I’M READING AS FAST AS I CAN (FEBRUARY 2012 EDITION)

I read books. You read book reports. And isn't it lovely how that worked out?

JUST FINISHED

House Dick by E. Howard Hunt
Yes, that would be the same E. Howard Hunt who was a CIA agent and did time for the Watergate break-in. Apparently he also wrote pulp novels in his spare time – including this (reprinted by Hard Case Crime), a 1961 crime noir about a hotel detective in Washington DC who gets mixed up with an ash blonde, a jewel heist, a blackmail plot and (of course) murder. It’s actually not bad, even if it does try too hard to emulate Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled cynicism and depends on the title character, Pete Novak, doing things that only make sense in pulp noir. Still, the story’s okay, and the whole thing has a kind of cynical charm to it. And I like the idea of a hotel detective as a pulp noir protagonist. That said, I fully admit I mainly picked it up for the Watergate novelty value, so I don't think I’d become a regular reader. But if I come across any of his other books, I’ll probably at least pick them up for a look.

JUST STARTED

The Year Of The Flood by Margaret Atwood
The sequel to Oryx and Crake (which I rather enjoyed) which takes place in the same dystopian future in which gene-splicing is commonplace and society has become over-commercialized and governed by corporate interests, until a synthesized virus wipes out most of humanity. This installment follows two different characters – both former members of the same back-to-nature religious cult – so it will be interesting to see where Atwood goes with this.

( RECENTLY: Bradbury! Orwell! Hiaasen! Boulle! And LeGuin (kind of)! )

Starting over,

This is dF