The next two week's forgotten books will be collected by Todd Mason. One is a fun week off, the other is a horrible oral surgery appointment.
Please contact him if you are not a regular reviewer and want to do one. Thanks!
Ed Gorman writes the Dev Conrad series, the Sam McCain series and edits anthologies in his spa
re time. You can find him here. Ross Thomas, The Procane Chronicle
One of life’s true pleasures is reading a Ross Thomas novel. He never lets you down when you re-read him, either.
I’ve now read The Procane Chronicle for the third or fourth time, and even though I now know all the amazing surprises Thomas blesses his readers with, the prose alone is as much fun as the story. The only writer living today who can even come close to the grace and nimbleness of Thomas is Lawrence Block. Block knows from sentences.
In this one, Phillip St. Ives is dragooned by poverty as usual to act as a go-between when a blackmailer sets a price. St. Ives is hired to make sure that both sides keep their promise. The stake this time is a possible Mafia war.
As always, Thomas gives us a radiantly cynical take on Washington, D. C. and all who do business there. Though thirty years have past since original publication, Procane depicts a nation’s capitol no different from the one we know today. St. Ives is lied to and betrayed by everything on two legs, even – or especially – those fine looking female legs.
For me, Thomas was one of the two or three best crime writers of the last century. He brought to each book a witty and brutal intelligence that exposed all of us as less than we’d want to be.
You can get Ross Thomas books on the Mysterious Press e site as well as in many mystery bookstores.I can almost guarantee you'll be a fan for life.
Sergio Angelini
Joe Barone
Brian Busby
Bill Crider
Martin Edwards
Curt Evans
Jerry House
Randy Johnson
Nick Jones
George Kelley
Margot Kinberg
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Richard Robinson
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Bill Selnes
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple
Prashant Trikannad
TomCat
Wuthering Willow
Zybahn
7 comments:
Oral surgery. Yuck! Best wishes.
Here's mine, Patti:
Westlake's I Gave At the Office
Incidentally, I own a very scarce British edition of The Procane Chronicle, which went under the title The Thief Who Painted Sunlight in the UK.
Best of luck with the surgery!
Patti, I have posted my review except I don't know how to provide a link here, if that helps. I'm sorry about the delay. I will be posting much earlier next week on. Many thanks...
As long as it's posted, I can retrieve it. You don't need to give me a link! Thanks so much.
It should be mentioned somewhere that PROCANE, like the rest of the Philip St. Ives series, was published under Thomas's Oliver Bleeck pseudonym.
Jeff M.
Second the "Yuck" and the best wishes!
Good luck with the surgery. I will not forget having 4 impacted molars removed one Friday afternoon over 30 years ago.
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