the crime. It sounds like it shouldn't work but it does. Preston and Child give the book enough narrative drive and gory detail to keep you interested. And Pendergrast is a quirky and odd enough character to keep you coming back to the series (although he isn't in all the previous books, like I said the series so far is quite loose). While Pendergrast is a little too alien a figure to give the books a intimate human dimension, the authors always come up with a local character to identify with. This time it's teen misfit Corrie Swanson, a goth kid who's ostracized by the community but is smart and savvy enough to be a real help to Pendergrast. I think we'll be seeing more of her eventually, as she would surely make a good long-term sidekick one day.

One minor complaint about the series, though. I find they always tease supernatural causes for the mayhem but in the end it always ends with a naturalistic explanation -- and that's ok. I don't need a horror novel to be supernatural, human nature is scary enough. My problem is that they always end up having the whole thing be a bit stretched to the bounds of credibility for my taste, as if they felt the need to push the limit while they were writing and they had to squeeze in the reality at the end.

Estleman, Loren. Lady yesterday. New York: Ballantine, 1988. 211pp.

This is a novel in Estleman's long-running Amos Walker series of novels about a hard-bitten Detroit PI. It's a pretty good novel, nothing too fancy. A girl-gone-bad-gone-good looking for her father gets Walker to help. He digs deeply into her past, finding out some things that she doesn't want to know meanwhile pissing off various members of the criminal underground. A fairly standard tough-guy mystery, but with a good plot, good characters. Short and sweet, to the point. I look forward to trying out more books in this series and by this author.

Shubin, Seymour. Witness to myself. New York: Hard Case, 2006. 250pp.

So, this kid possibly commits a crime at 16 while on vacation with his parents, an assault on a young girl, but didn't stick around long enough to tell if the girl lived. Years pass, he becomes a successful lawyer but he still doesn't know what happened all those years ago. So, he researches the crime, to see if anything was in the papers in the small town where it happened. And from there it commences, he draws attention to himself, he attracts a weird stalker and it all comes to a head and not how you think, either.

A bit of departure from straight noir, as nobody is really a stone criminal but nevertheless I found this novel to be pretty entertaining. It's one of the first of the Hard Case Crime novels that I've read that was not a classic reprint but an original novel. In fact, it's a bit disconcerting when the guy does most of his research on the web (although he does end up at the town library), it almost seems a bit unnatural for modern technology to impinge on the noir genre.

In any case, Shubin is a classic noir author so I guess it all evens out. I recommend this book heartily. It's not a classic but it's got enough twists and turns to keep anyone happy.

King, Stephen. It. New York: Signet, 1987. 1090pp.

Reading this novel is like running a marathon. You start and it just goes on and on. One thousand and ninety pages. I've hardly ever in my life read such a long novel; the only other one I can think of over 1000 pages is also King's -- The Stand, Expanded edition, natch. Well worth it, but also a marathon.

I started It during a vacation that I knew had a couple of longish train rides, to get a good head start. But still, it took me a good 3 weeks to get to the end. Was it worth it? On the whole, I have to say yes. If anyone can keep the interest level high over such a long book, it has to be a natural storyteller like King. I really enjoyed the detail, the opportunity to really get to know a few interesting characters. The story of the battle of good and evil in Derry Maine, twice fought, in 1958 and 1985, of a group of kids at 11 and 38, is a good one combining a coming of age and an acceptance of adulthood.

But, such a long book must settle for a short review. Read it, but you better start soon.