Stocking up on late-night reading

I'm finally restocking my nightstand with crime novels, after a long hiatus I can't fully explain. Last night I was reminded of what I've been missing. In Michael Dibden's And Then You Die, detective Aurelio Zen, assaying a bogus identity, is talking to a beautiful woman he has met on the beach:

"So where are you from?"
"Venice," he answered without thinking.
"Really? But no one's from Venice any more."
"I am that no one."

That's a nice bit of dialog, and I intend to steal it if I can figure out a method more subtle than outright plagiarism. Meanwhile, I'll reveal myself for the crime-fiction dilettante I am by admitting that this is the first Dibden book I've read. My friend Peter Rozovsky was recommending him years ago. With good reason, it seems.

I have a couple others on stack: Thirty-Three Teeth, featuring Colin Cotterill's Laotian coronor Siri Paiboun; and What the Dead Know, by Laura Lippman. Based on previous experience, I have high hopes for both.

Comments

Peter Rozovsky said…
It might be time to read him again. I haven't read the last few in the series. I'd be interested to hear what you think of Cosi Fan Tutti if you read it.

I don't know about this dilettante stuff, though. Crime fiction is such a big field that I'm not sure anyone has an understanding of all its areas. Think of crime fiction as, oh, say, the universe. That's pretty large.
===================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
June 2, 2008 at 3:25 AM
Dave Knadler said…
And I thank you for expanding my view of that universe. So does my brother, who is now a committed fan of Fred Vargas, after I gave him my copy of Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand.
June 3, 2008 at 2:22 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sleuths are only as good as their sidekicks

Image
I recently read the much-lauded Wash This Blood Clean From My Hands , by French author Fred Vargas, and like many others found it quirky and engaging. Her deft writing left me happy to have found another series character to follow: Commissaire Adamsberg. But that's not what this post is about. I've decided that others do a lot better job with reviews than I do, and I hate laboring over my shallow insights only to find later that I've echoed what everybody else said a long time before. (And yes, I can hear you saying: "But that's never stopped you before." True enough. Nor will it now.) So, short version: Wash This Blood is a good book. Buy it. But for all the talk about it being "eccentric" or even "kooky," it does share one key device with nearly all other detective fiction: the sidekick. Adamsberg's reliance on gut instinct and intuition is sharply defined by the hard-nosed, scientific approach of his second in command, Capitaine
Read more

That ship has sunk

Image
After a long career in journalism, I'm back in the job market. For a limited time only. All I require are a company car, a five-figure signing bonus and a six-figure salary. If somebody could swing by and clean the house once a week, that would be great too. Until then, guess who's going to be blogging like there's no tomorrow. I've worked at various newspapers for the better part of three decades. I've been a reporter and an editor and there was a time in the mid '90s when I thought I was being very clever by learning HTML. I was thinking: Job security, baby; every newspaper will be on the Internet in a few years. I was right about the last part. But it turns out most people eventually questioned the wisdom of paying for what they could get free. Who knew? Then circulation and ad revenue headed south, and corporate boards figured they could maintain profits by shrinking the product and letting people go. Now circulation and ad revenue are Thelma and Louise: st
Read more

Back to the keyboard -- but it's a new one

Image
After a writing hiatus of quite a few months longer than I intended, I'm back to work on what I will refer to as "the book." I knocked out another 500 words yesterday, and expect to make that the standard day's output. But since I've had these productive impulses before, and since they tend to expire after about a week, I'm employing a few other strategies. First: A new computer! Yep, I have decided that there are too many games on my desktop machine, it's too noisy, and it confines me to one room of the house. So I ordered a new notebook computer from Dell. It's their new 1420 model. Should be here in a couple more weeks -- although you never know with Dell -- and then the only files I'll transfer from my old computer to the new one are my in-progress writing projects. I know what you're thinking: Basically, I'm offering myself a cheap bribe to a commit to a project that will probably take a year -- long after the shiny new computer cease
Read more