Daily Archives: April 14, 2014

Recent Reads

Click to enlarge. Half of my paperbacks, just east of my desk.

Half of my paperbacks, just east of my desk.

While on the way back and forth to the Virgin Islands I spent several hours on airplanes and even more hours in layover airports. What better time to whittle down my to-be-read stack? Not owning a Nook or a Kindle, I usually don’t take big modern fantasy books, but slim paperbacks, which slide in and out of the carry-on case a lot more simply. And I have to confess that I feel like I’m making more progress if I knock through a series of shorter books. I DO have a large TBR list, after all.

On the way down I read Dan Marlowe’s The Name of the Game is Death,  a riveting noir novel about a guy who’s not quite as much of a sociopath as he seems, set in some semi-tropical places. A haunting and powerful crime drama and character study. Then I tried another Wade Miller, Dead Fall. So far the team of Wade & Miller (two guys under one pseudonym) haven’t let me down. Even their standalones, like this one, are pretty riveting. The mystery was excellent and kept me guessing. Unfortunately, this one had the most “slap you in the face with its ’50s sexism” ending I’ve yet found in their work. Wade & Miller frequently featured strong women, so this was actually a departure for them. I’ll write up a longer article about their work some time soon, because they wrote some overlooked gems.