What are you currently reading?

[QualityBookReviews]

An open discussion on what everyone is currently reading. Make recommendations to others, discuss what is new, hot, bestsellers, anything and everything related to books and the authors.

[I. J. Parker]

Van de Wetering is usually superb. A pity he's being forgotten. He is one of the great Scandinavian mystery novelists.

[HappyRuby]

I'm reading Tommy Gun Tango by Bruce Cook and enjoying the book.

[Karen from AustCrime]

I've just finished Death and The Running Patterer by Robin Adair - new author, competition winner for Penguin Australia, set in Colonial Sydney - very good. Then I inhaled Adrian McKinty's latest book - Fifty Grand which was absolutely fantastic. Now I'm about to start on an Advance copy of Peter Temple's next - Truth - which will be out in October.

[Suzanne]

Am finishing Val McDermid's "The Grave Tattoo." Disappointing, contrived, stretching
credibility.... I had the urge to shout out loud, "Don't go there alone, stupid!"

Picked up Ian Rankin's new "Dark Entries." No, not a book exactly. It's a comic; I can't
remember the polite term. We'll see.

[I. J. Parker]

Interesting reading. I lso read GRAVE TATTOO and didn't like it.

[Donna Carrick]

Sorry to be boringly honest, but I'm currently reading my just-received copy of The Lost Symbol.

My pending list, though, is a little more varied. You'll be happy to know that I.J. Parker's "Hell Screen" is on its way from the vendor even as we speak, as is Sandra Ruttan's "What Burns Within", Jon Loomis's "High Season", Rick Mofina's "Vengeance Road" and Vicki Delany's "Gold Digger".

I trust my "pending list" redeems me from the shame of my "current read"?

[I. J. Parker]

Oh, my! Now you truly have an interesting list. I know and love all of them, except Rick Mofina, whom I haven't read yet but will soon.

:)

[HappyRuby]

I read and enjoyed Hell Screen and Vengeance Road.

[minervaK]

High Season is a gem, you'll love it.

[D.R. MacMaster]

I just finished James Ellroy's The Cold Six Thousand, and it was a very different kind of read, sort of like reading noir written by an enraged and hyperactive beatnik.

[p-squared]

Just finished all three Keller "Hit" novels by Lawrence Block. Like Pringles you can't stop at just one. Only problem is, he stopped at three.

[Harley Sachs]

The risk in writing a series is that the author begins to repeat him/herself. thereby producing an echo and not something fresh. (I did a series of four mysteries in the Mystery Club series but discovered that the the little old ladies who solved the crimes were becoming something of a cabal and one prominent member was turning awfully vindictive and not very likable. I think you have to like your detective, however flawed.) Parker, for instance, seems to have fallen into a pattern and in the Spencer novels comes too much to rely on snappy dialogue between Spenser and Susan and Spenser and Hawk. Parket can dash those off in a wink, but they're no longer fresh. reader like series because they become attached to the fictional characters. They may even think they are real, a problem I started to have with the Mystery Club SOlves a Murder. I kept wondering what one of the characters was doing after the end of the book, and of course he wasn't doing anything, being imaginary. I had to write "IS" about what is real and what is not to purge myself of this delusion.
Harley Sachs www.hu.mtu.edu/~hlsachs where you can read about The Lollipop Murder.