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What book is everyone reading at the moment? Part 2.

We have a paperback Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone that we picked up in London. Like Agatha, I was surprised ty the different font (tiny) and style of the British paperback vs American ones. For one thing, in the British version the margins ran up to within a sixteenth of an inch of the page edges!
 
Spektator said:
The Mugger, Ed McBain

The second in the 87th Precinct series, this police procedural is, natch, about a serial mugger who specializes in attacking women, punching them, and stealing their purses, which in the City means he usually gets away with fifty bucks or less. Newlywed detective Steve Carella is off on his honeymoon with his deaf-mute wife Teddy, so the burden of the investigation falls on the short, polite, but deadly Hal Willis, the brutal, big, but corrupt and violent Roger Havilland, and the youthful beat patrolman Bert Kling, who aspires to become a Detective 3rd Grade.

This is the novel that introduces one of McBain's favorite tropes - the extended metaphor "The City is a woman . . .." In this one it goes on for a page and a bit, and in later novels he lovingly revisits and rings changes on it. And, I noticed, in Guards, Guards! Sir Terry Pratchett pays homage to it from the viewpoint of a drunken Sam Vimes: "The city wasa, wasa, wasa wossname. Thing. Woman."

Like most of the early 87th Precinct novels this one clips right along, a fast read with a satisfying mystery and a wicked little curveball for those coming to it for the first time. We meet Monaghan and Monroe, two Homicide detectives who are cut from the same bolt of cloth (sharkskin) and who spend all their time snarking about the lower-class precinct detectives and making bad jokes. God forbid they should ever do any actual police work. This novel also introduces the reader to the bald-as-an-egg, preternaturally patient Meyer Meyer, who narrates a long, complicated tale about the detectives of the 33rd, who are struggling to solve the case of an actual cat burglar.

And one of the detectives meets a future flame or two, the weather has shifted from sultry summer to balmy, colorful autumn, and the City, well, the City is like a woman.
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Thank you so much for bringing this series and author to my attention. I was expecting mediocre potboiling prose, not an elegant dance of lyrical vision and brutal action. Dunno if it's quite up to Elmore Leonard yet, but it's definitely up there with Jack McDonald and Joe Lansdale.
 
My pleasure, theprestige. If you haven't discovered Ross Macdonald, I'd also recommend his Lew Archer series. My favorite of his is The Chill.

The Pusher, Ed McBain

Third in the 87th Precinct series, set during a cold Christmas season and dealing wit h the City's heroin problem. It begins with the apparent suicide by hanging of a young junkie, which leads to a ghastly murder. Before long, the investigation becomes personal for one of the squad, a nice teen gets hooked, one of the detectives is shot in the line of duty, and we meet Danny Gimp, a strangely endearing stool pigeon who doesn't realize that he discovered an important clue.

McBain was a pseudonym for Evan Hunter, who put in his time as a teacher at the Bronx Vocational High School (under his real real name, Salvatore Lombino). As Hunter, he wrote The Blackboard Jungle and his familiarity with the urban youth culture shows here.

This one pulls out of the station and speeds along like a freight train. If you read the series in order, the suspense ramps way up before the end. And be sure to read the author's Afterword....
 
Spektator said:
My pleasure, theprestige. If you haven't discovered Ross Macdonald, I'd also recommend his Lew Archer series. My favorite of his is The Chill.

The Pusher, Ed McBain

Third in the 87th Precinct series, set during a cold Christmas season and dealing wit h the City's heroin problem. It begins with the apparent suicide by hanging of a young junkie, which leads to a ghastly murder. Before long, the investigation becomes personal for one of the squad, a nice teen gets hooked, one of the detectives is shot in the line of duty, and we meet Danny Gimp, a strangely endearing stool pigeon who doesn't realize that he discovered an important clue.

McBain was a pseudonym for Evan Hunter, who put in his time as a teacher at the Bronx Vocational High School (under his real real name, Salvatore Lombino). As Hunter, he wrote The Blackboard Jungle and his familiarity with the urban youth culture shows here.

This one pulls out of the station and speeds along like a freight train. If you read the series in order, the suspense ramps way up before the end. And be sure to read the author's Afterword....
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McBain reminds me of Stephen King. He starts by telling you about someone. Their life and times, their hopes and fears. Then he does something to them. Sometimes he develops their character more. Sometimes he shoots them in the face.

It's a solid storytelling approach, and I love that he has prior art on King. I wonder if he influenced King. I bet he did.
 
theprestige said:
 McBain reminds me of Stephen King. He starts by telling you about someone. Their life and times, their hopes and fears. Then he does something to them. Sometimes he develops their character more. Sometimes he shoots them in the face.

It's a solid storytelling approach, and I love that he has prior art on King. I wonder if he influenced King. I bet he did.
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I once had the opportunity to meet Stephen King and someone asked him that very question. He said yes, the McBain series taught him to spin the plot after he had a good character. I also heard Evan Hunter address a convention crowd (in and just after college I volunteered to work many, many conventions to meet writers) and he spoke highly of King. That must have been just a few years before Hunter died because
I have an autographed copy of The Last Dance, a late 87th Precinct novel, as a souvenir.
 
I have just read two books by psychics. One about Edgar Cayce and the other by Nella Jones. These books were fairly easy to read but now I have embarked on a difficult read. ' The physics of immortality' by Frank Tipler. In it he uses quantum theory to try to show that God exists.
He says that studying the past and present universe is not enough as the universe is young and probably has more than one hundred billion years left to run. So the study of reality should include the future universe.
 
I've pretty much been stuck in the past for the last few weeks, starting with reading the first book of the Enola Holmes series---Sherlock's sister--- and now I'm reading The Pillars of the Earth (12th century AD) by Ken Follet.

I not only got interested in the Holmes series on Netflix because it helped fill in the time while waiting for the next season of Stranger Things (Millie Bobby Brown stars in both series, and she's incredible), but also because I'm a Sherlock Holmes nut.

Anyway, it's worth reading if only to get a laugh off Enola's take on the great consulting detective.

I've gotten into that part in the The Pillars of the Earth where a character named King Stephen appears, and I chuckled the first few times because I couldn't help myself from reading it as Stephen King instead.

Anyway, it's a great novel. One of my top ten favorites. As a matter of fact, this is my third time reading it.


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The Con Man, Ed McBain

The fourth in the 87th Precinct series, this entry begins with the discovery of a woman's body in the Harb River, the kind of corpse the detectives call a floater. Except this woman was different from most floaters because she died of arsenic poisoning, not drowning, and on the skin between her thumb and for finger she had a tiny heart-scalded tattoo.

Meanwhile con artists with various scams, big and small, have hit the City. And then a second floating body turns up with a similar tattoo . . . and she has also been poisoned. The different detectives investigate different crimes, their cases now and then criss-crossing. Black detective Arthur Brown debuts, young Bert Kling has romantic worries, and Steve Carella is recovering from a brush with death . . . and his wife is planning a surprise for him.

This one fleshed out the cops, showing us facets of their personalities that round their characters. I have discovered the T V series on Youtube, well-produced but short-lived (30 episodes). The initial one, "The Floater," is based on this novel.

McBain's editors were increasingly micromanaging by now, which would eventually result in his changing publishers and the series gaining attention and prestige when the novels gained hardcover publication.
 
AmyStrange said:
I've pretty much been stuck in the past for the last few weeks, starting with reading the first book of the Enola Holmes series---Sherlock's sister--- and now I'm reading The Pillars of the Earth (12th century AD) by Ken Follet.

I not only got interested in the Holmes series on Netflix because it helped fill in the time while waiting for the next season of Stranger Things (Millie Bobby Brown stars in both series, and she's incredible), but also because I'm a Sherlock Holmes nut.

Anyway, it's worth reading if only to get a laugh off Enola's take on the great consulting detective.

I've gotten into that part in the The Pillars of the Earth where a character named King Stephen appears, and I chuckled the first few times because I couldn't help myself from reading it as Stephen King instead.

Anyway, it's a great novel. One of my top ten favorites. As a matter of fact, this is my third time reading it.


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Ah, the extended Holmes family....
There was also an obscure series of stories pairing a younger sister, Charlotte Holmes, with Mary Watson.
Not to be confused with the new gender flipped Charlotte Holmes.
Then there was Ashleigh Holmes, The Time Traveller.

Personally I like the Mrs. Hudson series.

The Pillars of the Earth is an excellent series. In a similar vein I recommend Domini Highsmith's "Father Simeon" trilogy.
 
Killer's Choice, Ed McBain

Number 5 in the 87th Precinct series, this one starts with a double bang, or rather with one crash and one series of gunshots. In the crash, the most despised detective of the squad dies more or less of guillotining by plate glass, and in the shooting an attractive single mother of a sharp little girl is gunned down in a late-night rampage that wrecks the liquor store where she works as a clerk.

We meet a new detective, Cotton Hawes, a muscular. good-looking guy. He has red hair except for a white streak from an old knife wound that permanently bleached that one small patch. McBain's editor had leaned on him to add a detective who could replace Steve Carella as the hero. The author pointed out that the publisher had insisted that Carella WAS the hero - McBain's concept was that the whole 87th detection squad served as a composite hero. Nope, the editor shot back, there had to be one hero, but Carella was married and the hero had to be single. Oh, and handsome, too. Go. Write it.

Enter the tall, handsome Hawes, who the writer tells us has transferred from the hoity-toity, pantywaist, snooty 33rd. And he is a narcissistic, egotistical, inexperienced guy who puts his partner in serious jeopardy. But, hey, he's single!

By this point McBain was seething, but even clenching his teeth, he still wrote an engaging, gritty procedural.

Currently I'm reading a history of radio comedy.
 
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AmyStrange said:
I've sworn off reading serious novels for now.

War and Peace was just too damn much.

The first time I read it, I had to watch the movie in order to understand what the hell had happened. I won't deny that it's a great story, but damn it, talk about turning a two-hundred-page novel into a 1,000+page one. I mean, it took Tolstoy almost three pages (in small type no less) to describe the Kazachok dance, also spelled Kazatsky or Kazachoc, and that was short compared to most of the other descriptive passages in the book.

I think reading it twice was more than enough times.

Anyway, I've been reading more Perry Mason books and watching the two Enola Holmes movies, and I've put on hold the books that they're based on. It's in order to substitute for my Stranger Things addiction until the new episodes come out on Netflix.

The reason is because Enola Holmes (Sherlock Holmes's baby sister) is actually being played by Millie Bobby Brown who played Eleven in the Stranger Things series.

I'm also addicted to the Wednesday series and the upcoming new season, but that's another story all together.


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I LOVE War and Peace. In the early 70s the CBC broadcast the very long Russian Movie based on the novel as a miniseries. I loved the story and so I read the novel. It was a wonderful read for me. I have since re-read it 3 times and each time I love it more. I have an edition which translated the Russian into English but the left the pretty extensive French sections as is. That is my favorite edition.

Regarding Perry Mason, sadly I can't go near any of the books because of the grotesque TV series of the fifties into the sixties. The stupidities of that show are incredible. They start with Perry Mason being basically God's Incarnate Son, so wise, so infallible so perfect - just barf! The extremely rigid structure of each episode. The endless parade of legal absurdities in the show. Perry never losses a case; actually not true he losses one but of course his client was still innocent. Perry Mason breaking the law. And the ultimate idiocy those truly moronic courtroom confessions, even of people who are not being questioned!!

Never heard of the Enola Holmes movies I think I will check them out.

And yes I am looking forward to another season of Wednesday.
 
Pacal said:
I LOVE War and Peace. In the early 70s the CBC broadcast the very long Russian Movie based on the novel as a miniseries. I loved the story and so I read the novel. It was a wonderful read for me. I have since re-read it 3 times and each time I love it more. I have an edition which translated the Russian into English but the left the pretty extensive French sections as is. That is my favorite edition.

Regarding Perry Mason, sadly I can't go near any of the books because of the grotesque TV series of the fifties into the sixties. The stupidities of that show are incredible. They start with Perry Mason being basically God's Incarnate Son, so wise, so infallible so perfect - just barf! The extremely rigid structure of each episode. The endless parade of legal absurdities in the show. Perry never losses a case; actually not true he losses one but of course his client was still innocent. Perry Mason breaking the law. And the ultimate idiocy those truly moronic courtroom confessions, even of people who are not being questioned!!

Never heard of the Enola Holmes movies I think I will check them out.

And yes I am looking forward to another season of Wednesday.
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The Perry Mason TV series was kind of a let down from the novels by his creator, Erle Stanley Gardner, especially since in the novels, Perry and Della actually fall in love.

I can't argue with you about War and Peace, because I've read it three times myself.

If you loved reading that, then you would probably love Mony Dick.


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Pacal said:
Regarding Perry Mason, sadly I can't go near any of the books because of the grotesque TV series of the fifties into the sixties. The stupidities of that show are incredible. They start with Perry Mason being basically God's Incarnate Son, so wise, so infallible so perfect - just barf! The extremely rigid structure of each episode. The endless parade of legal absurdities in the show. Perry never losses a case; actually not true he losses one but of course his client was still innocent. Perry Mason breaking the law. And the ultimate idiocy those truly moronic courtroom confessions, even of people who are not being questioned!!
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Not to belabor the point, but you (or anyone else here) might like another series by Erle Stanley Gardner (writing as A. A. Fair) based in the 30s and 40s.

The Bertha Cool and Donald Lam series.

Bertha is a widow who runs a detective agency. She's looks like everyone's sweet old grandmother until she slaps you around with her words.

In the first novel, The Bigger They Are, Lam is down on his luck looking for a job and gets hired by Bertha.

I haven't read it in a while so this may not be entirely accurate, but Lam used to be a lawyer that got disbarred after he offhandedly told a client or colleague that he knew how to commit first degree murder and get away with it, even if he was guilty as sin and confessed.

Now, you have to remember this is based on laws in the1930s in Arizona, but in the novel, he proves it can be done, and soon after, the Arizona legislature actually fixed that loophole in the law.

You should read the novel for a better explanation, but it's based on the law at the time, that a person can't be extradited to a state they were forcibly removed from.

For example, say you killed someone in California, drove normally into Arizona, and then drove back into California, and when you saw a cop, immediately floor it and fly by them so fast that he'll have to chase you into California to arrest you, and then forcibly bring you back to Arizona.

What happens in the novel is a little more complicated than that, but it's still the same idea.


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Spektator said:
Killer's Choice, Ed McBain

Number 5 in the 87th Precinct series, this one starts with a double bang, or rather with one crash and one series of gunshots. In the crash, the most despised detective of the squad dies more or less of guillotining by plate glass, and in the shooting an attractive single mother of a sharp little girl is gunned down in a late-night rampage that wrecks the liquor store where she works as a clerk.

We meet a new detective, Cotton Hawes, a muscular. good-looking guy. He has red hair except for a white streak from an old knife wound that permanently bleached that one small patch. McBain's editor had leaned on him to add a detective who could replace Steve Carella as the hero. The author pointed out that the publisher had insisted that Carella WAS the hero - McBain's concept was that the whole 87th detection squad served as a composite hero. Nope, the editor shot back, there had to be one hero, but Carella was married and the hero had to be single. Oh, and handsome, too. Go. Write it.

Enter the tall, handsome Hawes, who the writer tells us has transferred from the hoity-toity, pantywaist, snooty 33rd. And he is a narcissistic, egotistical, inexperienced guy who puts his partner in serious jeopardy. But, hey, he's single!

By this point McBain was seething, but even clenching his teeth, he still wrote an engaging, gritty procedural.

Currently I'm reading a history of radio comedy.
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Does it mention the Great Tiddlewinks Cheating Scandal of '57, the role of Spike Milligan as Prince Phillip's Royal Champion and the involvement of most of The Goon Show cast in the business?
 
I have been reading some heavy duty books, the most recent being 'the physics of immortality' by Frank Tipler. I have struggled half way through it and decided to give it a rest, because in spite of needing a degree in physics to understand it (which I don't have) I have come to the conclusion it is trash. Tipler thinks we are like self replicating robots and he sees the future universe as being populated by self replicating robots we will invent and send into space. They will take with them human eggs and when they find a suitable planet in another solar system they will breed the human eggs in artificial wombs, and raise the children they give birth to. Thereby spreading the human race through the universe.

I decided that is bunk and so I started reading, 'the emperors new mind' by Sir Roger Penrose. He is not a fan of AI taking over and does not think Intelligence like human consciousness can be replicated by future computers. I agree with him because I believe consciousness is the incarnate spirit, and a robot of the future will have no spirit so it will not equal us in intelligence. Penrose does not say that, he has other theories about the future of consciousness I have yet to read.
 
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