Recommended Recreation

quick reviews

Thomas Perry, prolific and undaunted, has released another flawless contemporary thriller. I like everything Perry writes but Pro Bono showcases the master in top gear. After I started the book, I met a friend for dinner, and told them frankly, “It’s so great to see you, but I almost would rather be still reading the new Thomas Perry right now.” (They are also into this stuff, so they were delighted rather than offended.)

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I’ve kept my eye on Duane Swierczynski ever since the beginning of his career. California Bear is his latest, and it’s a wild ride with a touching backstory. Swierczynski’s output is hard to sum up in a word; at this point he might even be considered an innovator in the genre. California Bear is blurbed by James Patterson and Michael Connelly but those conventional crime authors are not at all the right reference for Swierczynski’s fantastical or downbeat conceits. I started this one “cold,” not knowing a thing about it, and I recommend others to do the same.

Duane is also on Substack.

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My wife encouraged me to investigate The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy. It was a refreshing change of pace: superb prose, the Southern novel, the ‘80s, a doorstop bestseller from back in the day when a significant percentage of the American public read fiction.

Conroy can write about animals! Honestly the scenes with animals in The Prince of Tides are some of the best things I’ve ever read.

That sent me back to a simpler, shorter panoramic American novel, Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow. I read this a lot when I was young, and it is still great. On this go-round, I appreciated how much harder Conroy was working the written word than Doctorow, although I think Conrow borrowed from Doctorow for the final climax.

I may look at McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove next….

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Heist movies are a great use of cinema. On Sunday night in Boston I entered an AMC and enjoyed Den of Thieves 2: Pantera. While I viewed the original Den of Thieves on my laptop, the Pantera experience was good enough that I am vowing to go out to movies more.

There’s nothing new to be done in a heist movie, not since the 1950s. What matters is how they fill the container, and Pantera does the job. The humor was excellent, I really enjoyed watching Gerard Butler and O'Shea Jackson Jr. goof off together.

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Sarah Weinman talks to Robert Littell at The Crime Lady. There’s a movie of The Amateur coming out, but more importantly Littell has a new book, Bronshtein in the Bronx.

Littell is 90. I read all of his espionage, and thought that The Amateur and The Company were among the best American examples of the form. (Usually brainy espionage is the preserve of the British.)

Robert Silverberg also just turned 90 a few weeks ago. At his height Silverberg was wildly prolific. Lawrence Block recommended Dying Inside as one of Silverberg’s best.