I'm pretty sure that Nino Ricci articulates my position far better than I can, or have time to. Please read his open letter to our current PM.

I've never been a fan of Harper, his policies, his tactics, or his party. I can't honestly say I've ever had much respect for anyone leading his party, since the days of Preston Manning (while I never really can remember thinking I'd agreed with Manning, I'm not sure I had the same low opinion of his integrity or behaviour that I've had for anyone running his party's show since his retirement).

"At least he's not Stockwell 'Doris' Day" is not sufficient or compelling reason to want to support Harper.

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.

Apparently, HB Fenn has gone bankrupt. I'm not sure how bad this news is for the general book scene in Canada, but I'm sure it's not exactly good (well, reasonably sure, anyway).

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.

I had probably only casually heard of The Decemberists. And then a friend of mine who is a music nut (he's even in a band, which to me seems a bit of a novelty and rather special) pointed out that he was a Decemberists fan and insisted that I listen to their newest album on NPR's First Listen.

Woah. I don't know about their entire catalog, but "The King Is Dead" in particular aligns strongly with what I'm liking to listen to right now. It's nigh perfect. Shortish, very smartly crafted roots-folk-guitar-pop with tight harmonies and obliquely spiritual lyrical vibe. One might almost call it American Myth Pop. It evokes the best of REM's heady middle years, but with perhaps a bit more musicality and less edge. And it certainly helps that Gillian Welch provides harmony vocals on many of the tracks: carefully constructed to draw me in.

You might not like it, but I think it's definitely worth a listen to see if you will.

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."

"Anything that impinges on Ireland's competitiveness is going to be a big thing for Google, including corporation tax." John Herlihy (head Google Ireland)

Perhaps the Don't Be Evil Dublin local office is just trying to figure out how it's going to pay for that 10% pay-rise they handed their 2,000 employees. Oh, and DBE (Dublin) is apparently not the only ones trying to run the local government. Intel (4,000 employees) is also getting antsy.

The Germans are, apparently, fully behind Ireland's "courageous [proposed] reform policies". Wow. Good for you, Deutschland. But, it might be a great idea if you made your press release sound a teeny bit less like "I've called you all here to tell you that I'm giving a vote of full confidence in our head coaching staff" or "We're waiting for the Dail to approve a rate increase so that more companies decide that working in the rest of Europe, including beautiful Germany, is an awesome idea".

PS -- Ms Merkel's press relations: anyone who's watched "Yes, Minister" or "Yes, Prime Minister" knows damn well what the adjective "courageous" really means in neuvo-politico...

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.

Very different to the movie, a quick read, and pretty unrelentingly bleak, "The Grifters" is perhaps one of Jim Thompson's best known books (because of the Frears' film from Westlake's adaptation script). This is the first of Thompson's books that I've read through (currently working on "The Killer Inside Me" as well), but it's strong and I recommend it, especially if you like the dark noir crime genre.

One of the really interesting differences between the film and the book is Westlake's excision of the Carol Roberg character. It seems to me that the book provides Roberg as a means to show the reader that people can and do rise above their circumstances, are capable of making ethical and moral choices even in the face of hideous emotional difficulty. I'm not sure that Roberg's role is needed in the film: it's certainly not central at all to the triangular struggle between Roy, Lilly, and Moira/Myra. But it lends the book a balance that the film must depend upon the viewers to supply on their own.

I very much enjoyed Thompson's book, and recommend it without reservation, but only if that sort of thing is to your taste. None of the principal characters are sympathetic, although Roy teeters on the brink of sympathy as Thompson does make some effort to portray his internal conflict. In the end, though, Roy's nature is so far gone that his glimpses of movements towards decency were pretty much groping around in the dark: knowing that he was broken, knowing that there was supposed to be something he might be able to do to fix himself, but just not having the emotional equipment to form an adequate articulation toward that regard. Whether or not Dillon is, in the end, redeemable and worthy of our sympathy is a crux of the narrative: to a certain extent I rather feel that Dillon deserves sympathy only in the way that any person deserves sympathy, and the very fact that Roy, Lily, Moira, and others like them, live in the world without this basic connection to other human beings points at the thing that distinguishes us from the single-minded predators that the Dillons and Langtrys of the world typify.

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.