March Reading List
Apologies this is coming a couple of weeks late. Blame Passover, Easter, and my birthday for that. Here is what Jeremy read in March
Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman
Wow. Every so often a book comes along that you read at the right time in your life that qualifies it as a “Blow Your Mind” book, where after finishing the book you’re not quite the same person.
This is always a joy when it happens and is one of my favorite things about reading and stories in general. Between Two Fires is a tale set in France during the Black Plague.
The story is a journey. It follows a knight of the crusades, injured in battle, now making his way as a marauder. It begins when he and his band of brigands encounter a young girl whose whole family has been killed by the plague.
There is something very strange about this young girl, and the knight ends up saving her from his own companions who have rape and murder on their mind.
Thus, the orphan girl becomes the knight’s charge and the two set out across a French countryside devastated by the plague. Along the way they meet a disgraced priest who sensing there is somethinh more to the girl accompanies them. Driven by the girl’s strange prophetic visions, they embark on a journey to save the Pope.
The book is what I would call horror but with a backdrop of historical fantasy. I feel like to describe it too much would give away so much of what makes the read so captivating, and in a way that would never do justice to the story that Christopher Buehlman has written.
Buehlman himself seems an interesting character. When not writing novels, he is a regular performer at essentially a Medieval Times. He is a student of the period and he uses that knowledge to bring to life the world and characters in, what is at times, a sparsely written novel, but one in which every single word counts.
I’d previously read another novel by Mr. Buehlman, also a period novel but that one set in 1970s New York. That novel, The Lesser Dead, is also terrific. It offers a new take on vampire lore, but does so in a very original and engaging way. I highly recommend both novels. If you are an audiobook fan, I would add that the narration of Between Two Fires is wonderfully performed by Steve West.
Exodus by Leon Kass
I’ve read and re-read this masterful commentary every year while simultaneously studying the Biblical (Torah) book of Exodus since its publication a few years back. This book is Kass’s follow up to his first masterpiece commentary on the Torah book of Genesis, written fourteen years earlier. Leon Kass, works as a Professor Emeritus of Social Thought at University of Chicago.
I have been fortunate to make the study of the Bible a regular part of my life in the past several years, and it has benefitted me enormously. Not to mention opened my eyes as to where so many of our literary and cultural influences comes from, to say nothing of maxims, and idiomatic expressions. My reading of the books of the Bible, old and new testaments, have been greatly enhanced by the commentaries I’ve read alongside.
The commentaries, particularly the best ones, stand on their own, and in the case of someone such as Leon Kass, they are towering works that are staggering in their insights. Not only to the Bible stories themselves, but into human nature and history. This book can be appreciated even if you’ve never read a word of the Bible. I highly recommend it, as I do all of Kass’s other books.
Edge of Defiance: The Edge of Collapse series Book 5
This is a re-read for work. I am developing this book series as a television show. Mark my words: This one is a big hit. Kyla Stone is a great kick ass author with a great personal success story.
The seriesbegins on what is the worst day for the rest of the world — an EMP blast fries all electrical circuits and kills all power — but for Hannah Sheridan this is the day she gets her freedom. Because the power going out opens the door to the cabin where she has been held prisoner for five years by a sadistic murderer.
Book one sees Hannah hook up with former special forces solider, Liam Coleman as they fight their way back across a freezing cold landscape of a collapsing United States to get back to Fall Creek, Hannah’s hometown. Where her husband and son await her.
Taking inspiraton from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Nevil Shute’s On The Beach, the story follows Hannah and Liam and the other residents of Falls Creek as they attempt to stave off the dangers of a changed world without power.
The story moves between scenes of nail-biting intense action and emotionally charged drama, weaving them together into a memorable story and characters.
A pair of Denis Lehane novels:
“Darkness Take My Hand” and “Sacred”
Crime thrillers are staple for me, and this month saw me do a Denis Lehane dive following last month’s Don Winslow revisit.
I am a newer fan to Lehane’s novels having enjoyed his work on The Wire and the movies made from his books, Gone Baby Gone and Mystic River. However, until this past month I had yet to take the plunge as a reader. I am glad to say that I have remedied that by reading two of his earlier detective novels, featuring the sometimes romantic pair Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro.
The books both weave the city of Boston, the particulars of its neighborhoods, and the characters who populate them, with intricate murder investigations taking us, the reader, on a descent through Boston’s criminal underworld.
I like Lehane’s books because they are not traditional police procedural like say, Michael Connelly, yet his books delve deep enough in spots into the inner workings of police departments, cops, and their investigations, not to mention the particulars of how Patrick and Angie do their jobs as PIs, to bring the story a sense of authenticity as well as making the course of the investigations a bit easier to track.
At the same time the books are populated with characters who feel real and whose stories (told in their uniquely Bah-stonian vernaculars) are the most interesting parts of the book. The characters feel like the real reason Lehane is writing these novels. In that way, as a novelist he more resembles a Richard Price type. This is generally more my speed, however, I always want a good plot. Character without story only succeeds so far, if at all, and Denis Lehane provides both in spades.
Pronto by Elmore Leonard
Then there is the master and along with Stephen King and Nelson DeMille, the contemporary author who I read the most when I was growing up (and still to this day, either revisiting old favorites, or finally turning to read the titles I’ve held off getting to). Nobody makes crime sing like Elmore “Dutch” Leonard.
On the surface his plots can seem inconsequential. Especially in our days of big budget Marvel superhero movies in which the entire world is always in jeopardy, or big high concept novels with their twists endings which often feel like the only reason the books were written in the first place. Leonard by comparison focuses on small, personal, plots. Crime that might not even make the local news. Yet, once you read one of his books, the characters come to life in a way that makes them more relatable than criminals and lawmen you might read about in other novels.
These feel like people you know.
Leonard, who cut his teeth on paperback western novels and short stories before turning to crime, still infuses his good and bad guys with the qualities we might have associated with characters straight out of the Old West. It makes the principled stands they take all that much more interesting to read about when they take them.
U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens being a prime example of this.
In Primo Raylan finds himself following a Miami bookie named Harry Arno to Italy when Arno skips town after a local mob boss, Jimmy Capotorto, who Arno has been skimming from for years is looking to take him out.
First in Miami, then later in Italy, Raylan hooks up with Arno’s younger girlfriend, Joyce, who goes to Italy to meet Harry.
At the same time as he starts to like Harry Arno and understands his predicament. Certainly more than the two hitmen hunting Harry. So he takes a stand and draws a line in the sand for the bad guys. All the way we spend time with him and the other cast of characters including Arno’s girlfriend and a Vietnam vet turned driver-bodyguard to Harry Arno.
It goes without saying that the dialogue is crackling and among the best you can read or hear in any book or movie or tv show.
Vanishing Games by Roger Hobbs
Rounding out my crime reading for the month is the sequel to the excellent debut novel Ghostman. I wrote about Ghostman in my February book lists, and about its extremely talented author, Mr. Hobbs. Sadly, Roger Hobbs based away at a very young age from a drug overdose. No doubt had he lived he’d be in the midst of a hugely successful career as a crime novelist, though I wonder if he would not have eventually transcended that genre.
Hobbs is a naturally gifted storyteller and writer. Which seemed to be the consensus of his agent and all those who read his debut novel, Ghostman.
But far from relying solely on talent, Hobbs showed a serious commitment early on to his craft, and to bringing to life fully the world and characters he wished to write about. To gain the knowledge and get the real feel for how criminals looked, sounded, and acted, Hobbs spent much of his time as an undergraduate in bars and hangouts where the types of unsavory and criminally-minded characters he wished to write about might hang around.
Indeed they did, and indeed he managed to get their stories which he brought to the pages of his first novel, Ghostman.
The Ghostman of that novel is a career criminal, mostly operating as a master thief and conman. The ghost in the title refers to his ability to change his appearance the way you would expect a seasoned spy or stage actor to be able to do. His mannerisms, way of speaking, his style of dress, even the way he walked, can all be manipulated by a Ghostman in order to aid him in the execution of his crimes. In this case, “Jack” the alias the Ghostman takes is working not to commit a crime, but to solve one. Specifically a heist that’s gone wrong.
Sent a message by the woman, “Angela,” who claims to be in trouble on a heist she set up. His friend Angela is a “jugmarker” the underworld term for the master criminal who puts together the score. The defacto head of the band of criminals she pulls together to pull of the heist she devises. Sh’s also the person who trained “Jack.”
Unfortunately for Angela the heist she planned (that goes down in the first chapter) goes bad when one of her crew betrays the others and makes off with something even more valuable than the loot from the score. This brings down a world of trouble courtesy of the Triad underworld bosses in Macau, China where the novel is set.
Jack comes to Angela’s aide, which puts him in the crosshairs of the underworld bosses, the deadly assassin tracking down and killing Angela’s crew, not to mention on the hunt for a score worth untold amounts of money. It is a real cat and mouse game.
Though the most fun of Hobbs’s novels is the way in which the machinations and lingo of the criminals like Jack, Angela, and their associates, is revealed by Hobbs. It’s like the inside talk Clooney, Pitt and Damon put on in “Oceans Eleven” but played straight, not for comedy. Reading the book feels like a crash course in criminality.
Sadly, these are the only two novels from the gone-too-soon Roger Hobbs. At least we have these.
Unless, he isn’t really dead.
Maybe he just ghosted to take down another score.
That’s what I like to imagine anyways.