Very cool, SD. And sure, more is great! (My to-read list is already at about half a million, but I’m finally coming out of my cozy mystery bunker.)
I agree. It did feel a little too easy at the end. I do remember feeling a little relieved though. The first two were heavy on the noir. I was feeling sorry for the guy.
Oh I agree, he had it seriously rough the first two books.
Obviously, Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim series and Mike Carey’s Felix Castor series are very much in the same vein as Blackmoore’s.
I loved the Mike Carey and didn’t finish the first Richard Kadrey.
I’m the opposite, I read the first two or three Carey books and quit, but I’ve read most of Kadrey’s. Stark is totally Kadrey’s Mary Sue wannabee buthe’s having such fun with it. bahahahahahaha!
Recently finished:
The Face of Battle by John Keegan - Pretty good, but dry; about how warfare affects the common soldier, with case studies of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme.
The Complete Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Vol. Two by Gilbert Shelton - Stoner comics, not as funny as I remembered from my high school years (and no, not just because I wasn’t high this time around).
The Judas Goat by Robert B. Parker - Parker’s fifth private-eye novel (1978), with Spenser and his rather-less-principled legbreaker pal Hawk tracking down a cell of white-supremacist terrorists. I’m reading the Spenser books in order, and can really see Parker’s skills improving. I particularly enjoyed the smartass dialogue, details of stakeouts and the development of Spenser’s and Hawk’s friendship.
May I also recommend Kennedy’s Wars by Lawrence Freedman (an interesting British perspective) and Essence of Decision by Graham Allison (a classic on crisis management, diplomacy and presidential leadership). Both excellent examinations of the foreign policy crises which JFK faced and largely overcame.
Yes, Tsouras has written a lot of alternative history - never as novels, but rather in a knowing academic style as if you were reading nonfiction from a parallel universe. His book on an alternative Gettysburg is particularly interesting. Meade is badly injured in a Confederate bombardment. A much more confident and aggressive Winfield Scott Hancock takes command of the Army of the Potomac and counterattacks immediately after Pickett’s Charge, driving the Confederates from the field as darkness falls. An ailing Robert E. Lee is captured from a horse-drawn ambulance during the rebel retreat, and the war is over by the end of the year. Hancock is elected President in 1868. Pretty well done, I thought.
Then you smack her very smartly on the nose with a rolled-up copy of The Times.
I miss Robert B Parker. 
His Spenser novels are being carried on by Ace Atkins, which are almost as good as Parker’s. His Westerns are being carried on by Robert Knott, which I think are better than Parker’s.
EXACTLY. And you hope she doesn’t like it too much.
Finished The Dante Chamber today. The first two thirds were a real slog for me, but it picked up enough in the final third. The author, Daniel Pearl, specializes in 19th-century mystery thrillers involving actual literary folks; this one was about the Rosetti siblings, Robert Browning, and Tennyson.
Recommended? Maybe, if you really like this sort of thing; it’s far enough outside of my wheelhouse that I nearly set it down several times.
I read one of the Atkins books, which was pretty good until the end, when he had a character do something very implausible. Almost ruined the book for me. Haven’t read any of the Knotts.
Heh. That’s just the risk you take.
I finished Jim Butcher’s Brief Cases – a collection of new-to-me short stories set in the Dresden Files world – a day after I posted about it (about a week ago). I was, in fact, kind of sad when I finished it. 
And I tried to re-watch the old TV show, but it isn’t available via iTunes, Netflix, or Amazon. Meh.
When deciding what to read next, I ignored the virtual pile of purchased books and free samples already on my Kindle and chose something I’d only just heard about: an English professor friend – who was the director of my master’s thesis committee a decade ago – highly recommended Less. I found the plot intriguing: Arthur Less, a failed novelist who is about to turn 50, receives an invitation to the wedding of his boyfriend of the past nine years. Attending would be too awkward but declining would feel like admitting some kind of defeat, so of course his only option is to accept
a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world. I’m something like 40% in, and really enjoying it. 
I struggle with Dresden these days. I enjoy the character and series so much, but good gravy has that guy ended up in an endless slog of the suck. I know the series was inspired by noir detective stories, but I don’t know how long I can keep going if Dresden doesn’t catch a break soon. I’ll take a look for where the series might be available. It’s one of my favorites. 
I had to bail out of the series a book or two back for exactly this reason. I just couldn’t handle all of the hostage-taking.
That would be my summation as well, it got tiring to reach the end of the book and everyone was mad AGAIN at Harry.
And I loathe Butcher’s women, whores, bitches and doormats.
I finished Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman. I love the book even if the ending felt somewhat anticlimatic, whichwas the point I suspect, still it’s MUCH better than the end of American Gods.
RE: Harry Dresden
I definitely admit that the “but the damsel needs rescuing!” attitude Harry has gets old. *Very *old. But I’ve read every book in the series, so something keeps me coming back. Nothing in Brief Cases bothered me.
I don’t agree with DZedNConfused about Butcher’s women. The vampire and fairy queen types are definitely whores and bitches, but the human women are…by and large…pretty human. Flawed, but strong and (mostly) independent. One of the things I liked about Brief Cases is that the stories are told from different characters’ points of view: one is told by Warden Anastasia Luccio, and one is told by Molly Carpenter. Neither of whom is a whore, bitch, or doormat.
Just finished Jeffrey Archer’s 1980 short-story collection A Quiver Full of Arrows, which I hadn’t read in 20-some years and which wasn’t as good as I remembered. By far the best story was “Old Love,” a charming romance about fierce academic foes at Oxford who fall in love, get married and continue a good-naturedly combative professional, although not personal, rivalry to the end of their days.
I’m currently reading The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North, a novel about a man who lives over and over as the same person and remembering his past lives.