This week’s Sunday Salon will be deferred until next week, thanks to a combination of circumstances: following up on a story of a soldier from the area where I live who was injured as the result of a suicide bombing attack in Afghanistan (I am a correspondent for a newspaper, whose full-time reporter is on vacation for the next two weeks), mowing our lawn (a necessary evil) and a nap brought on by the resulting headache from allergies.

I was planning on continuing to read The Outfit by Richard Stark, the third Parker novel (1963) as written by one of the many pseudonyms of Donald E. Westlake (the first nine of 27 have been rereleased last year and this year by the University of Chicago Press). I have written previously about Westlake/Parker here. I just finished the second Parker, The Man with the Getaway Face, last night and jumped right into this third one.

Alas, it was not to be today.

Despite that, this week was a pretty good week, reading- and blog-wise. I actually wrote two posts: Tuesday’s Meme Things: Traveling down Zzyyzx Road, finding loot and trivia, and Library Loot/Friday Finds Redux: New and improved! Now with a photo! and finished four books:

1. Dead Sleep by Greg Iles
2. The Narrows by Michael Connelly
3. Last Shot by Gregg Hurwitz
4. The Man with the Getaway Face by Richard Stark

I will leave you with a sample from The Outfit, a part in which Parker is going to see a mobster named Fairfax:

The heavy-set man came back, followed by Fairfax. Fairfax was tall and stately, graying at the temples, with a smartly clipped pepper-and-salt moustache. He was about fifty-five, and had obviously spent a lot of time in gymnasiums. He was wearing a silk Japanese robe and wicker sandals. He looked at Parker and frowned, “Do I know you.”

The new face came in handy sometimes. Parker said, “I work for Mr. St. Clair. You might of seen me around with him.”

“Mmmm.” Fairfox touched his mustache with the tips of his fingers. “Well’s what’s the message?”

Parker glanced meaningfully at the bodyguards. “Mr. St. Clair said I should keep it private.”

“You can speak in front of these men.”

“Well– it has to do with Parker.”

Fairfax smiled thinly. “Parker is the reason these men are here,” he said. “What about him?”

“He knocked over The Three Kings tonight.”

“He what?”

“He beat up Mr. St. Clair and the bartender. He walked off with thirty-four hundred dollars.”

“So he’s in New York.” Fairfax mused, stroking his moustache.

“He did, eh?” Fairfax glanced around at his three bodyguards. He smiled again, with scornful amusement. “I think we’re ready for him if he does come,” he said. “Don’t you.”

“No.”

Parker fired through his pocket…

I already did Library Loot hosted by Eva and Marg and Friday Finds hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading with my last post. However, as I mentioned then, my wife had the camera or so I thought (actually it was in my desk drawer, but I didn’t know it). Now that I have the camera, I thought I’d update my loot and finds with the photo and a review of what I’ve read and watched so far this week.

First, here’s the photo:

In addition to what I’ve already finished (The Narrows by Michael Connelly and the movie The Express), I still have left from the library, including several that I took out tonight:

• The Visitor, a movie that, in short, is about a man who returns to his NYC apartment to find two people living in it and the relationship that develops between him and the couple. For more on the movie, visit the site (click on the link).
• Milk, for which Sean Penn won a Best Leading Actor Oscar last year for his portrayal as the gay activist Harvey Milk and Dustin Black won a Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen Oscar.
• Flyboys, which stars James Franco and that’s all my wife needed to know for me to get it from the library.
• both Connelly’s The Closers and Echo Park, continuing the Harry Bosch series.
• The Bourne Legacy by Eric Van Lustbader, the continuation of Robert Ludlum’s Bourne series.
• Emperor: The Gates of Rome by Conn Iggulden, the first of a series about Julius Caesar.
• Lush Life by Richard Price, who also wrote Clockers and this book, which my wife read when I took it out of the library a couple of months ago (she said it was very good, so now I’m going to see for myself). Price also was a writer on the HBO series The Wire.
• and four by Agatha Christie: Murder at the Vicarage, Peril at End House, Thirteen at Dinner and Murder on the Orient Express. Sadly, I had to order The Sittaford Mystery, which chronologically comes between the first two mentioned, through interlibrary loan and will have to await reading until it arrives. However, I wanted to have them ready and waiting (okay, I’m obsessed) as part of the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge in which I am participating.

On Tuesday, I already mentioned  the books that my brother-in-law, Warren, loaned me this past weekend:

• a Parker novel by Richard Stark, The Man with The Getaway Face.
• another Parker novel by Richard Stark, The Outfit.
• Lemons Never Lie, another Stark novel.
• The Cutie by Westlake.
• Gun Monkeys by Victor Gischler, which was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel when it came out in 2001.

As for the last book pictured, it is the book that I am reading currently: Last Shot by Gregg Hurwitz. It is the fourth of a series, but Warren, who also loaned me this, told me that it is the faster paced of the first four. So I am going (waaaaay) out on a limb and trusting his judgment on this one. Usually I am a stickler for reading series in order, even before the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge, but for you, Warren, I will break my rule (at least this once).

So far, the book is a good one and better than the last book I read: Dead Sleep by Greg Iles that I finished earlier this week. I think I’ve been spoiled by Connelly, but that book by Iles (the first one I’ve read by him) didn’t hold up for me as well as I thought it might when I started it. It was decent, but it was by no means great, and I wouldn’t tell anyone to rush out and pick up a copy. Last Shot is somewhere between good and great at this point, but I’m only about three-quarters of the way through it so I’ll suspend my judgment until the end.

So what have you found at the library this week or just in general that has you obsessed?

Back to our regularly scheduled program, where I participate each Tuesday in book blogging meme activities:

It’s Tuesday … Where are You as hosted by raidergirl3:

This Tuesday, I’m with private detective Harry Bosch and FBI agent Rachel Walling on ZZyzx Road near Las Vegas as they are investigating the murders of six men in The Narrows by Michael Connelly. Bosch’s investigation, at first, is into the death of former FBI agent, Terry McCaleb, who apparently died of a heart attack. However, as Bosch starts to investigate, threads from his case cross with threads from the FBI investigation into the murder of the six men. The common thread: a serial killer known as The Poet, a former FBI head agent himself named Robert Backus.

*****

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading, with the rules pretty simple:  Grab your current read, open to a random page, share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page, BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!), and then share the author too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! I’m going to cheat just slightly on this and share two teaser sentences from a random page of my next read:

Parker studied them one by one, trying to decide. He crossed off the horsy nymphomaniac right away; when the armored car guards came in here for coffee and danish, that one would spend too much time thinking about their sex organs to wonder about the money they were guarding.

The book is The Man With The Getaway Face by Richard Stark, one of many pseudonyms for the writer Donald E. Westlake, whom I’ve only recently discovered thanks to my brother-in-law, Warren. For more on Westlake and Stark, see this post I wrote about them.

*****

Next up, I’m combining Library Loot hosted by Eva and Marg and Friday Finds also hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. The first focuses on books that you’ve checked out from the library; the second, books that you’ve come across that you want to read.

I would have had a picture to go with this but my wife took her camera with her today, so no picture.

So from the library, here’s what I got for this coming week:

• The Narrows by Michael Connelly, as previously mentioned.
• The Express, a movie about Ernie Davis, the first African-American to be awarded the Heisman Trophy. For me, the interest arose since he was from Elmira, N.Y., which is about 60 miles away from where I live.
• The Visitor, a movie that, in short, is about a man who returns to his NYC apartment to find two people living in it and the relationship that develops between him and the couple. For more on the movie, visit the site (click on the link).
• Milk, for which Sean Penn won a Best Leading Actor Oscar last year for his portrayal as the gay activist Harvey Milk and Dustin Black won a Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen Oscar.

I already watched The Express and can say that yes, it was another one of those football movies, but it was very well-done, and I highly recommend it.

As for my Friday Finds, I’m going to mention a few books that my brother-in-law loaned me this past weekend, including the previously mentioned The Man With The Getaway Face.

The others are:

• another Parker novel by Richard Stark, The Outfit.
• Lemons Never Lie, another Stark novel.
• The Cutie by Westlake.
• Gun Monkeys by Victor Gischler, which was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel when it came out in 2001.

*****

Last but not least is this week’s Weekly Geeks, where this week’s theme is trivia…

…since I’ve been talking about Donald E. Westlake and Michael Connelly, I’ll present a little trivia about them both. Try not to Google if you can.

1. Name a movie for which Westlake wrote a screenplay.
2. Name a movie inspired by one of his books.
3. Name one of Connelly’s book that was made into a movie.
4. Name the actor who starred in the movie.
5. And a relatively simple one, name the newspaper for which Connelly wrote before he became a successful crime author.

Already, I spied one of the more interesting takes on this week’s Weekly Geeks theme as done by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise. Her subject: Agatha Christie, of course.

Title: Medicus, A Novel of the Roman Empire
Author: Ruth Downie
Publication Year: 2006
Genre: Mystery
Count for Year: 15
Pages: 386

How I discovered

A friend of mine, John, actually was the one to discover this when at a bookstore. I believe the book might have been in the bargain bin. However, he thought it looked interesting because he had read a series set in ancient Rome by Stephen Saylor previously. Since he knew I also loved Saylor’s Roma Sub Rosa series, he sent this to me along with the first four of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith. While I have yet to get to them (although my wife did and has now read everything up until the most recent one), I did get to this.

The setup

Roman Army medic Gaius Petreius Ruso has come to Britannia to make a fresh start. Within days he finds himself landed with a female corpse that nobody else wants to deal with, and a local slave girl who won’t talk to him. He’s also fallen foul of the dreaded hospital administrator at Deva (modern-day Chester), and a senior centurion wants to strangle him. The last thing he wants to do is investigate the murders of local barmaids – and naturally, his handsome and spectacularly lazy colleague Valens is no help at all.

Things can be tough on the edge of the Empire – not only for a civilised man, but for the women he seems fated to gather around him.

– a description of the book from Downie’s website

I was more than ready for this book based on the description from my friend John and also because I had loved Saylor’s series set in a similar time. For the most part, I was not disappointed as Downie wove a story that while not as good as Saylor’s yet definitely has the potential to become as good, although she will be hard pressed to be better than Saylor’s series, as it continues.

Unlike Saylor’s protagonist, Gordianus, who is hired in the first novel Roman Blood to be an investigator for Cicero, Downie’s protagonist Gaius Petreius Ruso is not an investigator. As the description above describes him, Ruso is an Army medic recently stationed in Brittania. However, when prostitutes from a local bar began getting killed, and the second spear, the man who should by rights do the investigation doesn’t, Ruso, in good conscience, has no choice but to investigate the murders.

In a subplot, Ruso also has no choice but to rescue an injured slave girl, Tilla, from the hands of her abusive owner — a device similar to one employed by Saylor with a slave girl with whom Gordianus falls in love and eventually marries.

I’ll be honest that I’m hard pressed to pull one section of the book as a sample of Downie’s writing. Nothing exactly stood out, because it all flowed together fairly seamlessly.

However, in a telephone conversation the other night with my friend John, he reminded me of the humor that Downie uses throughout her book. He said for him this short interaction Ruso had with a landlady where he was going to put up Tilla:

“Do you have mice?”

She frowned. “The girl is on a special diet?”

“I don’t mean on the menu. I mean running around. Wild mice.”

This is just one sample of the subtle humor that is found throughout the book and makes the book work.

One last note, like Saylor in his series, Downie here adds an author’s note to place the book in its historical context and like Saylor’s author’s notes, it fleshes out the details just enough to put the icing on the cake, as it were.

Of course, I’m not to give you any of those details. That would spoil the icing when you get there.

My final analysis: 4 out of 5, not because I didn’t think it was as good as it could be, but I think it will get better in the next few that Downie writes. In her defense, though, this was her first novel.

My rating system:

5- Classic, must read
4- Worth owning a copy
3- Worth picking up at library
2- Worth skimming at the bookstore
1- Worth being a doorstop

Book 2 of the series, Terra Incognita, is now available in paperback from Bloomsbury Press. For more information, click here. Book 3 of the series, Persona Non Grata, will be available in the U.S next month in hardcover: information here.

Earlier in the week, I signed up for Natasha at Maw Books Blogs’ challenge called Bloggiesta. In a nutshell, the challenge, which ran from 8 a.m. Friday until 8 a.m. today, was to catch up on your blog.

I planned to spend 10 hours, which was a lofty goal on a weekend where I already was committed to helping out at two different places for a local festival and a work assignment last night on top of that. Needless to say, I didn’t come close to reaching that goal.

Out of 13 books, I reviewed three and started on a fourth review, but didn’t finish yet. The three I reviewed, all in one post were books by Donald E. Westlake:

• Somebody Owes Me Money by Donald E. Westlake
• The Hunter by Richard Stark
• The Ax by Donald E. Westlake

Stark is one of many pseudonyms Westlake uses.

The fourth book on which I started a review was Medicus: A Novel of the Roman Empire by Ruth Downie. I will attempt to get that one done later today.

I did accomplish two other things as part of the challenge:

1. I added a badge to my sidebar: Weekly Geeks. I had it there previously, but somehow within the last couple of months, I accidentally deleted it. As it was the first meme group with which I started, and to which I periodically contribute, it is a necessity that it be there.
2. I had my blog graded on a site called Website Grader as part of a mini-challenge set by Ruth at Bookish Ruth. I received a 93 percent grade for this blog. I also had my humor blog, Unfinished Rambler, graded and it received a 94 percent.

Total time spent on the whole challenge: about four hours, including twittering about grading system with Ruth and others. While well short of the 10 hours to which I challenged myself, I am glad to have just spent some time on this blog as too often I have neglected this blog for Unfinished Rambler, which in contrast is a silly dalliance to this.

****

Footnote: One of the things I wanted to do as part of the challenge was to organize my Google Reader, including adding author and book blogs of people that I follow on twitter. That will continue today and throughout this week. I also want to work on commenting on other blogs. To that end, I’m off to comment on at least 10 wrapup posts and also hopefully along the way those who also participate in The Sunday Salon. Maybe I’ll see you over at your blog along the way.