The Hungry Detective

  First image from Live By Night the latest Dennis Lehane novel to be directed by Ben Affleck has appeared. Here is the accompanying article from Indiewire . What can you say about one singular image from a film that will include a hundred thousand or so? It looks good. I'm a sucker for big fields of grass, what can I say? I have enjoyed all of Ben Affleck's directing efforts to date, even if I wasn't wowed by any of them. I don't mean to damn him with faint praise. He is a solid, unpretentious director of capital m 'Movies'. And even if he wasn't making the best thing Dennis Lehane has written in the last ten years I would still go see his next effort. The movie is slated for a 2017 release which I'm not certain should be believed. In spite of the film already vacating a Fall 2016 date, if the movie is even kind of  good, dollars to donuts it sneaks into a late 2016 release for Award show consideration. A 2017 release date seems more acc...

In June I bought a collection of Edward Gorey books via an auction, but lets go back a minute. In the Summer of 2014 an Edward Gorey site I frequent mentioned an auction of a significant Gorey Collection. A majority of the the books on offer were limited numbered editions, and at the time most were out of my league. I did have my eye on a few things, but the day of the auction all but one spiraled out of responsible financial reach. The one book I did get, The Silent Film , I was the sole bidder. There was a companion auction that fall. I scanned and passed on all of the Gorey titles. A few books, a lot of paper. None of the books sparked with me. Of course it turns out that a book, The Dripping Faucet  was picked up for $250 plus buyer's premium. Flash forward to February of this year. I went to a book show in Pasadena. I chatted with a book seller about his Gorey's for sale. Now I don't think he had a copy of   The Dripping Faucet, but he did explained the u...

Not at Bouchercon this year and it is a bummer. There was a long layoff between my attendance at Indianapolis in 2009 and Long Beach last year. Of course being there reminded me of all things I love about Crime Fiction and Bouchercon. It is a great place to be among something I dearly love. What is troubling as I look over Bouchercon past, present, and future is the startlingly few West coast B'Cons. Before Long Beach last year the last West coast B'Con was San Francisco in 2010.  After Raleigh this year we are looking at New Orleans, Toronto, and St. Petersburg. After that there is a bid for Dallas in 2019, before we get a to possible Sacramento B'Con in 2020.  Dating back to 2000 West Coast Bouchercons are a bit of rare bird. Long Beach in 2014, SF in 2010, Las Vegas in 2003. Thats it. Add Sacramento in 2020 and that is four Bouchercons in 20 years. Maybe that's just the way it shakes out. The very early years of B'Con are on the West Coast, so this i...

Back in April I picked up the last two missing Dave Robicheaux books, Heaven's Prisoners and A Morning for Flamingos , for the collection. I feel like this is an oft to told tale, but that may just be for Mrs. Hungry Detective. However in regards to Heaven's Prisoners I thought I would have comfortably owned this book fifteen years ago. Back in the nascent days of the collection that book along with Neon Rain were the most expensive books I could have purchased. It was 1995, and  I had yet to really dig into Crime Fiction in a serious way. The only other authors I bought regularly were John Grisham, Walter Mosely and Clive Cussler. I had just picked up the first two Dennis Lehane books, and Michael Connelly and Robert Crais were a year or so away for being read for the first time. Neon Rain   turned out to be the most expensive book I bought until two years ago when I bought Michael Connelly's The Black Echo with blue rebate band. When I bought Neon Rain I was a ...

Thirty is now fourteen. I am at the halfway point of The List . The List was born out of a desire to reinvigorate my interest in Crime Fiction. Almost two years into this plan and I feel good about where I am...emotionally....physically...with Crime Fiction Although difficult to quantify I knew that the smart play two years ago was to focus on my core authors as a way to rekindle my interest in Crime Fiction. Chasing new authors with 'hot' debuts had lead me to a kind of ruin. My shelves became littered with authors and their two book deals that had come to nothing. A bunch three out of five star books that passed the time but never excelled. The other effect this plan had was to appease my desire to buy books. All those disappointing debuts that amounted to so much nothing still needed replacing. The promise of buying a book is completely separate from the shrug that it can elicit when I read the last page. Filling the gaps of my core authors also filled the need I have...

[Editor's Note: I have massaged this piece for longer than I care to admit. One should never openly denigrate ones work, but in wondering why this has taking me so long to finish I confront two options. One, I was trying to get it 'right,' and that is true up to a point. I am driving at something with this post that I am never quite able to quantify, hence the endless editing. Which then leads me into the second reason, that it just doesn't make any sense. The post starts by making a point then goes about proving it...or not proving it in this case..in the least effective way possible.]  I wish my ennui with Amazon had something to do with any one of the corporate messes that they have found themselves in over the last ten years, but that is not the reason. In a previous post I figured, through some suspect math, that I spend $700 a year on new Crime Fiction. While this number does not account for used, and rather expensive back catalog books, it is a useful number...