BOOK REVIEWS
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It is estimated that John D. MacDonald (1916-1986) sold over 70 million books in his lifetime. He is best known, of course, for his Travis McGee Series. (I have read them all). Any legitimate list of the Best Crime/Suspense writers of the 20th Century would have to include MacDonald in the Top 5. Here are some quotes Read more
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“The Red-Headed League” was the second Sherlock Holmes short story that John Watson shared with the world (the first was “A Scandal in Bohemia”). It is the story of Jabez Wilson, who comes to consult Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Wilson tells them that some weeks before, his young assistant, Vincent Spaulding, had urged him to respond to a newspaper advertisement by Read more
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I have said it before here at ClimbingSky: I love a good Police Procedural. The book I am reviewing here today, Mist-Walker by Barbara Fradkin, fits the bill well. Mist-Walker does a wonderful job of blending the tension of a Police Procedural with the eerie pull of Psychological Suspense. Set in a rugged, fog-shrouded landscape, the novel follows Inspector Michael Green as he’s drawn Read more
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I am a huge fan of Susan Hill’s ghost stories, especially her masterpiece The Woman in Black. I have had her Simon Serrailler Detective Series on my To-Be-Read list for a long time. The only reason I hadn’t started it years ago is because I was “saving” it for the time when I would need a great mystery. Finally, in early November, I caved. Read more
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I have lost count now of how many times I have actually read this classic adventure. Yet in October, I got an urge yet again to give Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson another rereading. Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle are the prose writers who have the most amount of work that I regularly find myself returning to Read more
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Context is important for me. Works of creation, athletic greatness, life-itself does not happen in a vacuum. There is always context. And where there is context there is influence. One of the things I created for myself years ago is a something I call “Writers/Artists in Context.” It is something I refer to often when Read more
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Book: The Last Kind Words Saloon, by Larry McMurtry Style: Western-Mythish Plot: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and other historical western characters like Buffalo Bill Cody and Charles Goodnight interact with fictional characters in a mythic West. Lines from the Opening Paragraphs: A hat came skipping down the main street of Long Grass, propelled only by the wind, which Read more
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“You are a traveller in little things–in something very small–which takes you into the villages and hamlets, where you meet and converse with small farmers, innkeepers, labourers and their wives, with other persons who live on the land. In this way you get to hear a good deal about rent and cost of living, and Read more
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