THE DEATH OF OSAMA BIN LADEN = THE FEEL-GOOD HIT OF THE SUMMER

‘Scuse me while I get this off my chest …

( You don't really want to read this ... )

I just can’t be happy today,

This is dF

I’M READING AS FAST AS I CAN: MAY 2011 EDITION

If there were no such thing as amateur book reviews, we’d have to invent them. Lucky you.

JUST FINISHED

Murder Is My Business by Brett Halliday
A Mike Shayne mystery! I’ve never read Halliday before, though I’m familiar with P.I. Mike Shayne, mainly via the racy cover art that caught my notice as an impressionable teenager with a jones for half-dressed damsels and second-hand bookstores. This is the 11th Shayne novel (reprinted by Hard Case Crime), in which Shayne looks into the case of a missing soldier in El Paso, TX, who turns up dead after being run over by a local mining baron and mayoral candidate who also just happens to be a former client of Shayne’s. That kind of happenstance seems to fuel the entire story, but Halliday delivers some nifty plot twists to keep you guessing. Still, as private eyes go, Shayne might be a durable character (who could argue with 70+ novels, a dozen films and a radio drama?), but he didn’t really make much of an impression on me, possibly due to Halliday’s dry writing style. It’s a decent read, but I don’t know that it’s decent enough to get me to read another Shayne novel.

JUST STARTED

Little Green Men by Christopher Buckley
I’ve been meaning to read Buckley for awhile now – his lineage and political opinions notwithstanding (though actually, like his dad, Buckley is one of the few conservatives I generally respect), and this story of a stuffy but successful Washington D.C. talk show host who gets abducted by aliens seems like a great place to start. A couple of chapters in, he’s already making me smile knowingly.

( RECENTLY: Hollywood Babylon, Death, time machines and the Stuff Of Epics! )

I want to believe,

This is dF