Book Review: Killing Floor

All right – who’s been hiding these Jack Reacher books from me?  Seriously – no one is willing to admit it?  Fine then, we’ll do it your way.

Normally I’m a guy who appreciates three specific genres: Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction, but every once in a while I find an author and character in other genres I can’t help but want to follow; Lucas Davenport in the Sandford’s Prey series, or Spenser by Robert B. Parker, Heck if I’m being honest even those Gallagher siblings in Nora Robert’s Irish Trilogy, grabbed me as characters and demanded that I follow them through however many books they appear in.

And now I’ve got Lee Child’s Jack Reacher.  What’s funny is although my friend Ron brought it up as his book for book club, Reacher is mentioned in a throwaway line in one of my picks from a few years back Under the Dome, by Stephen King, as a reference for one of the characters in that book – which to be fair, Ron mentioned at the time.

So last month I dig into the first Jack Reacher novel, Killing Floor, and I’ve got to say the character grabbed me from page one.  While sitting at a restaurant, Reacher sees a number of police pull up in cruisers, jump out of their cars and run straight for the diner.  Looking around he casually notes the other people present and immediately deduces that the police are there for him.  For me, this puts Reacher, who is about to get into a whole lot of trouble, in a bizarre position of control, a position he maintains throughout most the book.

I guess I would classify the book as “Men’s Adventure,” in that Reacher is almost always a man of action moving through each scene like a super-cool guy who is “The best at what he does, but what he does isn’t pretty” and the part of my brain that loves characters like these, from Spenser to Schwarzenegger’s Dutch in Predator, just eats this stuff up.  The book took me about three days to finish reading it on the bus and over lunch hours and I loved it.

Sitting on my desk in front of my right now is the second Reacher book Die Trying and assuming it’s as good as the first I’ve definitely found a new series that I’m going to have to start following.

So thanks Ron – very fun book and the beginnings of what look to be a very cool series.

Book Review: Sixkill

Author Robert B. Parker passed away in January of 2010 (which I wrote about here) and since then I’ve slowly but surely been working my way through the remaining books he wrote during his lifetime. On Friday I finished Sixkill, his final novel and honestly, it was a little bitter-sweet.

The story features his main protagonist (Spenser – a Boston Private Investigator) attempting to solve the murder of a young girl who was found dead in a hotel with a movie star named Jumbo Nelson. Like all of his books, I found it engaging, full of action and great one-liners. For me, these novels work best as a character study of the main character. Spenser sits for me as one of my favourite detectives in fiction (the others include Brother Cadfael, Sherlock Holmes, and Miles Vorkosigan) as he comes across as a bit of thug, but at the same time has one of the most straight-forward views I’ve ever come across in fiction. If there is a problem, he works to solve it, if he can’t solve it directly; he sits around and makes trouble until there is something he can do.

It’s funny, but as I was heading through the last few chapters of the book I kept taking pauses (I was reading on the bus and would wait until the bus made its next stop), I was really enjoying the story, but knowing that this would be my last first-time reading a Parker novel, I really wanted to savor it, and you know what.

That guy could really write.

Things I've Noticed: Sometimes it's easy to forget the books you want to read

As we begin counting down the hours left of 2010, I started thinking of the books that came out this year I haven't got around to reading yet, the ones I mean to read but simply haven't had the time to check out.

Here are the four books of 2010 I haven't got around to yet, and am really looking forward to reading.

Blue-Eyed Devil and Painted Ladies by Robert B. Parker

I came to Parker late, reading his first novel in August of 2006, but from that point on, I read one of his books a month until 2009, when I caught up with his current books. Basically they are detective stories, featuring either Spenser (the basis for Spenser for Hire), Jesse Stone or Sunny Randall. All of his books are a fun read and as he passed away earlier this year, I've both been looking forward to, and dreading reading his last few works. I know I'll like them, but I'll be sad when there won't be any more new ones for me.

I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett

I started reading Terry Pratchett books in June of 2005, again at the rate of one a month and if you've never tried any of his books, definitely give them a shot - they are just the perfect mix of comedy and fantasy, and they also happened to inspire my online name, Bookmonkey00k. This book is the fourth in a series focusing on a young witch called Tiffany and her varied adventures.

The Last Run, by Greg Rucka

Over the last few years, my tastes in non-genre works have moved into the spy genre. Earlier this year my wife and I watched possibly the coolest spy series I've ever seen; The Sandbaggers, a gritty '70s era show out of the UK focusing on the people who send out the people on the missions that help keep the world safe (if you haven't seen it, the series is definitely worth a viewing). Comic book wise, I took the time this year to read Greg Rucka's Queen & Country series, which, after telling a story through four large graphic novels, moved into a couple of prose novels to wrap things up. In October, the latest book in his series has come out, and I'll definitely be checking it out in January.

Keeping on top of Genre, the Weeklies

Last Friday I began looking at my process of keeping up-to-date with Genre news, focusing on my daily schedule. When it comes to keeping on top of genre news each week, there are a few websites I stop at and a bit of housekeeping to do.

The Websites:

Mania.com

Mania.com actually used to be Cinescape - the websites connected to the genre magazine of the same name. The focus is largely on SF, but they do give some space to comics, horror, fantasy and manga. The site itself breaks news down into different categories - lets users add scoops they've found elsewhere and (thankfully) allows you to search past articles. I probably could spend a lot more than just a weekly visit there - but as I try to balance my obsessiveness with my regular life, I just visit the site at lunch of Fridays.

Author Sites

One of my favourite things about Web 2.0 is that many authors not only have websites, but also have conversations with fans on those sites. I follow a number of Author sites (my favourite two are NeilGaiaman.com and StephenKing.com), which allow me to keep up with news about upcoming books or even short stories appearing in other books, but following these sites also point me to other authors and films I really dig (It was a mention by both Stephen King and Peter David in the same week that first sent me over to Robert B. Parker).

The Process:

Throughout the week I take notes on upcoming stories or movies I'm interested in (usually on whatever I'm using for a bookmark at the moment), and at the end of the week I've got to put it all together (pictured left). Basically it breaks down as follows:

Books:

Any upcoming book I've noted down gets checked out at fantastic fiction, as they usually have the relsease date noted - then I'll email the titles and dates to myself.

Comics:

As there is so much going on in the world of Comics - I do my best to follow bloggers and word of mouth (at one of my book clubs last week, the titles Unwritten and Chew were mentioned so I'll follow them up this weekend). Basically I start by seeing if my library has a copy (why pay if you can get it for free) and if not I'll look for online reviews. Any comics that I can find through friends or at the library get requested, the rest get emailed to myself.

Movies:

I use an online movie rental service called zip.ca - it's similar to Netflix in the States. You create a queue of movies you'd like to see and as they become available you are mailed them. Zip allows you to put movies on hold as soon as they get into the theatre. This allows me to keep a list of all the movies I'd like to see on someone elses site and ensures I don't miss out on as many as I did before we started using zip.

Whew - that's a lot of compiling I do each week - it never seems that big until you start explaining it. Next Friday we'll look at my monthly regime.

RIP Robert B. Parker

I am a huge fan of genre fiction. Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction fill my bookshelves at home and I am always on the lookout for new genre fiction at the libraries and in the stores. So keeping that in mind, a non-genre author has to be really REALLY good to keep my attention. One of the best was Robert B. Parker (pictured left) who died on Monday at age 77.

A couple years back I got into reading author biographies and blogs and started to notice that all sorts of my favourite authors (Stephen King and Peter David for example), talked about how they were always looking forward to the new Robert B. Parker book.

Doing some quick research I found that his books were detective novels, not normally my thing, but hey, I was up for something new. So back in 2004 I picked up his first Spenser novel, The Godwulf Manuscript, and I was hooked. His books are fast-paced, action-packed and in many places laugh-out-loud funny.

My personal favourite is Early Autumn (pictured right), where Spenser becomes a sort of father figure to a boy called Paul, simply suggesting that every problem can be worked at, and every situation can be made better.

At the rate of one book a month I had just caught up with his current book last month. There are still a couple works to be published, but it's a shame to know that soon I'll have read the last of the books written by this incredible writer.

If you haven't tried his books yet, I envy you, reading them is a real treat.