I couldn't possibly comment...

My FLBSO, Dave, mentioned that if I hadn't tried Reed Farrel Coleman, I oughta. Boy, was he right.

Walking the Perfect Square. Moe Prager quits his job as an NYPD cop short of making Detective, thanks to an embarrassing office encounter with a sheet of a paper on the floor that ended in severe knee torture. This may seem a bit far-fetched, until you realize that this moment in Moe's past occurs in the late seventies, a time relatively out of reach of modern joint surgery and physiotherapy. In this forced retirement, Moe is trying to scare up the scratch to open a wine shop with his brother. Then, a cop-friend of his comes along as the proxy of a Mr ConnectionsWithMoney, and an offer Moe will find it very hard to refuse: help us out and you'll have enough cash to open your wine shop and a smooth road past the city business regulators. Refuse to help us out, and, well, no money and a harder road. Why Moe? Despite his forced retirement, Moe has that one shining moment in his career when he found the young girl that nobody else could fine (largely by chance, he continually tries to convince).

What can he do, but proceed? Coleman's love of the city as she lived is evident: this is a hell of a time to be wandering around the streets of the Big Apple, and famous spots of the punk underground figure prominently, either named directly, or barely concealed (anyone with a reasonable memory of music history of the time might enjoy playing spot-the-scene).

Coleman brackets the narrative in the with a modern-day framing story that works perfectly. Walking the Perfect Square sets up the best and worst moments of Prager's adult life: it sets the foundation for who he will be in all the forthcoming novels -- a loving, family man forced into hard choices as a result of his past, and his remarkably stubborn and dogged character. By the end of this first book, you can see the overall arc of Prager's life stretching forward into the books to come: and we expect that future tales using the same frame will be loaded with irony. We expect that each book will show him moving forward through the past towards a crisis we know is coming, and towards a resolution of that crisis we can be reasonably sure will occur.

Coleman's prose is smooth, tight, and eminently readable without being simplistic. Prager is drawn in confident, spare strokes. The dialog is not showy, but it rings pretty true. The narrative is hard-boiled, without descending into cliché: Prager both is, and is not, the typical detective. He is not a super-cop, or a super detective. He is not an isolated loner. He is not mindlessly tough, nor overly forgiving. Prager seems like a real guy, with real abilities and gifts, real limitations, and real points that the reader can like, and fault him for.

Redemption Street. Apparently, Redemption Street was a classic sophomore slump book for Coleman. He thought it was really good, but the buying public, for whatever reason, did not. I think the answer probably lies somewhere in between. The pacing in Redemption Street is not quite as smooth as in Walking the Perfect Square; it's also possible that the historical background in the first Prager novel that might have appealed to a wider (more secular?) audience is exchanged for a historical background that's more rooted in the Jewish culture of the American north east (specifically the era of the "Borscht Belt" summering hotel resorts). A tragic incident we learned about tangentially in the first Prager book is the centrepiece of this one -- Prager is drawn into an investigation into the death of a boyhood crush. Coleman does a very good job of building Redemption Street upon the character foundation he established in Walking the Perfect Square, without really demanding that you've read the first, or wasting time in useless as-you-know-Bob rehashing of material already known from the first book.

That said, the framing narrative of the first book lays irony on with a trowel in this one. The activities of this book are set after the "past" events in book one, but before the time of book one's frame, and thus we know where Prager is headed, and the character studies in Redemption Street help paint out the sketches of that journey.

The details of the plotting do have twists and turns in them, some surprises await, but are foreseeable to a certain extent. Coleman's mystery does a bit of a double-twist in the end, showing you the right and then hitting you a bit with the left, but overall the real story here is not entirely surprising. That said, I'd urge you not to read Coleman's afterwords before you read the story, unless you like to have the plot spoilered a bit for you.

Everything that's there to like in the first book is provided here, and improved upon. The pacing is a wee bit slower, but the characters are drawn out a bit more. We get a fuller picture of Prager and his nobility and his flaws.

The Prager book that Coleman apparently hit his strong stride with was the next one in the series, The James Deans (winner of Barry, Shamus, Anthony awards; nom'd for Edgar, Gumshoe, Macavity). But I'm not at all sad that my neuroses compel me to read books "in order". Redemption Street is a good book (not perhaps as strong as the opener, but still, pretty darned good). Good enough to have me fairly eagerly looking forward to getting into the next.


If you like hardboiled crime fiction, or detective stories with protagonists that are interestingly off-centre, you really ought to try Coleman's Prager books. The entire series seems readily available in reprint editions from Busted Flush Press, and I'd strongly encourage you to support Busted Flush -- they're reprinting Daniel Woodrell as well, and he's just as worth reading as Coleman evidently is.

Highly recommended.

A book I just ordered from DriveThruRPG came with a small manufacturer's defect. A bit of bindery glue splotched onto a page, and it caused the paper to tear away between that page and the facing page.

DTRPG's customer service to rectify this situation was awesome (prompt, professional, and resolved the situation to my satisfaction), and I publicly commend them for it. As a result of this service experience, I will certainly be giving them future patronage.

Very quietly, while practically no-one is watching, Melissa Leo is becoming one of the bravest, strongest, most talented actresses of our generation. If someone asked me "who is the US's answer to Hellen Mirren?" I suspect that after some thought I might say "Melissa Leo."

I don't rightly remember how it exactly happened I discovered the writing of Cathrynne M Valente, otherwise known here as yuki_onna. But I do know these things:

• She was immediately identified as a good egg, and a good writer (in ways that I, as a reader, appreciate and enjoy), by several friends and acquaintances I trust (some of whom are writers themselves, or reviewers, or fans, or just plain old folk, like me, not particularly connected to the genre writing or fandom community).

• I picked up one of her "The Orphans Tales" volumes from the local library, read 50 pages in, and immediately ordered it, its companion volume, and her novel Palimpsest. I find her writing lyrical, rich, approachable but deep and mythical: it's writing that (so far) seems to resonate with what I like from the SF&F-end of the genre stuff I read.

• Her educational background is as a classicist, and I find accord with what this has done for the way that she writes. She names things well. She doesn't just sprinkle around world-building and cultural elements as if they were doritos or knick-knacks -- they have weight and seem real and substantial, even when her tone is light and flippant.

• She has a new book that's just come out, the first volume of what (as far as I know) promises to be a major new project for her. To call it the culmination of a hell of a lot of work would, I gather, not be quite accurate. Rather, it might be the first public return on declarations of a hell of a lot of work, with more to come. This new book is called "The Habitation of the Blessed", and it bills itself as a "dirge for Prester John". (Who is Prester John, you ask? Well, she is only too happy to explain.)

• I will be buying her book. I hope to be buying this book directly from her, at her book reading at Longfellow Books in Portland, Maine. I may even buy other books of hers that I don't already own, if they have 'em. As you may know, such a trip will be a bit far afield for me, and thus An Adventure™.

• Because I don't have the book yet, I cannot yet have read it. I thus have no idea what it is like, and it would be irresponsible of me to say anything more about my response to it. But I will promise to write a comment about it, after I have secured and read my copy. Whether this will motivate you to seek it out yourself... well... I don't know whether your taste is in accord with my own. Plus I do not have millionz of intarwebz followers, so my reach is rather small.

• She offers kewl prizes for the spreading of word about her work. It is partly in this endeavour that I make this post (see previous point about book unseen, unsecured, unread). I would like kewl stuff. I promise to share any kewl stuff, should it come my way by happenstance, with friends and family.

• The SF&F genre seems to me to be in an interesting place. There are really good writers in it. There are also scads and scads of formulaic and relatively mould-standard books as well. From what I've read so far, I think Valente falls into the former category: her writing reminds me of other folks I really like to read, like John Crowley, Gene Wolfe, Ursula Le Guin -- mostly because she seems really good at naming things, and because her worlds seem simple, human, but still, deeply deeply real. But, it also seems to me that the really good writers (or at least the writers I like) often don't get supported and continually published (in the same way that, often, really good TV shows that I like get cancelled).

So, if you're of a mind, try out one of her books. You might then want to buy some. I did.

I honestly wasn't prepared. When I found out that Sparky Anderson had died I was struck by sadness: fond memories of my youth have moved on. It's odd to consider, but Sparky was to a certain extent key to my engagement with The Church Of Baseball over the years in a way that Cito and the Jays of 92 and 93 never were. I've never been a Tigers fan, but growing up, if the team wasn't the Jays, it was the Tigers. Have a good rest, Sparky.

Seen at work in lunch-room:
• Handsome Young Intern fellow fetches plastic fork out of drawer full of plastic cutlery next to sink, for lunch.
• HYI takes two steps back to lunch table with fork, bumps fork against his leg, and drops it on floor.
• HYI picks up fork, takes two steps right past sink, gets another fork out of drawer, and then pitches first fork into garbage.

I am boggled with the idiocy of this event on so many levels.

Stan-Van says (according to Tim Povtak) of Vincey:

"Everybody here just wants him to play the game the way he's played it through his career -- attacking the basket."

Excuse me, Mr VG, were you at all paying attention to Vincey's career here in the "tee dot"? Where, season after season, we heard constant commenting from broadcasters and pundits, "You know, the Raps would be in this game, if only Vince would live up to his promise and aggressively go to the rim..."

Vince's unwillingness to bring his game on a consistent and regular basis is the key to his disappointing career, to the Raps, to the Nets, and no doubt now, to the Magic. The Magic may in fact do well next year, but I rather doubt it will be at all thanks to Vince.

From Vince himself, we get:

"Just bring it. It's time to be me (again). I accept that. I understand that. It's been on my mind all summer. And I don't have a problem with it."

Wow. How refreshing. We've never heard anything like that from Mr Carter. If I only had a nickel, etc, etc, etc.

On the weekend, I finished off Mankell's "The Pyramid" a book of shorts and a novella that chronicle the career of Wallander up to (the very beginning of) "Faceless Killers". "The Pyramid" makes a clever change of pace to Mankell's previous depictions of Wallander: structurally and narratively.

Structurally, because to this point, all the Wallander tales had been novel length; narratively, because the stories in Pyramid have a strong anti-mystery component to them. We already know how the lives of many of these characters develop through the years: who lives, who dies, who remains faithful, who betrays, who leaves. The mysteries themselves are even more strongly in this direction than most of Mankell's Wallander stories: the conclusions seem to leap upon Wallander as if by chance, good or bad. Many of them seem to be united thematically by severe injury.

The stories in "The Pyramid" are strongly written, and serve as a nice counterpoint to the rest of Mankell's Wallander novels -- they are not the best or most compelling stories in the series about the dogged provincial policeman, but because of their differences from the established pattern they reward the reader, like seeing a sculpture from a different angle.

Well recommended for Mankell fans: don't start with this one, but if you've become attached to Kurt Wallander, then you should not miss it.

Rare response to a meme: post your photo taken now, un-altered, yoinked from pyat and yuki_onna.

( Only if you need to see me. )

Six.... Four. Three? How about six-effing-teen, and shut the hell up, you entitled punk.