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books #29 and #30
May. 22nd, 2008 02:28 pmLately I've been getting behind with reporting my leisure-time reading activities; this has been for the same reason that I've not been posting as much over the past couple of weeks as usual. I'm trying to get to a stage in my work on Bogus Science where I can leave it for a week or two without finding, when I get back to it, that I have too much tiresome picking-up-of-pieces to do before hitting my stride on it once more. (In fact, I'm planning to take a laptop and some relevant books into the hospital with me, but I've no idea how much time and/or inclination I'll have for any real progress to be made.) Further, since I'm doing so much reading for research on that book during "working hours", as it were, I have less time and exponentially fewer brain cells for leisure reading; right now I'm not selecting exactly yer Proust or Gogol to read in bed or on the lav.
So, a pair of thrillers . . . and treated more briefly than usual.
A couple of years ago I discovered a Stephen White novel in a garage sale and bought it on the principle that he was "obviously" Jonathan Kellerman Lite: his psychologist detective is called Alan Gregory rather than Alex Delaware, but the setup's very similar. By the end of the book, I realized I'd rather underestimated White's place in the scheme of things. Since then my reading tastes have undergone one of their periodic shifts, a by-product of which has been that I'm no longer interested in Kellerman's work (although someone let me know if he writes another Billy Straight or Butcher's Theatre). I still, though, like White's work very much.
The latest I've read, Warning Signs (2002), sees Alan Gregory treating a patient whose son and another young man seem to be planning a sort of Columbine-style crime. Of course, nothing is quite as it seems, and by the time things really start hotting up it's plain that the crime involved is on a far, far more grandiose scale. All of White's usual characters weave in and out of the story in their customary soap-opera (no insult intended) fashion, but, in terms of these minor subplots, he's a skilled enough writer that it doesn't matter if you haven't read any of the earlier volumes in the series. All in all, then, a good, satisfying read.
Decades ago, probably in the late '60s, I read one of Dell Shannon's police-procedural novels and liked it quite a lot; for some reason, though, I never got back to her. More recently, I found an omnibus of the first four Shannon novels and bought it; and the other day I read the first of these, Case Pending (1960). Luis Mendoza and the crew investigate the second of two murders that strike Mendoza as full of similarities even though in different areas of town and with victims from very different backgrounds.
I didn't enjoy this as much as I remember enjoying the Shannon novel I read 'way back when; but, to be fair, this was her first foray into crime fiction (she'd written historical novels under her own name) so its major flaw -- too many "atmosphere-building" sections in which nothing happens and anyway you already know the character is scared stiff so don't need five pages of description of heart pounding, shadows rustling, pants-leg dripping, whatever -- can readily be forgiven. I'm not planning to read all four of the novels on the trot; but the omnibus is on my nightstand for the next time I'm in the Shannon mood, which I expect won't be long a-coming.
Currently I'm enjoying Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty (1990ish).
