The Hungry Detective

Feast Day of Fools - James Lee Burke I have previously detailed my foolish decision to stop purchasing Mr. Burke's work. Now that I put more thought in to it I think I have done this before. Why I keep thumbing my nose at the author I consider the best crime fiction author is a mystery for the ages. Feast Day of Fools is the second book in the Hackberry Holland series. Which in turn is a companion to Billy Bob Holland books. I really dug those three books, and truth be told it was that series that brought me back into Mr. Burke's writing the first time. I'm still woefully behind... Poseidon's Arrow - Clive and Dirk Cussler I don't believe in guilty pleasures. The Dirk Pitt books are ridiculous, but they sure are a blast. Tons of action. They are are a mid-nineties action film of the best kind. Clive Cussler was one of the first authors I picked up and I never regret it every time I do. This books catches me up on the collection dating back to Dragon. ...

Jared and I drove away from Indianapolis four years ago. At this point we had attended the last three out of four Bouchercons. We were pros. San Francisco was financially our of reach, but St Louis was a year away, so maybe. Soon Cleveland and Albany would virtually be in our backyard. We attended none of them.  St. Louis was just far enough away. Cleveland rolled around right around the time I was trying to get out of town, and Albany is now a whole country away. Its been a bummer. The place is fun and it was always great to spend some time with my pal. So finally, Long Beach. I get to fill our a registration form. Make a hotel reservation. Awkwardly try to met authors. Go into the book room. Spend a lot of money. Ya know, fun stuff. Save your money Jared. Your kids can go to public school one more year...

I put off looking at my credit card statement for a few days. I had, indeed, spent a lot of money on books recently. Perhaps I should have been more concerned. I wasn't. What I knew was three years ago my interest in Crime Fiction switched off. I cast about trying to figure out what was wrong. I beat myself up about. This blog, the free books people were sending me, and 25 years of reading Crime Fiction will give you serious pause when suddenly you lose all interest. I was more concerned by that, so much more than the money. Three years ago was also the summer that the wife and I decided it was time to pull up stakes and give Rochester the long goodbye. It was the summer I would make and lose a number of friends due to geographic separation. It was the summer Wallace laid his head down for the last time. I wish I had given away the books sooner. Stopped reading so many authors who were not worth my time. Wished I had made the list. But I didn't. Timing, a friend told m...

I should have know things were about to get serious. The booth had my big four books. The Black Echo (with blue rebate band), The Beekeepers Apprentice by Laurie R. King, Heaven's Prisoners by James Lee Burke, and Lullaby Town by Robert Crais. Written in pencil on the inside of this particular copy of Lullaby Town was a price I had not seen since I started paying attention to the book. It has been well above $400 for decade, and this price made my throat close. Ms. King's book was reasonable as well, and the Burke was in my wheel house if, unfortunately for my purposes, inscribed to someone else. The Connelly loomed there on the shelf daring me to name a price that I would pay. And wouldn't you know it I hit right on its head. It was a steal at this price. I put it back on the shelf. I walked around giving the room one last shake, but much like The Vinegar Works I had already bought the book. I had a momentary debate about picking up the Crais as it was just as goo...

I was wrong of course. I wasn't going to find The Vinegar Works for cheaper. And like most things the money did not really matter. With each step up the street to find my wife and friends, the book became more and more mine. By the time we hugged our friends good-bye for the third time, I should have walked back across the street to save myself the eventual postage I would pay a week later. In the two weeks that followed I built a list of Crime Fiction books I planned to procure and picked a Gorey or two from his daunting catalog too focus my attention. Obviously, the next logical step was the Pasadena Convention Center. It had been a good long while since I had been on the floor of a proper book fair. Eleven of the thirteen years I lived in Rochester I went to the Rochester Antiquarian Book Fair. More than half those years I was able to survey the complete run of booksellers in fifteen minutes, and leave soon after. I do not want to bad mouth ROC too much. A few of those ye...

"I'll show you some treasures" In a bookstore, as in life, you wait your whole life to see treasures. And the owner of this shop; she had them. Three Books from Fantod Press 1+2. The Beastly Baby. The Wuggly Ump, The Vinegar Works, The Unstrung Harp, A Limerick, The Broken Spoke. Lovely stuff. I would have bought them all. Still laboring under the extreme delusion that I wasn't going to spend a lot of money I grabbed most of the books south of $50. The others were seriously out of my price range. I was just happy to see them. The two books that gave me serious pause were Mr. Gorey's first, The Unstrung Harp. At just over $100 I felt I could justify it based on it being his first and not in terrible condition. A small tear, a few chips but otherwise a very nice copy. The other was the three book collection entitled The Vinegar Works of which Mr. Gorey's most famous creation, The Gashlycrumb Tinies is apart. If a singular book can encapsulate an author'...

Friends had made the decision to marry near the small town of Hudson, New York. This part of New York is rabbit's warren of little burgs that are filled with many cutesy gift and antique stores for NYC residents during the weekends and Summer months. The wife and I traveled into Hudson to meet up with another set of old friends that we don't see nearly enough now that we are well across the country. What was a 5 minute ride a cross the Rip Van Winkle bridge for us was a three hour car trek for them. We are in there debt for the trouble they took to travel 6 hours round trip with two kids who seem to have excessive amount sass. Lunch was boozy and Mexican. And it turned into a walk around the three block main drag. The kids were bored by the adults, and promises of a cheap present for the ride home needed to be filled. While they hunted for something appropriate in a CVS. I ducked into bookstore. Immediately I knew that I would find Edward Gorey books. While the owner smoke...