MAKING A KILLING by Warren Dunford

 Finished Sa 1/31/26

This is one of my ancient trade paperbacks that I had never read. The novel is written with a kind of a gay Agatha Christie plotline. The setup is that a young man is thrown out of a third story window and is impaled on a fence. His father was stabbed to death and left in the room where the boy had fallen. It was believed that the son killed his dad and then jumped out of the window. This is not what happened. 

The novel is set in the Bloor Street area of Toronto, Canada. This is a 'hip' area of the city with trendy shopping and old money homes.

This was a light read and somewhat enjoyable, but I still do not like the Agatha Christie setup. The author introduces many possible suspects and the reader is supposed to guess the killer. 

From Publishers Weekly:

"Dunford's immensely satisfying sequel to last year's Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture picks up several years later with the same appealing characters. Soon found fledgling Toronto screenwriter Mitchell Draper and his friends Ingrid and Ramir in a sendup of crime dramas and Mafia Princess potboilers. This latest venture is a smart and self-aware parody of gothic murder mysteries, complete with a bevy of suspects, hidden staircases in a spooky mansion ("the kind of house that had inspired the game of Clue"), ancient secrets and even a giant party at the end that brings all the suspects back to the scene of the crime. Alert readers will catch references to Rosemary's Baby, The Haunting of Hill House and Scooby Doo. The biggest surprise is the book's gradual slide from hilarious homage to an honest-to-goodness locked-door mystery. Few will guess the outcome of the clever twists that tantalize until the final pages. Mitchell's idea that a 20-year-old father-son murder-suicide would make a blockbuster movie script finds him investigating the long-closed case and discovering new facts that may endanger him and his cohorts. Meanwhile, Ingrid is attempting reconciliation with her ex-husband, and Ramir has joined a charismatic cult whose leader was intimately involved in the tragedy. New characters are especially well drawn, notably dying designer Cortland McPhee, aging sexpot Gabriella Hartman ("one of Entertainment Weekly's 101 Stars Who Just Won't Give Up") and her Thelma Ritter–like psychic adviser Jane Choy. While some readers will be eager to see what genre Dunford turns his comedic talents to next, others will hope he settles into mystery for good."

THE 6:20 MAN by David Baldacci

 Finished Su 1/25/26

This was a trade paperback that Janny loaned me. Usually I think Baldacci is today's James Patterson and these books are not well written and just for the 'ride'. However, this one was interesting as it concerns Travis Devine, an Army Ranger who goes to work on Wall Street. He's doing it to appease his father. When his father learned that he was an 'Ranger' he asked what national park he would work at...."My son is Smokey The Bear". Travis leaves the military and starts to earn big bucks in investment banking. 

From Debbish.com:

"Every day without fail, Travis Devine puts on a cheap suit, grabs his faux-leather briefcase, and boards the 6:20 commuter train to Manhattan, where he works as an entry-level analyst at the city’s most prestigious investment firm. In the mornings, he gazes out the train window at the lavish homes of the uberwealthy, dreaming about joining their ranks. In the evenings, he listens to the fiscal news on his phone, already preparing for the next grueling day in the cutthroat realm of finance.

Then one morning Devine’s tedious routine is shattered by an anonymous email: She is dead.

Sara Ewes, Devine’s coworker and former girlfriend, has been found hanging in a storage room of his office building—presumably a suicide, prompting the NYPD to come calling on him. If that wasn’t enough, Devine receives another ominous visit, a confrontation that threatens to dredge up grim secrets from his past in the Army unless he participates in a clandestine investigation into his firm.

This treacherous role will take Travis from the impossibly glittering lives he once saw only through a train window, to the darkest corners of the country’s economic halls of power…where something rotten lurks. And apart from this high-stakes conspiracy, there’s a killer out there with their own agenda, and Devine is the bullseye."

Odd Premise: The bad guy who runs the brokerage house uses a woman in a bikini to signal trades secretly. She's in a green suit if they are to continue to trade and she's in a red bikini if they are to shut down. 

STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. by Robert Heilein

 Ebook borrowed from Lincoln Library and finished We 1/21/26

I've read this half a dozen times over the years. I was surprised to learn that it was first published in 1961. 

He dedicates the book to 3 people and one of them is Philip Jose Farmer

THE BRASS VERDICT by Michael Connelly

 Finished Su 1/1126

This was a paperback that I at the Rochester library book sale on Su 4/23/23. This was the last time that I will be attending a library book sale. There just isn't anything of any depth because it's all 'light reading' and I want something more. 

However, I liked this novel because it's the first time that Micky Haller works with Bosch. I was going to give it to Janny, but I noticed that she had just lent me this book in hardback. 

 The review of 'THE BRASS VERDICT' at The Guardian:

"Mickey Haller, who runs his legal practice from a car, is ready to get back to work after a year off recovering from a gunshot wound and an addiction to painkillers. But he gets more work than he wants when he inherits the caseload of a colleague, Jerry Vincent, who has been found dead. The cases include the forthcoming murder trial of film producer Walter Elliot, who seems strangely serene about his impending legal date. Mickey has to discover what Elliot is so smug about, and all the while the police are trying to find out who killed Vincent. Could there be a connection? The author is one of the top American crime writers, and whether you pick up one of his celebrated cop novels or a legal thriller such as this, you can be assured of an intriguing plot, decent characterisation, excellent writing and an exciting ending."

BLUE CALHOUN by Reynolds Price

Finished Mo 1/5/26

This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I had never read. However, this was one of the finest novels that I've read in a long time. 

In broad strokes the story is about a 35 year old musical instrument salesman who falls madly in love with a sixteen year old girl. The disruption caused by this action has ramifications that affect his family forever.

The book is Blue (the guys name) explaining his life to his granddaughter. 

He has a 13 year old daughter who he worships and his wife his 'long suffering, yet forgiving'. Mom and daughter are both Catholics and the family lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. This is also Reynolds Price's home. Luna is the sixteen year old girl who is far older than her years. Her mother is a childhood friend of Blue's. 

The reveal is that his daughter's husband (the storyline moves ahead thiry) might be having some kind of sexual interaction with Blue's granddaughter, Lyn. Dane, her father commits suicide when Blue witnesses what he thinks is a sexual encounter with the young girl. 

The story is told in a very southern, almost 'decorous' style. 

From the book's page at KIRKUS:

"Written in the almost buttery style that Price has favored since Kate Vaiden (1986), this melodrama concerns an ex-alcoholic music salesman, Blue Calhoun, living in Raleigh, North Carolina, in the 1950's. Having sorely tried his wife and daughter and old mother by his drinking (he's sober now), Blue at last seems level. But then into the downtown music store where he works comes an old acquaintance from high school and her 16-year-old daughter, Luna. Blue is tempted and again falls; Luna (an incest victim) is a taste of freedom and possible redemption. He tries giving her up once, and is taken back by his family, but the leukemia death of an old bachelor friend re-involves Blue with Luna (in a not terribly credible plot-thickening). This second lapse is more serious, and, in sorrow, his long-suffering wife, daughter, and mother send him away. Blue will get still another chance (the story is boned with second and third chances), but his flaw has affected three—and ultimately four—generations of Calhoun women permanently. Only their patience and grace-in-pain reconstitute him. Price, in his recent books, has been assembling a kind of humane moral iconography: variously posed portraits of the utterly human sinner, no better and no worse than people can be; and strong versions of the Blessed Woman. Here, though, in the soapy re- curlings of the style (``I understood I'd failed completely, now today if never before in my long mess. I knew I was locked in the trough of it too, out here lost on a girl's hot tether, awaiting her will''), the icon seems merely air-filled. The characters speak to each other in conspicuously sad/wise parables; themes are paired too smoothly; and a certain gooey smugness—in the classical self- condemnatory/self-congratulatory mode—lurks everywhere."

 

THE HUNGER by Whitley Strieber

 Finished We 12/24/25

This was one of my ancient paperbacks that I first finished on Fr 12/6/19. I remembered the small detail that Miriam, the vampire used a soap that embalmers use on dead bodies to ward off the smell of decomposition. 

This is one of the better Vampire themed novels and introduces a bit of science to the subject. The key to 'Vampire-ism' might have something to do with the human body's need for sleep. Although vampires and humans are two entirely different species, there seems to be some connection via sleep. 

From the book's page at Publishers Weekly:

"Most readers know Strieber for his bestselling books about his alleged contacts with aliens (Communion, etc.). Yet before he met the saucerians, Strieber wrote immensely popular horror novels, some of them filmed (as was Communion which, nonfiction or not, is a horror classic). The most imaginative was The Hunger (1980), which posited an ancient race of vampires that created humanity and has directed our species' history. In his first novel in seven years, Strieber returns to the opulent, ferocious world of Miriam Blaylock, the beautiful, powerful and rapacious vampire who dominated The Hunger (and was played by Catherine Deneuve in the film version). It's time again for the vampires' centennial conclaves, and Miriam is in Thailand, hoping to find a mate at the Asian gathering. Instead she encounters a possibly mortal enemy, Paul Ward, a CIA operative heading up a hush-hush team dedicated to wiping out the vampires. The novel's first two-thirds offers a tour de force of mythmaking (as Strieber redefines the world through vampiric eyes) and emotionally intense action (as Ward's team stalks Miriam and her ilk). The last third, set in Manhattan, is less successful, as Miriam, intent on destroying Paul, lures and seduces him and then falls in love, as does he with her. This turn doesn't quite convince, and the contrived ending shrieks sequel. There's much here to admire, not least Strieber's expert modulation of tone and dialogue as POV shifts from Miriam (fluid, refined) to Paul (muscular, slangy). While not as original as its parent, this bloody, lush and gripping novel trumpets a welcome return to fiction by Strieber and could win award nominations."

The novel is lurid and trashy and I loved it and the next morning (Christmas Day, 2025)  I watched the film on Tubi. 

THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST by Nikos Kazantzakis

Finished We 12/17/25 

This was one of my ancient trade paperpacks that I had never read. The premise of the story was familiar (Jesus's hallucination of a life that he might have had), but I think that I remember that from the movie. 

The book is a somewhat fictional account of the end of the life of Jesus. The disciples were all behind 'the savior' when he promised that they would become 'kings of the earth'. But when things got dangerous, they folded. 

Judas is a red headed blacksmith who was a member of The Zealots (with Barabas) who went around attacking people who were not 'following the laws of Moses'. Jesus's message was that he was 'the next covenant' and that he had come to replace those laws. Thomas was a merchant, Peter a fisherman, Mark a publican which means a pub owner or a tax collector, Nathaniel was 'slow' and a cobbler. 

When Jesus is put on the cross he hallucinates a life with two wives (Mary & Martha) and numerous children. In this life he lives to be an old man, but deeply regrets that he did not 'bear the sins of mankind on the cross'. 

 From Kirkus reviews:

"This is a retelling of the story of Christ which has created a stir of controversy abroad and is bound to be received with mixed feelings in this country. Kazantzakis is the greatest modern author Greece has produced and those who are familiar with his work will recognize the conflict between flesh and spirit which he has explored again and again in both his novels and philosophical writings. Here Kazantzakis follows the Gospels in accepting the miraculous events they relate. Where he deviates is in the psychological make-up of the Christ who is portrayed as a reluctant Messiah moved by the calling of God but also drawn toward living a normal life among men. The last temptation is in fact a vision which comes to Christ on the cross in which he sees himself married and as an old man surrounded by a loving family. Orthodox Christians may also be disturbed by the characterizations of Mary, Mary Magdalene and Judas who is portrayed sympathetically. Mary is a troubled mother worried about her son's strange behavior, and she would like nothing better than to see him living a full normal life. She is terrified by the mission he has undertaken and vainly tries to save him from self-destruction. Mary Magdalene was to be betrothed to Christ and in her disappointment over his rejection turns to prostitution before she is reborn to a higher understanding of love. And Judas is pictured as a rebellious zealot of the period who believed that the Kingdom of God should be brought about on earth by violent means if necessary. He is drawn to Christ's teachings but he cannot understand his passivity. In the end he betrays him unwillingly..... Kazantzakis is a powerful writer and this is a powerful book. The setting is again Mediterranean- the land and the people he understands so well. There is no doubt that the book will draw wide comment and, after all is said, it should prove to be one of the most important of the year."- August, 1960