Book 17: House Dick

A brief bit of time away to start re-watching Battlestar Galactica from the beginning again now that it's finally wrapped caused a bit of a delay in finishing this incredibly short book by Watergate Conspirator E. Howard Hunt.

The book was put out by the Hard Case Crime Library, a specialist line from Dorchester Publishing, the company responsible for the excellent Leisure Horror line, which has two books in competition for Stoker Awards this year (neither of which I've read and peeking through them didn't really stir much interest, but I'll check actual reviews to get past the marketing). Hard Case Crime re-introduces old crime and detective fiction which has been out of print and also publishes new works in the old styles. They offer a subscription service where you can get the books for $4 (plus $2 shipping) versus the list price of $7, which is how I get their books.

So far, I've been rather happy with the service. I've only been a member since late last year, so I've only gotten a handful of books, but all of them have been pretty excellent. This is the first one I've read for this project so I haven't really discussed the line before. But if you like "Noir" (which I don't think works as a fiction genre name), you could do much worse than looking into this line. For the moderns check out Money Shot, which is traditional genre conventions told with a female twist. As an aside if you want a real gut shot, check out Murdaland (site contains music).

"Not everyone gets to die at the Tilden. Poor people, they die where ever they can."

House Dick is the story of Novak, a hotel detective whose job it is to keep things under control, a function which now would most likely be contracted to an outside agency. But in 1961, he was all that stood between the poodle in room 403 and chaos.

The book is short, but excellently put together. It has a rich matron, her dead husband, missing jewels, mob heavies, the husband's mistress, the mistress's ex-con husband, a mescaline dealing quack, a few fights, a shoot out, a world weary detective who behaves in a smart, realistic way. While it manages to cram all of these elements into the short book (204 pages), the book never loses its way nor does it leave anything unresolved. There's some excellent dialogue and it's clearly written by someone familiar with DC and the loneliness inherent in a position like a hotel detective.

If you have a few hours to kill and just want a good, intellegent jaunt, you could certainly do worse than this.

Interlude: Meh.

I've started and stopped reading three books since the end of the Oppenheimer one and nothing is really striking my fancy.

Thankfully I'm well ahead even without having been as dedicated to reading as I like

Books 16: The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer

I wrapped this several days ago and frankly there isn't much worth discussing here.

The book is fascinating and Oppenheimer got screwed, but this book spends much of its time setting up villains and praising Oppenheimer that you'd get the impression that he was a perfect little lamb while Teller was a fame thieving jerk.

You'd be better off watching the PBS Nova special The Trials of Oppenheimer than you would reading this book.

I saw it described as a Hagiography and that is the perfect terminology for this tome.

Book 15: A Pretty Face

Rafeal Reig has just put himself on my radar, and it's thanks to a suggestion by Jessa Crispin over at the NPR Book section. This is a very, very quick read (which somehow still took me nearly a week) that deals with a ghost who looks back on her life while also looking to see who murered her. But this isn't really a genre book by any means. This isn't about a crackling plot or last minute twists to keep you into the night.

It's really more about the life we live and the memories we leave behind. And as a ghost, would we have the ability to look back without romantcizing the elements which we've been familiar with.

The last two "chapters" (there are breaks, but not numbered chapters per se) are some incredible writing, which even in (the occasonally sloppy) translation struck true.

Any attempt to say much more would be a disservice to the book and to any potential readers.

The link above includes a good excerpt which should give you a good idea if you'd like to read the rest of it.

Interlude: Good Reads

I keep forgetting I have a profile on this site, so I update it fairly rarely. I was hoping that intertwining this project with that website would lead to adequate enough reminders but that doesn't seem to be the case unfortunately.

Regardless, I just thought I'd share my profile should anyone want to "friend" me.

Book 14: Apocalypse Movies

Just as I suspected. Well done, but shallow overview of the genre. It succeeded in making me add Kevin Costner's The Postman to my Netflix queue after making a somewhat passionate argument for it.

Interlude: stumbling toward prolifancy

Three back to back yet shallow posts. Amazing.

I am trying an experiment to purchase less books. I have a bit of an issue with buying something because it looks really interesting, then when I am available to devote my full interest to the book, my capricious nature has tended to move on.

I'm trying to avoid this rather expensive habit so I am not purchasing any books for the next two weeks, which means that I will have to make do with the many, many unread books I have until then.

I'm probably going to wrap Apocalypse Movies tonight, and was thinking of moving on to A Pretty Face, a surreal book from Spain about a woman trying to solve her own murder with the help of a mad scientist.