THE FOURTH DEADLY SIN by Lawrence Sanders

 A Kindle book for $1.99

BLOWN by Philip Jose Farmer

 Finished Fr 7/4/25

This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I had never read. Boy, am I glad that I kept this one around because I don't think I've read anything like it. It's hardcorn porn that's excellently blended into a compelling SciFi tale. Many reveiws seemed shocked at the sex, but I thought it was essential. One of the characters was named 'Vivienne Mabcrough'. She has a 'snake' that extends from her vagina during sex. This extension has the bearded face of Gilles de Rais. The Vivienne character is the 'reincarnation' of Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais was a leader of the French army during the Hundred Years' War and a companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc. He is best known for his reputation as a serial killer of children. The fictional character of 'Bluebeard' is based on this historical figure. 

The 'Ogs' and the 'Tocs' were two societies from another galaxy that were at war on their home planets and then took their fight to earth. These two 'tribes' were the basis for faries, nymphs, werewolves, big foot, and many others. 'Ogs' were bad and 'Tocs' were forces for good. 

From Thriftbooks.com:

"In Philip Jose Farmer's incredible sequel to The Image of the Beast, Herald Childe continues what started out as a murder case - a very gruesome one admittedly - but which has now become a struggle against the strange and deadly beings who have taken his wife, who threaten his manhood and who threaten mankind itself. His seems a hopeless quest. He is fighting not people but inhuman. unhuman monsters from another universe. They take grotesque physical forms, they recklessly indulge cruel whims-and they are utterly sex-crazed. There's Vivienne-amazingly beautiful-who used to be Joan of Arc. But she has false teeth and she comes, literally, to pieces. Her lover is a snake-like horror whose needle teeth drip aphrodisiac venom. There's Count Igescu. a real live vampire. And these three are surrounded by a crowd of ghastly aliens, grisly characters in a science fiction nightmare. But for Childe there is to be no waking up. It is no bad dream. Though no one else will believe him. he knows this is for real... This description may be from another edition of this product."

It was a wild and crazy ride and I really liked the book.   

THE WINNER by David Baldacci

 Finished Mo 6/30/25

This was a paperback that Janny loaned to me, but I know I have a copy that I had read before.

A poor woman is given the opportunity to win $100 million in the national lottery. Her benefactor pays her $25 million and keeps the hundred million for ten years. The real money is made on the interest. That's a simple premise, but it works and the book is compelling to the very end. 

From Kirkus:

"Irritatingly trite woman-in-periler from lawyer-turned-novelist Baldacci. Moving away from the White House and the white-shoe Washington law firms of his previous bestsellers (Absolute Power, 1996; Total Control, 1997), Baldacci comes up with LuAnn Tyler, a spunky, impossibly beautiful, white-trash truck stop waitress with a no-good husband and a terminally cute infant daughter in tow. Some months after the birth of Lisa, LuAnn gets a phone call summoning her to a make-shift office in an unrented storefront of the local shopping mall. There, she gets a Faustian offer from a Mr. Jackson, a monomaniacal, cross-dressing manipulator who apparently knows the winning numbers in the national lottery before the numbers are drawn. It seems that LuAnn fits the media profile of what a lottery winner should be—poor, undereducated but proud—and if she's willing to buy the right ticket at the right time and transfer most of her winnings to Jackson, she'll be able to retire in luxury. Jackson fails to inform her, however, that if she refuses his offer, he'll have her killed. Before that can happen, as luck would have it, LuAnn barely escapes death when one of husband Duane's drug deals goes bad. She hops on a first-class Amtrak sleeper to Manhattan with a hired executioner in pursuit. But executioner Charlie, one of Jackson's paid handlers, can't help but hear wedding bells when he sees LuAnn cooing with her daughter. Alas, a winning $100- million lottery drawing complicates things. Jackson spirits LuAnn and Lisa away to Sweden, with Charlie in pursuit. Never fear. Not only will LuAnn escape a series of increasingly violent predicaments, but she'll also outwit Jackson, pay an enormous tax bill to the IRS, and have enough left over to honeymoon in Switzerland. Too preposterous to work as feminine wish-fulfillment, too formulaic to be suspenseful. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)"

From 'Bookskeptic.com':

"The premise here is quite simple – LuAnn Tyler is a twenty years old poor waitress with a small baby and a good-for-nothing wannabe drug dealer partner. For the sake of the plot she is incredibly beautiful, unbelievably strong and her moral compass is impeccable. Up to a point of course, when she is offered an opportunity of a certain win in a lottery by a shady character initially she refuses (oh, how high this horse is). However, upon her return home she discovers her partner brutally murdered and is attacked herself. Barely managing to escape with her baby safe she decides to accept the offer, as much for safety as to assure a better future for her child.

As we can expect the offer is too good to be true and has strings attached all over. Eventually LuAnn wins the lottery and has to leave the US never to return. Only after ten years that’s exactly what she does. And as we can predict all hell breaks lose.

Is it believable? Not one bit. But if you suspend your internal reality check it can be fun. Let’s be honest we’re not reading it for complex characterization or development. It’s all for action and there’s plenty of it, especially once FBI get’s involved (the IRS is not that interesting). There are some annoying bits too, like the fact that we are constantly reminded of LuAnn’s physical prowess, or the whole romantic bit (really, the book would work equally well without it). But all in all it is what you expect from Baldacci, a quick paced action thriller. Maybe not one of his best, but does the job nonetheless… as long as you keep your expectations in check and keep in mind the book was published in 1998."

A MONTH OF SUNDAYS by John Updike

 Finished Mo 6/23/25

This was one of my ancient paperbacks that I've never read. However, the cover of the book is covered in tape, so I cared enough to keep the cover presentable.

It's the story of a Protestant pastor who is placed in a retreat for sexual addiction. The novel is his experience at the facility and how he got there. He was married for twenty years to a woman who 'stood by her man'. He's having an affair with the church's organist who is also a 'sexually free spirit' and he would like to have his wife have an affair with the 'deacon' (?) or his 'second in command'. This guy is actually having an affair with his 'liberated' girlfriend. Soon he's having an affair with a rich woman in the congregation and also Ms. Prynne, at the facility. 

This novel is the first in a trilogy paying homage to Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Scarlet Letter'.  

A lot of the novel is 'stream of consciousness' and a little difficult to follow, but worth the effort. Also, there are references to Protestant philosophers that I was familiar with. Especially Karl Barth (1886- 1968) who is considered one of the most important Protestant thinkers of the 20th century. 

Some of the novel is brilliant, and other parts....not so much. 

From KIRKUS: "Purely and simply, or rather impurely and not so simply, this is the Updike man, whether in vestments or not, we have often met before — the lacerated Calvinist, here a Barthian (Barth after all is the most unobtainable — "opacity triumphant"), as divided as sin and salvation particularly when it comes to adultery which is our inherent and inevitable condition. Specifically the clergyman is Tom Marshfield, at the moment spending a month in "detention" for his "retraction" — writing "ad libidum" the annals of his fall in a fashion which is filled with a lush, explicit eroticism and sly punning that stretches from nave to navel and is so predictable in Updike. And also filled with "play and pain and display," otherwise known as self-love and self-loathing and self-indulgence, as Tom looks back on the first lapse with Alicia, his organist, distracting in her panty-hose and more so without them, then a second submission to one of his ministry, before he is besieged by his entire female flock and sent off in the desert. "What a paradox it is, dearly beloved, in a nation where every motel room unavailingly offers a Bible for the perusal of travel-worn salesmen, bickering vacationers, and headlong fornicators secluded with eager 'fornacatrices' that this passel of disgraced and distracted ministers should be uniquely denied the consolation and stimulation of this incredible, most credible book!" And what a bottomless cul de sac it is for Updike as well as for Tom — this prurient condition of man, no matter how married he's still left to burn, shriving and unshriven. A feat of sorts as well — although many readers will be uncomfortable in the hot seat that is his pew."

ANGELS FLIGHT by Michael Connelly

 Finished Th 6/19/25 at the tail end of a very bad cold. This was a hardback that Janny loaned me and I put off reading it, but it hass become one of my absolute favorites from the Harry Bosch series. 

From Kirkus Reviews:

"The murder of a high-profile civil rights lawyer is just the trigger for another far-ranging case for L.A. cop Harry Bosch (Trunk Music, 1997, etc.). Howard Elias was widely known as the man who made a good living by suing the LAPD. So now that he's been shot, along with inoffensive cleaning woman Catalina Perez, aboard an otherwise empty inclined railway car, cops all over the city are cheering. What's not to like? wonders Bosch. Only two things: the likelihood that Elias was helped to his grave by one of the hundreds of officers now toasting his death, and the certainty that the public will scream coverup and react in riotous fury if Bosch turns up anybody but a fellow cop as a suspect. Under pressure to satisfy Deputy Chief Irvin Irving, who's determined to put his own Rainbow Coalition p.r. spin on every development, and to work peacefully with the Internal Affairs officers he's been saddled with, Bosch soon focuses on Elias's latest client: Michael Harris, the scruffy suspect who maintains that his confession in the murder of pre-teen Stacey Kincaid had been beaten out of him by cops who jumped on their first slim lead that came their way. But even as Bosch is turning up evidence that indicates Harris might be innocent after all—many sordid, though unsurprising, revelations here—the net is closing around his former partner Frankie Sheehan, a Robbery-Homicide detective on the Harris case who'd already caught the eye of Internal Affairs when he killed a suspect in an earlier case. Bosch sweats to exonerate his old friend and find a substitute killer, but Deputy Chief Irving, who can't forget O.J. and Rodney King, is just not that interested in getting Sheehan off the hook. Reliable suspense on a grand scale, though the half-hearted attention to the suspects and Harry's perfunctory domestic troubles, as well as the lack of a powerfully mysterious center, make this the most routine of Connelly's eight world-class thrillers."

DR. JOHN: Under A Hoodoo Moon by Mac Rebennack with Jack Rummel

 Reread over sunday and monday during a very bad cold June 15-16, 2025.

From Kirkus Reviews:

"This unflinching autobiography by Mac Rebennack, aka Dr. John, with Rummel (Malcolm X, 1989) gives a firsthand account of New Orleans street life and musical history in the last few decades. Rebennack began frequenting New Orleans music clubs at an early age. In the '50s he dropped out of high school and devoted himself to playing the piano and guitar. While developing his music he also developed a taste for heroin and other drugs. Musicians in the New Orleans scene provided entertainment for ``turistas'' and, in the early morning hours, for pimps, prostitutes and thieves. To supplement their income, musicians also engaged in some of these vocations. Rebennack admits to participating in many shady dealings: He disposed of fetuses for an abortionist, held stick- ups, and conspired to, but evidently did not, murder. After a stint in prison on narcotics charges, he cast himself as Dr. John, based on the 19th-century conjurer by that name, and played distinctly New Orleans music in a wild stage show that featured snake handling and black magic. Dr. John's music became popular with the '60s counterculture. Rebennack also played as a sideman throughout his career with a catalog of music greats—some obscure and some well- known, such as Little Richard and Professor Longhair; considering the ``narcotic haze'' in which he often found himself, he remembers many details from sessions. Rebennack, however, has no respect for fame without musical skill—he refers to the group Iron Butterfly as ``Iron Butterfingers.'' Taken advantage of by unscrupulous music business executives and strung out on heroin for 34 years, he tells a tough tale. A life this varied and chaotic is hard to translate into a linear story. Though Rebennack's prose sometimes rambles, he gives the reader a perspective that most tourists to Bourbon street never see."

I wonder what he might have accomplished if his thirty year dope addiction had not been a factor in his career.

THE JUDGE'S LIST by John Grisham

Finished Su 6/15/25

This is a paperback that Janny loaned me. I loved the book and I read nearly all of it yesterday because I was sick as a dog with a very bad cold. 

It's about a crooked judge who gets back at every person who ever wronged him. It might take 20 years, but he will kill his victim with a crushing blow to the head and then he strangles them.

'The Plot' from Wikipedia:

"Three years after the events of The Whistler, Lacy Stolz is tired of her work as an investigator for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct. But when a woman named Jeri Crosby nervously approaches her, Lacy discovers that a sitting judge, Ross Bannick, is a murderer. She's reluctant to get involved, but Jeri is obsessed with bringing the man to justice.

Jeri's father was one of Bannick's victims 20 years earlier, although his case has never been solved. She has studied Bannick for two decades, and has discovered other victims in the process.

While Bannick's guilt is never really in doubt, finding evidence to convict him is a much bigger challenge, because he knows the law, and is always one step ahead of law enforcement. He has a list that includes the names of all his targets who have wronged him in some way, and Lacy must help Jeri establish his guilt without either of them becoming his next victim.

At the climax of the book, Jeri is kidnapped by Bannick, but is rescued by police. Lacy and her brother Gunther force Bannick to flee. Before they can catch him, however, he overdoses at a rehab facility after mutilating his fingers with acid. Jeri manages to find Bannick's truck, which has a fingerprint that Lacy can use to prove two of Bannick's murders."