You might also like George R.R. Martin’s masterful Fevre Dream, about vampires along the Mississippi River before the Civil War. Very good stuff.
I finished The Poet by Michael COnnely and by and large enjoyed it. I was a bit off on the identity of the killer, I failed to look high enough, but overall not a big surprise at the end, The twist in a twist failed to work primarily because I knew the suspect was in later books. However, in spite of all this the book was a great read, the action moved along after a slightly slow start as Connelly set the scene for the reader. The characters were well drawn and suitably sinister. The suspense was maintained through the book and even knowing that there would be a twist at the end, he still kept the reader’s attention ratcheted up and firmly fixed on the next page.
Two observations about Connelly:
One: he does NOT like the FBI. All of his fleshed out FBI agents are self absorbed, ball busting jerks, any pleasant agents are background 2D cutouts.
Two: he really doesn’t appear to like women much either. He seems to equate strong willed with ball buster or he makes them passive dishrags.
I totally don’t agree with you about Connelly and women. What women are ball busters? What ones are passive dishrags? Actually, since women tend to run the gamut in real life it’s not so amazing they should do so in fiction, although I do not agree that all Connelly’s strong women are ball busters. And don’t confuse Connelly with Harry, either.
I’m not confusing him.
[spoiler]Eleanor ran off pregnant and didn’t tell Harry about it until the child was four years old. Rachel had a hissy and blamed Jack for a photographer getting a pic of HER kissing him. What’s-her-face in City of Bones was shot trying to shoot a suspect so she could garner fame. Munchhousen maybe?
Riley is the definition of dishrag, yes she just lost her husband but damn all she does is droop over the scenery. And Sylvia was so colorless, I only ever saw an outline like a light leak when ever she was on screen. [/spoiler]
BTW, he cites to the Straight Dope in his acknowledgments, mentioning on p. 336 (as to Day 40 of his project) this article by Cecil as to polling of Americans’ opinions as to the age of the Earth: Nearly half the U.S. population believes the earth is less than 10,000 years old? Say it ain’t so! - The Straight Dope
I have to agree with kayT. I don’t get that Connelly hates women. As for the FBI, they’re pretty much fair game and treated this way by many authors. I think you’re overthinking it.
Meanwhile, I finished Zuleika Dobson, or An Oxford Love Story, by Max Beerbohm. A satire of undergraduate life at Oxford during the Edwardian era. His only novel, it ranks #59 on the Modern Library’s list of the top 100 novels of the 20th century. A good story, but I’m not sure why it made the Modern Library’s cut. it wasn’t that good.
Next up is #72 on the list: A House for Mr. Biswas, by VS Naipaul.
I’ve gone lowbrow for awhile and am reading some of the Virgil Flowers books by Sandford. Highly entertaining.
I finished The Bees this morning. It was well-written and sufficiently interesting, though not all I hoped it would be. Maybe bees are just too alien for this sort of book to work.
I started Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke today. Fairly standard talking animals go on a journey story so far…
Oh, I love this series but have gotten out of the habit of checking for a new one! That one will definitely go on my list.
It was just released as a stand-alone novella and if you read the Amazon reviews you will see that a lot of King fans were taken by surprise – even though the listing is pretty clear.
Myself, I was hoping he released an expanded version of the novella but apparently not.
Craig Johnson’s Kindness goes Unpunished
Started this morning on The One I Left Behind, by Jennifer McMahon. This one’s about a woman whose mother turns up alive, many years after she was taken by a serial killer.
This book gave me terrible nightmares. I’m not even sure why - it’s not the most graphic horror or the scariest thing I’ve ever read by any means. But Martin builds up this terrible pervasive sense of menace / doom in the atmosphere very well, and I think it seeped into my psyche all unawares.
I’m reading Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves now, and I’m glad a library friend warned me that it’s a slow burn. I haven’t even gotten to the ‘damp smolder’ part of slow burn yet. If Josh Hanagarne hadn’t sung its praises so many times, I’d probably toss it aside. Anyone want to second his recommendation?
Oh, and I’m also reading Here Be Monsters by Alan Snow for my much-less-scary Halloween book. It’s charming so far, and I like the illustrations.
That sounds like a good plot, Dung Beetle. Let us know how it is.
There’s one even newer than this, called Crimson Angel. Haven’t read it yet. Good grief, it looks like in that one she’s sending January to Haiti!
In the Heart of the Sea turned out to be a good read. It’s short, with only about 240 pages of narrative. It’s of interest if you liked Moby Dick, or nautical books in general. Herman Melville is not in the book (except to note that he would have heard about the Essex) but it looks like he’ll be a character in the 2015 movie.
I just finished an out-of-print 1990 post-apocalyptic novel by R.M. Meluch called Chicago Red. It’s an odd, slashy, angsty, character-driven story, which is kind of Meluch’s thing, but I liked it. It spends little time elaborating on the post-apocalyptic American “kingdom” which is suffering through a revolution, instead focusing on a handful of characters and particularly on a few unlikely romances. (I discovered Meluch through her newer military sci-fi series that begins with The Myriad, which is great fun but rather hokey - although no more hokey than the Honor Harrington books, I suppose. I think C.J. Cherryh fans might like Meluch - maybe not the new series, but her older work.)
For Halloween I’ve started another of Phil Rickman’s ghostly mysteries: The Fabric of Sin. It starts out with Merrily being asked to bless/exorcise an old haunted farmhouse on a piece of land in England near the Welsh border that the Duchy of Cornwall wants to acquire, and the estate manager really wants the trouble all taken care of so that nobody ever has to tell Prince Charles about it.
It didn’t have nearly that strong an impact on me, but yes, he’s very talented that way. I still remember the two lead characters almost as distinctly as if I’d actually met them.
I gave up on Rob Kirkpatrick’s 1969: The Year Everything Changed, which was boringly told and poorly edited.
Going back now to The Children of Men by P.D. James, and maybe my copy of The Collected Archie Comics for something a little (OK, a lot) more light-hearted.
Will do. 
This author is hit-or-miss, but I’m liking it so far.
The title became something of a joke today when I accidently left the book at the doctor’s office and had to go back for it.
I know just what you mean. I once accidentally set fire to my copy of Censorship Through the Ages, and sneezed on Thirty Days to a Healthier You!
That’s one of the books I stayed up all night to finish. There’s going to be a movie? I have mixed feelings about that.