Chapter Fifteen

A New Year, and a new post. I remember struggling a bit to get through some of the books at the end of last year, so I started this year with a couple of old friends. Sort of a "sorbet" to cleanse the palate. There are also a couple of oddities this month, and what I think is a real find.

Series

Walking Shadow - Robert B. Parker ($7.50/$.50, 281 pages, copyright 1994, Paperback)
Spenser and Hawke. Two old friends that I can always rely on to provide a few hours of entertainment. Add Susan into the mix and you almost don't need a plot. The conversations alone could probably carry a book. Anyway, this one starts with a stalker, leads to a murder, and mixes in a Chinese Tong. Classic Parker. I enjoyed it.

Miscellaneous

Her Forbidden Knight - Rex Stout ($4.95/$.50, 248 pages, copyright 1997, Paperback)
Don't let the copyright date fool you, that applies only to this volume. The nearest I can figure this was originally published back in the 40's. That is an appropriate time period, because I can see this as the basis for one of those movies from back then, maybe with Lew Ayres as the lead and a cast of the usual back up players. It nominally involves a group of guys who hang around a New York hotel lobby, a telegraph girl, and a handsome stranger passing bogus $10 bills. The oddity here is that it is written by a pre-Nero Wolfe Rex Stout. I enjoyed it.

Welcome to Xanadu - Nathaniel Benchley ($5.95/$.50, 304 pages, copyright 1968, Hard Cover)
The oddity here is that it is a Hard Cover book, published in 1968, with a cover price of $5.95. You can't even get a paperback for that price now (unless you do what I do). This is an story about a farmer's daughter in New Mexico who gets kidnapped by an escaped patient from a mental institution, and how they both learn something from each other. I found it to be very interesting.

Let the Great World Spin - Colum McCann ($15.00/$.50, 349 pages, copyright 2009, Trade Paperback)
The central point for this book is that in August of 1974 a man walked across a tightrope stretched between the Twin Towers. Maybe that's what attracted me to the book. Maybe I thought it would be based on what happens down there in lower Manhattan - a place I worked in for 20 years. I was wrong. It is so much more. The tightrope walker is peripheral, and the other characters are tied to each other in an almost "six degrees of separation" way. I think the author is trying to show that each off us walks a tightrope every day - life. AND McCann's writing style had me locked in from the very first section. I found it hard to put down. I really enjoyed it.

Serendipitous Side Note

As anyone who's read any of these posts knows, I enjoy comic books (please note, I said "comic books" and not "graphic novels"). To that end I'd like to mention that NBC is now airing a show called The Cape on Monday nights at 9:00 PM. I saw the 2 hour pilot last night, and enjoyed it a lot. There are elements from established comics that run through it - Batman, Luthor, Oracle, The Circus of Crime from Spiderman to name a few - and they have been blended together in a very enjoyable way. I don't know if it will last long but I intend to go down with the ship.
The serendipity part comes in now - when I sat down to write this, I put the TV on as sort of background noise. I found that the SyFy channel was broadcasting the old Green Hornet show. Unfortunately, these are not as good today as I remember but what the hell - Van Williams and Bruce Lee for a few hours? I'm down for that.

Keep Reading!