Those little people were made by Theodore. I think they are adorable and I wish he were still working at woodcraft because he made so many projects that have a true "primitive" charm. I took them to Alexander a few years ago and I hope he found a good place to put them out. They really cheer up a window sill!!
I have been mostly in bed for the last few days so have been reading more than usual. Ben left me two police procedural kinds of books when he was here at Easter. I have now read The Sentry by Robert Crais; this one is a Joe Pike book.
Joe Pike is an enigmatic figure, a sort of superhero. I found him a little bit incredible in this book. And those dark glasses! He wears them day and night and when I read of that, all I can think of is my vision in my old age, when I go from spot to spot to try to concentrate every photon in the atmosphere on my page in order to be able to read it at all. Dark glasses, indeed. Who needs 'em?
Then I read Michael Connelly's third or fourth Hieronymus Bosch book, The Last Coyote. Aside from the protagonist's ridiculous name, I like those novels pretty well. Connelly is a good writer. So is Crais, for that matter, when it comes to putting sentences together to make some sense. Connelly is more subtle and goes deeper into his characters somehow.
In The Last Coyote, Bosch goes looking for a killer--the person who killed his mother long ago when he was a kid. It's an interesting chase. The people all come to life. When I thought that at last the story was over, it too had a long extension at the end when the real truth comes out. In this case, the extension was necessary to the story's ending. I thought it well written indeed.
I am not devoted to "mystery" novels as a rule. They are too gripping, too easy to read, and even if not too superficial, too light to consider as literature. You forget them as soon as you put them away. But Crais and Connelly, in their separate focuses, have one great thing in common: The City of Los Angeles. We lived in Los Angeles for several months in 1958-9. Think what it was like then, folks!! We were seeing the last of an era. I was fascinated by the place and never saw enough of it. Since then, the great surge of Hispanic and Asian immigrants has irrevocably changed the face of the place, and we will never see that old Los Angeles again. Have yall seen Blade Runner, that movie of the future? Those downtown scenes are so close to 21st century reality that it's uncanny, folks. And Crais and Connelly in their characters of Elvis Cole and Joe Pike and Harry Bosch and the Lincoln Lawyer, and via the Police Department of Los Angeles, are keeping it all alive on the page in front of us. I love that. Love it that when the guys are chasing from freeway to freeway, canyon to canyon, park to park, ravine to ravine, seedy neighborhood to home of palaces, we can follow along and say, "Oh yes! I know that place!" So viva the lot of them. YAZZYBEL
No comments:
Post a Comment