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

Taking a break from police procedurals, I read Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov.

Uncle Vanya is a tragedy of family and social dissolution. The inaction takes place on a decrepit estate managed by Uncle Vanya, 47, and his young niece Sonia. They maintain the fields and buildings for no pay beyond room and board. The owner of the estate, a retired academician named Seerbryakov and his much younger wife Yelena live expensively, relying on the income from the estate. Which Seerbyakov inherited from his first wife. Who was Vanya's sister. Now the professor intends to sell the land, dispossessing Vanya and Sonia. And the prof's temporary guest, his doctor.Who hates being a doctor. Everyone mopes around, lamenting that the good old days are gone. No one converses; they are in the same place, but each character monologues without paying much attention to the others. In the end, the land is up for sale and no one is happy.

That was so bleak that I read The Cherry Orchard, a laugh riot about, um, family and social dissolution, set on, let's see, a decrepit estate boasting a cherry orchard that produces cherries about three times every decade, and everyone complains about missing the good old days, even the former serfs who wax nostalgic about those times when men were men and they were property. The family is hard up and the only solution seems to be to sell the orchard, which no one can bear to do because sentiment and all, so everyone miles and talks, no one listens, the orchard gets sold, and the family gets evicted, nobody is happy, and the faithful old family retainer lies down for a quick nap, unaware that the bulldozers are about to demolish the house.

This is a comedy. According to Chekhov. Who admittedly was coughing up blood as he wrote it.
 
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While searching for the Cthulhu Casebook series, I ran across another series where Sherlock Holmes fights monsters with a twist. It's called the Classified Dossier series by Christian Klaver and the first one is called Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula:

In this thrilling first instalment of The Classified Dossier, a Transylvanian nobleman called Count Dracula arrives at Baker Street seeking the help of Sherlock Holmes, for his beloved wife Mina has been kidnapped.
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But Dracula is a client like no other and Sherlock and Watson must confront – despite the wild, unbelievable notion – the existence of vampires. And before long, Sherlock, Watson and their new vampire allies must work together to banish a powerful enemy growing in the shadows...
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Another book I found was called Sherlock Holmes Vs. Dracula: Or the Adventure of the Sanguinary Count by John H. Watson MD (as edited by Loren D. Estleman) and is basically a retelling of the original Dracula by Bram Stoker with Holmes and Watson mixed into the narrative, and then there's the one that really messes with the Sherlock Holmes mystique:

The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Dibdin.


In Victorian-era London, noted detective Sherlock Holmes attempts to solve the murder of prostitutes by the serial killer Jack the Ripper. He suspects the Ripper to be his nemesis, James Moriarty.[1] In a twist ending, it is revealed that Holmes himself invented the character of Moriarty due to insanity and was himself committing the crimes. There is also an ambiguity to the revelation as a despairing Holmes tries to explain to his companion John Watson that Moriarty has fooled Watson and framed Holmes.



Anyway, needless to say, Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows is not your typical Holmes or Cthulhu story either, although, it's obvious the author was a big fan of both, but it does mess with the Holmes storyline a little, but it's all for a good cause.

I recommend it quite highly, even if you don't like the Cthulhu Mythos.


ETA: I've found another Sherlock Holmes and Dracula story called Sherlock Holmes and the Plague of Dracula By Stephen Seitz. It seems Holmes and Dracula together is almost a niche market.


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AmyStrange said:
While searching for the Cthulhu Casebook series, I ran across another series where Sherlock Holmes fights monsters with a twist. It's called the Classified Dossier series by Christian Klaver and the first one is called Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula:




Another book I found was called Sherlock Holmes Vs. Dracula: Or the Adventure of the Sanguinary Count by John H. Watson MD (as edited by Loren D. Estleman) and is basically a retelling of the original Dracula by Bram Stoker with Holmes and Watson mixed into the narrative, and then there's the one that really messes with the Sherlock Holmes mystique:

The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Dibdin.


In Victorian-era London, noted detective Sherlock Holmes attempts to solve the murder of prostitutes by the serial killer Jack the Ripper. He suspects the Ripper to be his nemesis, James Moriarty.[1] In a twist ending, it is revealed that Holmes himself invented the character of Moriarty due to insanity and was himself committing the crimes. There is also an ambiguity to the revelation as a despairing Holmes tries to explain to his companion John Watson that Moriarty has fooled Watson and framed Holmes.



Anyway, needless to say, Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows is not your typical Holmes or Cthulhu story either, although, it's obvious the author was a big fan of both, but it does mess with the Holmes storyline a little, but it's all for a good cause.

I recommend it quite highly, even if you don't like the Cthulhu Mythos.


ETA: I've found another Sherlock Holmes and Dracula story called Sherlock Holmes and the Plague of Dracula By Stephen Seitz. It seems Holmes and Dracula together is almost a niche market.


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I believe I have read all of these, plus Saberhagen's The Holmes Dracula File which has Dracula, Holmes and a plague.
 
Spektator said:
Everyone mopes around, lamenting that the good old days are gone. No one converses; they are in the same place, but each character monologues without paying much attention to the others. In the end, the land is up for sale and no one is happy.
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Oh god. I read a book like that not too many years ago (it's a book I just refer to as That Book now). Not much really happened, and when something did happen it was almost always bad, and if something good happened the author seemed to think it needed to be immediately offset with some tragedy or catastrophe. The characters virtually never spoke, except to express how much they feel sorry for themselves. The absolute worst.
 
Lady Killer, Ed McBain

The eighth installment in the 87th Precinct series of police procedurals, Lady Killer was written in exactly nine days while McBain was on vacation.Like all the earlier novels in the series, it is short and tightly written, and like its immediate predecessor, Killer's Wedge, its plot limits itself to less than a day.

Lady Killer kicks off with a familiar trope: the cops receive an anonymous note composed of words clipped from a newspaper and pasted on a sheet of typewriter paper*. This one warns the cops that someone called The Lady will be murdered in twelve hours and asks "Can you stop me?"

It's a hot July day, and Carella, Hawes, Kling, and Meyer set out chasing down clues to learn the identities of both the note sender and the lady and, they hope, prevent a murder. It sounds and is a bit more old-school than the earlier McBains, but it is clever and allows the guys in the forensics lab to shine.

McBain was about to change publishers, finally fed up with micromanaging editors. Soon after his books would appear as hardcovers, not paperback originals.

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*As in The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle. Scholar Gorge Dove tracked down the actual issue of the Sunday NY Times that McBain used for the Lady Killer paste-up.
 
La Peste had some eerie parallels to the Covid pandemic, showing perhaps that human nature is much the same in every time and place.

Back to the Bobby Owen series by E R Punshon and the fifteenth book, Ten Star Clues. Earl Wych has been shot dead just after recognising a claimant to the title and estate who has turned up out of the blue despite being reported dead many years ago.

The great-nephew who had believed himself to be the heir has had an angry quarrel with the Earl a few minutes before the shooting, but there are several more suspects - the Countess, the Tichborne-style claimant, a granddaughter who is engaged to the great-nephew but who breaks the engagement in favour of pursuing the claimant, the Countess's companion who is the vicar's daughter and who is in love with the great-nephew (and he with her), the vicar himself, a solicitor, a cousin who skulks in bushes to spy on the occupants of the estate and a butler with a history of blackmail.

It's 1940 and Bobby has been refused permission to leave the police to join the army, which he unhappy about but gets on with doing both war work and leading the Wychshire CID.

His Chief Constable Colonel Glynne's indispositions occur conveniently whenever there is work to be done and is apt to lose his temper with witnesses, so Bobby finds the investigation hard going at first.

This was well-plotted with several red-herrings strewn across the reader's path, though the clues were there. I didn't spot the murderer until almost the end, which always pleases me.

Onto the sixteenth book now The Dark Garden and the action has moved to 1941, with the war intruding on the rural life of Wychshire.

An angry farmer accuses one of the partners in a solicitor's practice of embezzling his wife's trust fund of £5,000 (worth about £380,000 today). Not long afterwards the solicitor is found shot and drowned in a canal, echoing a previous death in the same canal which was also linked to the farmer. Colonel Glynne is again suffering from one of his convenient illnesses, so Bobby is relying more and more on his junior officers to help him out with the routine work.

I think I have guessed the murderer but I may well be wrong!
 
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At the moment, I'm reading my favorite Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Drowning Duck. The old B&W TV series version sucked compared to the original novel, but I'm sure no one wants to hear about that.

Anyway, after that, I'm going to read some stories from the Joe Grey series by Shirley Rousseau Murphy that are about three talking cats that help solve murders.

I found this series when I finished my first three novels and wondered if there were any other talking cat stories, and I even wrote a blog piece about the search and the series itself.


Next, I'll be reading two of my favorite David Baldacci series. Each one has a very strong woman character, and I love that in a novel:

The King and Maxwell series:

Split Second
Hour Game
Simple Genius
First Family
The Sixth Man
King and Maxwell


And my favorite of all time is the Atlee Pine series:

Long Road to Mercy
A Minute to Midnight
Daylight
Mercy


And these will be followed by two series about really strong women characters also. Each one basically involves time travel back to the Victorian Era. One character is an FBI agent working to solve serial killer crimes, and of course, when she arrives back in time, she becomes involved in the hunt for a serial killer.

The Kendra Donovan series by Julie McElwain:

A Murder in Time
A Twist in Time
Caught in Time
Betrayal in Time
Shadows in Time


This second series has the same time travel gimmick, except this character is a homicide detective from present-day Canada who also brings back with her the man who tried to kill her. When he arrives, he decides to start killing women by copying Jack the Ripper (a little more than a decade before they occurred) to make himself the first Jack and the REAL one a copycat killer, and Mallory has to find him before he claims his second victim.

The Mallory Atkinson series by Kelley Armstrong:

A Rip Through Time
The Poisoner's Ring
Cocktails & Chloroform
Disturbing the Dead


Besides the two strong woman characters, what I also found interesting was the attitude of the men towards women in high society during the Victorian Era. When the first of the series characters, Kendra Donovan, is forced to explain where she came from, I found the resulting read to be highly entertaining.

Knowing she will be thrown out onto the street during a very dangerous time in history for destitute women, the way she explains the truth is simply hilarious, and it works. Imagine someone from the present day talking to someone in the Victorian Age, and you can get a pretty good idea why it's not only funny but also very, very serious.

In short, I obviously recommend the above novels very highly, if for no other reason than they're very good and very entertaining reads.


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The Cat Who.... series doesn't have talking cats but they're pretty smart and communicative.
 
catsmate said:
The Cat Who.... series doesn't have talking cats but they're pretty smart and communicative.
Click to expand...


Yup, I have every book of that series, and I've read through all of them at least twice.

I loved every one of them, but at the end of the series, I found out where Koko got his name from, and it sucks.



The original (real live) Koko was killed when he was thrown out of the window of a high-rise apartment building by some sick SOB.

The only beef I have with the series is by the last book, Qwilleran got on my nerves, because he was constantly second guessing or ignoring Koko's intuitive help in solving the mysteries, thinking it was all a coincidence.

Anyway, my favorite one was The Cat Who Saw Stars.


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I enjoyed the Mallory Atkinson books.

I initially picked the wrong culprit in The Dark Garden, but changed my mind just before the reveal. It ends with an excellent and satisfying solution, and completely changed my view of several characters

The next Bobby Owen book is Diabolic Candelabra. The war is impeding on the daily lives of the characters - rationing is in full swing and even in rural Wychshire there is talk of parachutists and spies alongside the daily difficulties.

Two El Greco paintings and a silver Cellini candelabra (which features horrifying carvings and carries a curse - should the candles be lighted, someone will die within 24 hours) disappeared from Sir Alfred Rawdon's manor house many years ago, and after a desultory investigation the matter was apparently forgotten .

However, all of a sudden several people are looking for the paintings. What does that have to do with a secret ingredient in hand-made chocolates, a hermit and a little girl living in the forest, a woman who locks her stepfather in a cellar for punishment, two mysterious disappearances and a series of burglaries, one involving the near-fatal shooting of Sir Alfred in a house where he doesn't live? Everything, as it turns out.

I clocked the murderer fairly early on, but the motive was so much more complex and the ending incredibly violent.

Intriguingly, this book was published in 1942 and includes a body being stuffed into a hollow tree in Wych forest, whereas the ongoing real-life mystery of Bella in a wych elm happened in 1943. Prescience on the part of E R Punshon!
 
Other Arms Reach Out to Me, Michael Bishop

Michael Bishop (1945-2003) should be better known than he is. Trouble is, he got his start in science fiction, and despite the fact that he won all sorts of awards both in that field and in general (one of his stories appeared in The Year’s Best Short Stories), he found himself in the SF/Fantasy ghetto for far too long. This volume of 15 short stories, published not long before his death, features imaginative (but not science-fictiony) stores that are superbly crafted and feater intriguing characters, settings, and themes.

The title is from the lyrics of “Georgia on My Mind,” fittingly, since every tale in the book is either set in or features characters who are from Georgia. “Andalusian Tripytch” is set in Spain, but a major character, like Bishop himself is an Air Force brat who spent time in Spain.

As for the other stories, they range from magic realism to slice-of-life, often featuring quirky, sometimes endearing, other times intriguing characters. “The Road Leads Back” has as its protagonist Flora, a young woman writer with iffy health, and her friend Hettie, a pious Catholic, and involves a pilgrimage from Georgia to a Benedictine monastery in Alabama. Flora, a doubter, is in search of a miracle (she has already been sent to Lourdes by her mother, to no avail), and Hettie is her driver and protector. What happens is right out of Flannery O’Connor and is a lovely homage, especially a beautiful final image.

Belief and doubt, religion and atheism, run through many other stores, as do various institutions, ranging from the monastery to mental hospitals and hospices. “Unfit for Eden” gives is a protagonist raised in the Jehovah’s Witness church and hating everything about it, finally choosing Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass as his preferred testament. “Her Smoke Rose Up Forever” gives us a tragic, loving couple who face loss in their family in different ways: He becomes a fundamentalist preacher, she turns to art and crafts, and somehow they keep a little room of hope alive in their marriage.

A good many of the stories involve people connecting, in sometimes unexpected ways with others. “Other Arms Reach Out to Me” has a young female violinist, Dreamy Moody (the names are often nearly Dickensian) sort-of bonding with a cranky, weird old guy in hospice. “The Russian Agent” has a slightly-built Russian literary agent seeking American clients (including the narrator) whose works can be translated for Russian publication (“No money, but such prestige!). The epistolary story “Doggedly Wooing Madonna” follows the letter-writing campaign of a bedazzled fan. “No Picnic” has a puzzling friend-enemy connection between an elderly man in an old folks’ home with a young African-American who bears an uncanny resemblance to one of his ancestors.

For me the standout story is the final one, “Rattlesnakes and Men,” about a couple who, because of the husband’s work, move into a very small Georgia community that is an enclave of a snake-handling Fundamentalist sect. As in every other citizen is deep into the group. And the town ordinance requires that every household, including ones with small children, must allow a fully-grown, unaltered rattlesnake, loose in the house 24/7. It is a reaction to Kennesaw, Georgia, which in the 1980s passed an ordinance mandating that the head of every household in town had to keep a fully loaded handgun, readily available (not locked in a cabinet) at all times. Later that was altered so it had merely to be a firearm, and then gradually granted certain exemptions, but still . . . .

Just as dangerous as a snake. And I’m sure that Mr. Bishop wrote the story because of the mass shooting at Virginia Tech in April, 2007, in which the murderer used semiautomatic handguns to kill 32 people and wound about 20 more. One of the dead was a young German teacher who died trying to protect his students. He was Jamie Bishop, the son of Michael and Jeri Bishop.
 
Spektator said:
[snip] And I’m sure that Mr. Bishop wrote the story because of the mass shooting at Virginia Tech in April, 2007, in which the murderer used semiautomatic handguns to kill 32 people and wound about 20 more. One of the dead was a young German teacher who died trying to protect his students. He was Jamie Bishop, the son of Michael and Jeri Bishop.
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That's quite something.

The next book in the Bobby Owen series was Conqueror Inn. The war is rumbling on - it's 1943 - and Colonel Glynne has decamped to unspecified war work in London, leaving Bobby and the few remaining members of the Wychshire police force trying to enforce the myriad regulations as well as solve crimes.

An innkeeper reports the find of a box containing £2000 in used (so virtually untraceable) pound notes, and when he and Bobby visit the site of the find, they discover a mutilated corpse of an unknown man in a hastily dug grave. Lorry drivers (and their boss who ends every utterance with a truism and "that's my slogan"), the IRA, religious intolerance, a secret marriage, jealousy, a multiplicity of weapons, two missing men, and an Army captain who seems determined to thwart the investigation at every turn mean that Bobby's path is strewn with red herrings. But he gets there in the end.

I have the next two books, Night's Cloak and Secrets Can't Be Kept both originally published in 1944, but I'm going to save them for later in the month.

Next I am going to be reading several Jules Verne books in French - I've read Around the World in 80 Days, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Voyage to the Moon, Around the Moon and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea in English, but I got what appears to be the complete works on Kindle in French for only £1.99. Apparently it has 68 novels of "extraordinary journeys" as well as over 90 other titles (including poems and essays), so that should keep me busy for a while!
 
The Red-Hot Typewriter: The Life of John D. MacDonald, Hugh Mrerrill

A biography of the best-selling novelist who created the detective - no, wait, he prefers the term salvage consultant - Travis McGee, this book covers the facts of MacDonald's life, from his youth and on-again, off-again education, patchy business career, romance and marriage, military career (he wound up a lieutenant colonel), and then his tentative taking up the calling of professional writer.

Within five years he had become such a dominant producer of pulp fiction in various genres that he had to publish under scores of pseudonyms. Occasionally, the entire contents of a magazine issue would be his work, though the stories listed ten different pen names as by-lines.

But the pulp publishing industry was dying. MacDonald salvaged his career by becoming a paperback writer. He and his wife lived as nomads, living variously in New England, Texas, Mexico, and then at last Florida. The pulp magazines didn't pay well (one or two cents per word), and the book publishers weren't much better. However, MacDonald's education had been as a businessman, and he took a businesslike approach. If unit prices were low, he made up for that by volume.

At last with The Deep Blue Good-By, he created Travis McGee, boat bum and expert in recovering stolen valuables in exchange for half the value of the recovery, taking his retirement in installments between cases. A blend of sour realist and romantic idealist, McGee caught on for a run of 22 best-selling books.

Merrill's bio gives the reader the facts, but somehow few insights into MacDonald's processes and philosophies. About 75% of the way through, the pace speeds up for some reason and the last quarter becomes sketchy. Merrill does a competent job, and picking up the color scheme of the McGee books in his title is clever, but really he left this reader wanting more.
 
I've just started Simon Kuper's "Good Chaps" on Carrot Flower King's recommendation and because I found his previous book "Chums" very interesting (Kuper's previous book, I haven't read any by Carrot Flower King!)
 
The Empty Copper Sea, John D. MacDonald

This is the seventeenth novel in the Travis McGee series of, what are they, hardboiled mysteries, adventure stories, vehicles for a grumpy author to bitch about how things are changing for the worse? Toss 'em all in a blender and what pours out is close.

By this point in the series - there were only five novels to go - the pattern is well and truly set. Travis McGee, a tough man with small patience for the petty, the officious, and the bullies, is a boat bum. He lives aboard his 52-foot houseboat The Busted Flush, slip F-18, Bahia Mar Marina, Fort Lauderdale. His closest friend is semi-retired financial expert Meyer, a marina neighbor and sardonic yet empathetic advisor.

McGee's operation is that he attempts to recover items of value for those desperate losers who are willing to pay him half the value if he can recover the valuables. In this case the client is a recovering-alcoholic skipper-for-hire, crusty Van Harder, who lost his good name while piloting a yacht for Hub Lawless, rich businessman. A gale sweeps in, the yacht pitches, Harder is found passed-out drunk at the helm, and as Lawless and his right-hand man John Tuckerman struggle to get the vessel safely back to harbor, Lawless falls overboard and drowns. Harder gets blamed and asks McGee to recover . . . his lost good reputation.

McGee and Meyer head over to the West Coast of Florida and wade into local politics, drug running, and of course beautiful women and discover that things are not as they seem. Complications,of the violent kind ensue.

The series seems more and more dated (especially McGee's casual romps with tanned beach bunnies). However, the novels are still entertaining reads, sort of like a short beach vacation.
 
Spektator said:
The Empty Copper Sea, John D. MacDonald

This is the seventeenth novel in the Travis McGee series of, what are they, hardboiled mysteries, adventure stories, vehicles for a grumpy author to bitch about how things are changing for the worse? Toss 'em all in a blender and what pours out is close.
Click to expand...

This is something that comes up in Spider Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series. You can tell a protagonist from an antagonist by how much they share the author's likes and dislikes, and Robinson is a Travis McGee fan. In "Callahan's Key" the characters travel to Florida. The author's self-insert main character stumbles across the real-life marina that was the basis for the one where McGee kept his houseboat, and he's absolutely appalled that the owner of the marina not only isn't selling McGee books and heavily promoting the link, but he has never even heard of John MacDonald or Travis McGee.
(A condescending pity for anyone not "enlightened" enough to share the author/main character's tastes frequently comes up too.)
 
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I've been to the marina too, but years ago. When I visited, fans of MacDonald had erected a plaque commemorating Slip F-18, where McGee berthed the Busted Flush.
 
So I finished Braiding Sweetgrass, and to be honest I found it a bit too long-winded for me. Interesting read for sure and did make me think, but got a little bit too samey in the long run and could possibly have been shorter. YMMV, of course.
 
Safe-Keeper said:
So I finished Braiding Sweetgrass, and to be honest I found it a bit too long-winded for me. Interesting read for sure and did make me think, but got a little bit too samey in the long run and could possibly have been shorter. YMMV, of course.
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I hadn't heard of it so I looked it up.

en.wikipedia.org

Braiding Sweetgrass - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Sounds kind of interesting, but then kind of woo.
 
Orphia Nay said:
I hadn't heard of it so I looked it up.

en.wikipedia.org

Braiding Sweetgrass - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Sounds kind of interesting, but then kind of woo.
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I wouldn't call it woo, perhaps unless you consider Native folk beliefs woo.

What surprised me the most was that even though she's an Indian who believes strongly in being one with nature (which isn't just a stereotype or romantification, if that's a word -- I study geography and we've learned that native populations are often great stewards of their native lands), their belief was still surprisingly human-centric. They believe strongly in what we would call sustainability, not taking more out of nature than it can sustain, and only taking what it was okay for nature that we take, but they still had a belief that the plants and animals believed they were there to feed and provide for humans. Like, there was a hunter who said he never shot deer unless they stood still and looked at him, which he interpreted as the deer offering itself up as human food. And they had a creation story where animals sacrificed themselves by diving deep for dirt that humans could live on, some of them drowning in the process.

All in all it was a good book and I'm glad I read it, but I think it would have benefitted from being shorter. The message of sustainability and environmentalism and not robbing nature of its resources got a bit repetitive towards the end.
 
In other news, I've gotten a few more pages into If this book exists..., and so far it has heavy Stephen King vibes, in a really good way. The humor is great, too. The first chapter is a laundry list of ads for supernatural objects the author is trying to sell, which mixes supernatural descriptions with dry observations like that an indestructible cursed/haunted table 'wobbles slightly, but you can put a matchbox under one leg or something'.
 
Just finished To Hell and Back, Niki Lauda's autobiography from 1986.

I gather it was his second autobiography, the first discussed his first two Formula 1 world championships, while this one is more about the crash that almost killed him and that left him disfigured, and about his third world championship.

It also goes into his rocky relationship with McLaren team principal Ron Dennis, and his opinions on other drivers.

It also has a cool bit about the drivers' protest he led when the FIA tried to bring in team-specific superlicences.

A classic if you're into F1.
 
Still on an F1 kick, I read My Championship Year by Damon Hill, about his 1996 winning season.

Whereas Niki Lauda had a ghostwriter AFAIK, Damon Hill wrote this himself, and he didn't do a bad job. He comes across as thoughtful, honourable, and witty.

The excitement builds nicely, and 1996 is a classic season, with the Driver's Championship title decided in the last race of the year.

I enjoyed the bits about Hill's off-track activities just as much as his racing, as he did a lot of different sports in training, loves his family, and of course as an F1 driver spent time in many different countries.

An enjoyable read.
 
Based on @Agatha's example I have read the second Bobby Owen book. Death Among the Sunbathers didn't impress me much, and the plot twist was obvious very early on. However I'm starting The Crossword Mystery as the previous book may not have suited my busy, travelling schedule.
 
The Chill, Ross Macdonald

Kenneth Millar, a Canadian-American, began publishing suspense novels with The Dark Tunnel (1944), written while he served in the US Navy during WWIi. When he returned to civilian life In 1946, he pursued a PhD at the University of Michigan and wrote three more novels partly for the additional income but also because he loved writing. Then, having married Margaret, already a well-known mystery writer, he wrote a hardboiled detective novel quite different in tone and style from his first four books. For many reasons he decided to adopt a pseudonym for the new series. His father was John Macdonald Millar, and so the first novel featuring private eye Lee Archer, The Moving Target, appeared as by John Macdonald (1949).

On the other coast, John D. MacDonald had published a few short stories under his own name. His first novel. The Brass Cupcake, came out in 1950. A couple of years later MacDonald's mother mistakenly bought three dozen copies of John McDonald's latest Lew Archer novel. MacDonald fired off an intemperate letter to Dr. Kenneth Millar demanding that he cease using his pen name and have his publisher destroy all remaining copies of his novels. More, John D threatened legal action and physical violence. After exchanges of furious correspondence, Millar changed his byline to "John Ross Macdonald" and then to "Ross Macdonald."*

And that, friends is how The Chill came to be published as by Ross Macdonald in 1964. Like all the Archer books, it is set in California. After testifying for the defendant in a criminal trial, Archer meets young Alex Kincaid, whose newlywed bride Dolly has vanished. With some hesitation Archer takes the case. The trail leads to a local college in fictional Pacific Point, and to a murdered language teacher. Dolly discovered the body and in an emotional collapse seems to confess to the killing.

Realizing that the facts don't add up, Archer learns that a trauma from the past - ten years earlier, Dolly's mother had been murdered, and her father had been convicted and imprisoned for the crime, back in their Midwestern home town. A hallmark of McDonald's fiction is the relation between the past determines the present. Here Archer uncovers a web of murders going back twenty yearsand then circling back to a brilliant, inevitable climax.

Macdonald is a better writer than MacDonald. The people Archer meets are rounded personalities. The plots grow from the characters' complexities and are never punctuated by random violence; unlike Travis McGee, Lew Archer doesn't engage in fist fights just for the hell of it.

Maybe it's a bit of return fire that in this Lew Archer book, a sad-sack mooching loser is named Thomas McGee - and of all the other characters, only Archer treats him decently.

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*Millar had precedence for book publication as John Macdonald, but John D. held a smoldering grudge for the rest of his life. For one thing, he resented that Ross Macdonald's novels appeared from the first as hardcover books from a prestige house (Alfred A. Knopf) while John D was for years stuck in the paperback ghetto.
 
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Act I: An Autobiography, Moss Hart

“There was some things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.” – Mark Twain

When show folk tell a story, even if it’s true, they tend to embellish and exaggerate. This may be especially true of dramatists.

Moss Hart’s account of his life, from his impoverished childhood in the Bronx to 1930 and the opening night of the smash-hit play that he co-wrote with George Kaufman, Once in a Lifetime. It’s a rags-to-riches story, and Hart tells it with relish, though with few celebrity anecdotes, usually rife in a theatrical memoir.

Young Hart and his beloved aunt Kate loved the theater. Hart vividly recalls his first glimpse of Broadway, when he was fourteen and got off the subway at Times Square to step into a surging, joyous, celebratory crowd. Not welcoming him, mind, but rejoicing because that day, November 11, 1918, World War I had come to its end.

After two or three ordinary jobs, Hart became an office clerk for a small-time impresario who sent troupes into the hinterlands to perform plays that, Hart soon realized, were hackneyed. Believing he could write one at least as hackneyed, he penned The Beloved Bandit, and his boss found a backer willing to put up the money to stage it.

It was a disaster. The impresario fired him, and soon a friend talked the impecunious Hart into signing up a social director at Utopia, a summer camp. Among other amusements, they mounted plays and comedy routines (stealthily stolen from the New York theaters, where they had to sneak in because who could afford tickets?). The job became staggeringly difficult because Hart’s friend, the co-director of the program, had no skill at all for organizing and everything was always chaotic. The next summer Hart himself became the director at a different camp, where conditions were squalid, and the owner decamped without paying anyone.

To survive, he became the paid director of a couple of little-theater groups. He coped with the death of his Aunt Kate, long estranged from the family, and took successfully better summer jobs at summer camps. He also wrote seven or eight plays that he recognized as lousy. Then he made one or two connections with the legitimate theater, wrote a play that aimed to be a comedy (all his earlier efforts were melodramas or naturalistic dramas patterned after Shaw and O’Neill). The comedy was Once in a Lifetime, a satiric look at Hollywood as sound films came in and the silents went out. He knew nothing about the subject, but, hey, it was satire. That script got the attention of producer Sam Harris, who interested George Kaufman, already the king of Broadway comedy, and for well over a year Kaufman and Hart wrote, rewrote, and re-rewrote the script. Road tryouts were flops, so more rewriting, until at last the play became a runaway hit. Curtain falls.

Hart’s story of his life differs in some details from an objective version. He exaggerates his own neurotic fears, his limited social skills, and even his appetite (there are more than 200 references to the gargantuan meals he downs or moments when he’s on the verge of starvation). His aunt Kate really lived to quite an old age, though she lost her sanity. Perhaps it was easier for Hart to claim that she died when he was a teen, not a celebrated playwright.

Show folk. Real life is better if you embroider it a bit. Still, no matter what things he stretched, Hart does weave an engaging theatrical tapestry.
 
I got a recommendation for the Craft Sequence Series by Max Gladstone, but can't find a bookseller who has it is stock - yet.
 
Testament by David Morrell.
This is maybe only the second or third instance in my decades of reading that upon finishing I literally threw the book several feet. Written by the guy who wrote First Blood (on which the movie was based), this was his next book after that. It starts out nasty, with some mob guy causing a writer's kid to be killed because the kid drank poisoned milk before the writer did. All because the writer published an article the mob guy didn't like.
Then it gets increasingly ridiculous. The mob guy makes several attempts to kill him (through henchmen). But it's not as simple as that. He sends literally armies of guys over the period of months, even helicopters, ending with the writer being holed up in the mountains somewhere.
Nearly the last third of the book is the minutiae of the writer trying to survive in the woods with his wife and daughter (who die, btw). One would think this is leading up to some great revenge arc, but no. It is in the Epilogue, literally the last five pages, where the writer goes on the offensive. And he doesn't do it, just goes into hiding again. ◊◊◊◊ this book.
I'm putting it back in the Little Free Library kiosk I got it from, along with a Post-It note on it - "THIS BOOK SUCKS!"
 
Secret Sea, Robb White
When I was twelve, I checked out this book from my elementary-school library. It had been published in 1947, but this was a Scholastic paperback reprint, already old. I loved the book and checked it out over and over until eventually the librarian told me just to keep it. I literally read it to pieces.

Recently I discovered another copy, tenth reprinting, 19-freaking-71, in excellent condition. I recognized the cover, a helmeted deep-sea diver against the background of a rotting wooden ship’s prow, original price sixty cents. I paid twelve dollars and was glad to do it.

Like Treasure Island, Secret Sea can entertain adults as well as kids. It’s set in 1945-1947. U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Pete Martin, the captain of a patrol-craft submarine hunter in the Caribbean when we meet him, hopes for reassignment to the Pacific, where the war is still hot. During a storm, Martin and his crew discover a lifeboat with two Cubans in it, one dying, one dead. The barely-alive one gives him a logbook from the Spanish galleon Santa Ybel, which says that she sank and that she bore treasure.

Martin is skeptical, but during his last Caribbean milk run, a cruise to test a top-secret sonar device . . . the machine reveals a sunken wreck in the area. He’s inclined to ignore it, but the war winds down, he’s mustered out, and his younger brother racks up soaring medical bills because of an injury. Chasing a long shot, Martin scrapes together enough to buy a dilapidated yacht. No crew, no money to hire one, but then Mike, a tough waterfront delinquent, sneaks aboard.

With Martin as captain, Mike as mate, the treasure hunt is on. Storms, competing Nazis, and even an improbable monster of the deep make the voyage suspenseful. The tale verges on fantasy, but White gives it an urgent plot dynamic, characters that have interesting arcs, and a satisfying conclusion. The clean, sharp line art by Ray Quigley is lagniappe. I’d recommend this for a read if you can find a copy!
 
Currently reading Butchers Crossing by John Williams.
I really liked Stoner, so I'm curious of his other works and this one seems to be his second most popular one.
 
Lagniappe? Not exactly a bribe, but a little something extra just tossed in, making a good experience even better. A bonus, the thirteenth beignet in a baker's dozen!
 
Since I just watched Colossus: The Forbin Project again, I decided to pick up the book(s). I was surprised when I first checked a while back that it was actually a trilogy. Amazon and eBay only had overly-priced versions, even of paperbacks (which I prefer). So I had to cave and get the Kindle versions. One of the fastest times I've ever read a book -- only three days. The Kindle says it was 280 pages but who knows how that would compare to a paperback, with font sizes, margins and stuff.
The movie (made after) is very faithful to the book, even with long stretches of dialogue copied verbatim. I do think the movie had some improvements, though. But they both ended the same way. I'm now looking forward to the next two, to find out what happens after the movie ended.
 
If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe by David Wong/Jason Pargin is getting downright disturbing. Like, 'why did I decide to read this in the middle of the night' disturbing. Also incredibly well-written, a real page-turner. At times it feels like reading a classic Stephen King novel, but with some truly funny jokes thrown in, often coming out of the blue at the end of a sentence or paragraph. It revels in the surreal and absurd, and the parts told by John (it shifts between different perspectives) has him embellishing things in a hilarious way.
 
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Maigret Sets a Trap, Georges Simenon
Some years back I read one or two Maigret novels, and I've recently bought a few more. This is a late one, published in 1955. Next On my list is Pietr the Latvian, from 1931, though I also have Maigret's First Case (1948). The publication dates and the setting dates are unrelated.

Trap, like most of the series, is set in Paris, where a slasher is killing young women at the rate of one a month. Pipe-smoking, bulky, and muscular Inspector Manifest is catching flak both from his superiors In the Police Judiciaire and the press. Fortunately he has a conversation with a psychiatrist friend and based on that, he carefully sets up a trap.

And even then he winds up solving the same case three different times.

I enjoyed the book. It isn't a puzzler, and it's not quite a procedural, but it is entertaining. Coincidentally I recall the British adaptation of this one, starring the unbulky and unmuscular Rowan Atkinson as Maigret. He smokes a good pipe, though, and caught the essence.
 
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