Friday's Forgotten Books, July 22, 2016

Todd Mason will be on duty next Friday as I travel north to the Traverse City Film Festival

(from the archives)
Forgotten Books: DRIVE EAST ON 66 -- Richard Wormser (reviewed by Bill Crider) 

Okay, as I said yesterday, it was inevitable that after seeing the title of James H. Cobb's West on 66, I was going to read it. Today's book is the reason why. I read it around 40 years ago, and I have to wonder if maybe Cobb's read it, too.

A cop named Andy Bastian is hired to drive a kid named Ralph from California to Kansas, where Ralph will be put into what's called, in the novel,s 1961 way, an insane asylum. Ralph is brilliant, and his father's quite rich. Accompanying Ralph and Andy is Olga Beaumont, a psychologist who's along to care for Ralph. They don't get far before it's apparent they're being followed.

This isn't an adrenaline-fueled thriller like Cobb's book. The characters following along aren't hate-filled gangsters and hitmen. There are no heart-stopping car chases, hot sex, and shoot-outs. But that doesn't mean there's no suspense. It's just a quieter kind, and it's played out along a route that runs in the opposite direction, as the titles indicate.

James mentions that Cobb's book isn't quite a pitch-perfect recreation of a Gold Medal novel. Wormser's book is pitch-perfect, not as a re-creation but as an original. Read the first couple of pages, and you'll know what I mean, I think. Wormser's descriptions of the people, the landscape, and the seedy motels are on the money. I like all Wormser's GM books, including The Invader, which one an Edgar for best paperback. If you get a chance, give one a try and see what you think.

Yvette Banek, ANNA, WHERE ARE YOU, PATRICIA WENTWORTH
Joe Barone, FATAL PURSUIT   Martin Walker  
Les Blatt, DEATH OF A BOVVER BOY, Leo Bruce 
Bill Crider, RASH, Pete Hautman
Scott Cupp, THE PEACOCK FEATHER MURDERS, John Dickson Carr
Curt Evans, HELEN REILLY
Charles Gramlich, WARLOCKS AND WARRIORS, ed. Douglas Hill
Rick Horton, THE MAN WITH NINE LIVES, A TOUCH OF INFINITY, Harlan Elison
Jerry House, THE SNAKE, Mickey Spillane 
George Kelley, THE BIG BOOK OF SCIENCE FICTION, ed. Ann and Jeff Vanderveer
Margot Kinberg, UNLEASHED , David Rosenfelt 
Rob Kitchin, , MASARYK STATION, David Downing
Kate Laity, SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING, Alan Sillitoe
B.V. Lawson, VICTORIAN DETECTIVE STORIES, Michael Cox
Steve Lewis, THE CASE OF THE BAKER STREET IRREGULARS, Anthony Boucher 
Todd Mason, THE CRIMES OF OUR LIVES, Lawrence Block
Stephen Nester (The Rap Sheet), SIDEWALK CAESAR, Donald Honig
J.F. Norris, PUZZLE FOR PUPPETS, Patrick Quentin
Mathew Paust, SALVATION ON SAND MOUNTAIN, David Covington 
James Reasoner, MURDER CALL THE BLACK BAT, G. Wayman Jones 
Richard Robinson, GREEN MAGIC, Crawford Kilian
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang, A CHAIN OF EVIDENCE, Carolyn Wells
TomCat, THE CASE OF NAOMI CLYNES, Basil Thomson 
TracyK, DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, Ian Fleming