What I'm Reading This Week (January 15, 2024)

 

I finished three books last week ( Red Leaves by Thomas H. Cook, The Diabolical by David Putnam, and All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow), but I still managed to increase my in-progress reads from eight books to nine books by the end of the week. Momentum-wise, I've really been finding it difficult to put down Walter Tevis's The Hustler the last couple of days. Tevis creates such believable and complete characters that I think about them even when not reading.

In addition to the other books I'm carrying in from last week (Blues Brothers, The Boys from Biloxi, Writing to Learn, and What to Read and Why), I've begun these four:

Holmes on the Range is Steve Hockensmith's introductory novel in his series about a pair of cowboying brothers out West, one of whom (he's called "Old Red") is so infatuated by the Sherlock Holmes stories that he begins to model his entire life after the fictional detective - much to the exasperation of "Big Red," his younger brother. The brothers are working on an isolated cattle ranch when Old Red becomes convinced that the ranch manager's sudden death was not the accident it appears to be to everyone but him.

I'm a big fan of Dan Fesperman's thrillers ever since reading The Prisoner of Guantanamo back in 2007. Fesperman's novels usually reflect world politics of the day, and many of them have been about the impact of Islamic-influenced terrorism. The Cover Wife, a 2021 novel, follows a similar theme, but it is set in late 1999 before intelligence agencies around the world realized just how horrendous this kind of terrorism would soon prove to be. The "cover wife" in question is an American agent chosen to pretend that she is the wife of an author who has just published a book that fundamentalist Muslims consider very insulting to the religion. 

I love the idea that 84-year-old Lillian Boxfish has decided to take a NYC walk on New Year's Eve, a walk during which she interacts with people she meets on the street and wherever she stops for a moment. During the walk, Lillian looks back on her life and all the changes she's seen in the city since she first arrived decades earlier. I haven't been able to jumpstart this one yet because I'm not much enjoying the flashbacks, and keep wishing Lillian would return to the present. It's like two separate books, one I really like, and one that kind of bores me.

I've only read the first chapter of A Murder Is Announced so far, but at least I can finally say that I've read some Agatha Christie. I've found Christie to be surprisingly easy to read so far, and I'm intrigued by the set-up of this 1950 novel in which someone places an ad in the "Personals" of a local newspaper announcing a murder-to-be that will occur at a specific place and time. Everyone who sees the ad assumes that it's an invitation to one of the "murder games" that are so popular at the moment. Expect a crowd of suspects. 

Also most likely to be added later this week are one or two of these:

And that's not even to speak of the list of mystery writers I posted a few days ago and asked for your input on. I got some really great responses and will actively begin looking for some of the titles and authors most praised in the comments sometime in the next few days. 

Have a great week, everyone!