Sunday, July 06, 2008

Welcome to Hard Case Week

As long-time readers might have noted, I'm prone to bizarre reading projects. And it's been a while since the last one, which means I'm overdue.

So, since I'm on a business trip in San Francisco -- home of Dashiell Hammett, father of the hardboiled mystery -- and since I look to have quite a bit of spare time here, and because I'm missing a publishing party I really wanted to go to (for the launch of Naomi Novik's fifth novel and a celebration of Hard Case Crime)...for all those reasons and more, I took a pile of Hard Case books to read on this trip, and I'm going to try to review them at least one a day while I'm here.

I finished Lawrence Block's A Diet of Treacle on the plane, and am most of the way through Christa Faust's Money Shot, with five more books stacked under those. I'm on West Coast time this week, so my "day" may skew later than usual -- but I hope to have something up about Treacle before Sunday is over here.

And maybe the next time I come to a strange city, it won't be on a holiday weekend, and some actual human beings will be around...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hope you end up reading one of Richard Aleas' books, I thought those were the best of the modern-day HCC novels.

Of course, Richard Aleas is actually HCC Publisher Charles Ardai, who's married to Naomi Novik, so I'm guessing you've either read one of his novels or plan on doing so.

Andrew Wheeler said...

Roddy: Yes and yes -- I have Songs of Innocence currently slotted in fourth.

Justin Steiner said...

I just read my first Hard Case Crime book earlier this week - Bust by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr. Good stuff.

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