Crooked Little Vein

I almost forgot: I ordered a crime book a few weeks ago. It’s this classic, cheap private-eye story that I crave regularly. Wanna taste?

Burned-out private dick Michael McGill needs to jump-start his career. What he gets instead is a cattle prod to the crotch. The president’s heroin-addicted chief of staff wants McGill to find the Constitution — the real one the Founding Fathers secretly devised for the time of gravest crisis. And with God, civility, and Mom’s homemade apple pie already dead or dying, that time is now. But McGill has a talent for stumbling into every imaginable depravity — and this case is driving him even deeper into America’s darkest, dankest underbelly, toward obscenities that boggle even his mind.

Haha, can’t wait for this one

Oxford Bar

The Ox is Detective Inspector Rebus’s favourite place. Whether it’s meeting colleagues, journalists, friends or foes, here is where the Scottish investigator settles down for a pint of IPA or more.

Clearly, a place I couldn’t miss during a short stay in Edinburgh.

A Question of Blood

I am still under the impression of a week in Edinburgh. It will most likely be the subject of many an entry to this blog once I sort out a few things that have piled up over the last few weeks.

Haller vs. Bosch

Finished The Brass Verdict last weekend. Still not sure what to think of it, really. It’s praised by most fans, it seems. I have a few objections to that, but I guess that’s normal given as we’re all entitled to our opinions. I like Mickey Haller from The Lincoln Lawyer, but was hoping for more involvement of Bosch. In that respect, it was a disappointment. The book is described as “A Mickey Haller and Harry Bosch Novel” and it’s misleading to say the least.

Don’t get me wrong, if you’re looking for a good story depicting the procedures of a California murder trial, in all its details and intricacies, you can rely on Connelly, as always. He’s proven in The Concrete Blonde already that he can write a gripping story playing mainly in the courtroom, with Bosch as protagonist.

Rilke on Black

I mentioned Ken Bruen on several occasions here. He’s currently my favourite when it comes to what I like to refer to as relentless and unusual crime novels. His two series of books, Taylor and Brant, have made for many hours of great reading and interesting quotes.

The Brass Verdict

What a horrendous title! But it’s a Bosch and I shall read this series until its end.

In typical Connelly fashion, the book combines a character from another book. It was a book away from the Bosch series with the title “The Lincoln Lawyer” featuring a character named Micky Haller. This name alone is proof how much Connelly likes “Steppenwolf”. Haller is Bosch’s half-brother. I think only Bosch is aware of this relation but I expect them to somehow deal with it in this book.

New pages

It was about time I started writing about books that interest me. If you’re interested in reading about my interest in crime books, you will find a general description as well as the first series I summed up.

I hope these pages will help me keep an overview of what I have read and always wanted to read. More series to follow.

Conscious drinker

This is a quote from Ken Bruen’s “The Killing of the Tinkers”. It gives you a perfect idea of his writing. This is the second series, the first (the Brant series, brutally wonderful) I read through in a few days.