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Stuff I'm Reading

 I was lucky to pick up some good books in the past few weeks; if you're on the lookout, here are things I'd recommend:


*"Heat," by Ed McBain. The word on McBain is that "saying this guy writes well is like saying the Colosseum is a decent building." Or something along those lines. A McBain novel is like a particularly strong episode of "Law and Order: SVU." Flawed cops struggle with an impenetrable mystery; as the story unfolds, we get snapshots of the private lives of our cops. 


"Heat" occurs during a terrible spell of humidity, in August, in New York City. (The city is renamed "Isola.") Someone seems to have committed suicide after having switched off the A/C--but why wouldn't you want a cool breeze in this weather? At the same time, a cop is nearly certain that his spouse is cheating--and he makes some odd choices as he launches his investigation. Something I love is McBain's attention to ego; a certain scene centers on a wounded officer, and his determination to break down a door to show that his maimed leg will not be a "liability." 


McBain studied both literature and psychology, and he isn't just out to tell a twisty story; he also wants to think about what "being human" means. He has a gift for metaphors and for profane observations. "They were running out of suspects and into dead ends....They were running up one-way alleys and phone bills....They were running into airtight alibis and out of patience...." "The dead man lay on the rug, his body cavities and tissues bloated with gas....the skin on his face discolored a brown that was almost black....He smelled of bacterial invasion and vomited stomach contents and expelled fecal matter....."


*"Christmas Is Murder," by Val McDermid. These are crime stories--some, but not all, happening around Christmas. A woman seduces her lover's wife--as a prelude to murder. A grieving man targets victims who have been involved in nebulous deaths of children. A mysterious figure begins poisoning packets of gelatin, then reinserting the packets into boxes on supermarket shelves.....Short, fun, unpredictable stories.


*"Insignificant Others," by Stephen McCauley. A novelist of manners, McCauley is also a comedian and a gay pioneer. I say pioneer because McCauley was behind "The Object of My Affection"--a bad movie, but a movie that put a gay character front and center even when America was still in the Dark Ages. I like McCauley's dry, surprising sentences. "Even though it's usually not acknowledged, at a certain point in most relationships, discretion supplants fidelity as a guiding virtue....."


I'm looking forward to a new McDermid soon, and I'm excited about a children's book by Kevin Henkes; the Henkes novel is due out within the next few weeks.

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