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How to Stick a Landing Without Trying

I closed out the last of the Clive Cussler books about a month ago. Bit of a personal victory for me here as I don't think I have been caught up on the Dirk Pitt novels in ten plus years. I moved on to the latest, and seemingly last, of the Sean Duffy books by Adrian McKinty, POLICE AT THE STATION AND THEY DON'T LOOK FRIENDLY.

Quick aside... I was able to type that title without looking...small victories people. Small victories.

I have been reading Mr. McKinty since the beginning. I called DEAD I MAY WELL BE the best book of the last decade. I have never written a truer statement by the by.....

Just another quick aside... I kind of believe that everything from the two-thirds point in DEAD I MAY WELL BE through the rest of the Michael Forsythe trilogy is a fever dream. My primary evidence is that there is an escape from a Mexican prison that strikes me as.................unlikely.

Now. One could quibble that the start for Mr. McKinty is ORANGE RHYMES WITH EVERYTHING. Those who may quibble very well might include author, Adrian McKinty, as it was the book he wrote and published fire years before his other first book, DEAD I MAY WELL BE. I am relived, in part, that not even Mr. McKinty's website alludes to his first, first book. And now that I think of it for an author I hold in the highest regard I can't even say I am completist. While I own THE SUN IS GOD, I have never in my life heard of a book called DEVIANT that was published in 2011. And then there are the other YA novels I can only claim partial credit for reading because my sister has read them..... All of this is troubling for me. Fair weather fan I guess....sorry about that, Adrian!

Anyway this book has brio. Eddie Izzard describes George Clooney's character in Ocean's 13 as having brio, and in so doing a word that might be difficult to quantify is expressed as succinctly as could be. I guess, of course, unless you hate those movies to which I ask 'Do you hate fun?'

The problem with a word like brio is that it says more about me using a .50 cent word than does about the thing I aim to describe......so.......

As with all the books in the Sean Duffy series, POLICE AT THE STATION AND THEY DON'T LOOK FRIENDLY, is full of dick-ish charms that are well worth your time.

I've picked up a couple books since then SINCE WE FELL by Dennis Lehane, and UNSUB by Meg Gardiner. More on those in a bit.

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