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CRY BABY + A PRIVATE CATHEDRAL - Review

Curious occurrence that both books are written as flashbacks. I could not reconcile why this was the right time tell these stories this way. Still, both have The Hungry Detective's strongest recommendations.

 CRY BABY - Mark Billingham

Mr. Billingham is a closer. Which is to say that he knows how to bring to bare the weight of all that has come before in a book's closing moments. In the case of CRY BABY the closing moments certainly calmed some general qualms about why a flashback story now, especially as a milestone book, Mr. Billingham's 20th. There must be something there, right? There is no acknowledgement in previous books, no cryptic references to the events in previous books about this story. Regardless of this semi-frustrating structure, CRY BABY is great, and Mr. Billingham has not missed in quite some time.  

A PRIVATE CATHEDRAL - James Lee Burke

"I'm talking about the acknowledgment of mortality, and not the kind that slips up on you in hospice or on the battlefield filled with the cawing of carrion birds or by way of a drunk driver bouncing over a curb into a playground. I'm talking about seeing the Seventh Seal at work and a string of medieval serfs and liege lords and virginal maidens wending their way across a hilltop to a valley dark as oil, their silhouettes blowing like pieces of carbon in the wind."

Most days I get on my knees and thank the deep and holy spirit that I am alive to read the words of James Lee Burke.

Current Read - RIGHTEOUS - Joe Ide
To Be Read - Down to stragglers and the need to buy/borrow books to read others. Obviously this number will never be zero. An honest number is 4 as I own 3 but need to borrow a couple read them.
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