Well, it's almost the end of August. Summer is winding down and - for those of you who teach or have children - school will be starting soon. It hasn't been that hot a season - in fact, it's raining right now - but I do prefer the cooler evenings that should be coming soon. Here are this month's selections.
Miscellaneous
True Grit - Charles Portis ($14.95/$.50, copyright 1968, 224 pages, Trade Paperback)
I'm gonna guess that everyone who reads this blog has seen a movie version of this book. I have to say
that I did not see the Jeff Bridges version. Frankly, I didn't think I needed to. Reading this, John Wayne really is Rooster Cogburn - and Glen Campbell is "LeBeef", and Kim Darby is Mattie Ross. The story is simple. Mattie is the narrator and is after the man who killed her father. She hires Cogburn because she believes he has"grit". "LeBeef" joins up because he's after the same man for different reasons. Portis tells the story simply. There are no wasted words here, just a depiction of life on the frontier mixed with action, some
humor, and a fair dose of humanity. I enjoyed it.
Series
The Black Box - Michael Connelly ($14.99/$.50, copyright 2012, 403 pages, Trade Paperback)
I've said this before - I am a big Connelly fan, especially of his Harry Bosch series. I checked the front of this volume and it says he's written 16 other books in this series (and around 25 books all together). This is one of the best. Harry is working in the Open Unsolved Unit and he's down to his last 5 years on the job. He's trying to close as many cases as he can before they force him out. This case involves the murder of a Scandinavian free-lance reporter who was murdered during the riots that hit LA after the Rodney King verdict. It's been 20 years, but Harry remembers because he was there when the woman's body was found. Bosch is a driven man and what drives him is justice - justice for the victims - and this brings him into
opposition from his new Boss and the people upstairs, but Bosch doesn't play politics. What starts out as simple becomes complicated as Bosch turns up connections to the Iraq Wars and smuggled weapons. Connelly has created a world for Bosch that includes both his work and his private life and he weaves them together very well here. I enjoyed it.
Seventy-Seven Clocks - Christopher Fowler ($6.99/$.50, copyright 2005, 496 pages, Paperback)
This is one of the books in Fowler's Peculiar Crimes Unit series, and the first one I've read. It's set in London and features the detective partnership of Arthur Bryant and John May. Bryant, the older of the two, distrusts modern equipment while May takes to it. (Since the book is set in 1973, the "modern" equipment is mostly electric typewriters and walkie-talkies, which makes for some amusing situations.) Here, they have to deal with a series of strange murders - a man bitten by a snake in a fancy hotel, another who's blown up by
a watch, and several more - that revolve around a particular family and ultimately involves a couple
of ancient workers guilds. Fowler has a great feel for characters - Bryant and May work well together and
with the people they interact with. His knowledge of London's history is also impressive. But he weaves
in a side story that centers on a female Desk Clerk from the hotel who involves herself in the murders, which I found distracting, and the ending was a bit far-fetched. It was OK.
That's it for now.
Outside, it's stopped raining and it's looking more like September. Until next month ...
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