Found a few good things to buy in Halifax, then went up to Cape Breton to do some more work on the Back Forty. Spotty Internet, low battery, no electricity. That’s it for this week… More >>
Archives for September 2013
The Wrong Guy
Short road trip, but a long day. I didn’t pull into my Quality Inn until about 9:30 p.m. Kicked off my shoes with a weary sigh, poured me a whiskey, and flipped open the day’s McNews. I must confess that USA Today is one of my great illicit road pleasures, right up there with Krispy […] More >>
“The report of my death was an exaggeration”
Peter Blackman spreads his wares Seems hard to believe that, just a year ago, I was writing the obituary of the New Hampshire Antiquarian Bookseller Association Book Fair. This event, one of the longest running in the trade, had just been cancelled owing to lack of response from New Hampshire dealers. It was a sad […] More >>
The Best Blurb I Never Got
Elmore “Dutch” Leonard is my hero. His crime stories are great, but it’s his westerns – written at the beginning of his career – that really get me. Sentence to sentence Leonard can hold his own with Hemingway, and his plots are so soundly constructed and deeply satisfying that two of them, at least, have […] More >>
Blue Monday
Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe was a jaded knight-errant with a taste for wisecracks. Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op, by comparison, was a blunt instrument. A dumpy middle aged guy, tough as nails, with an engine that wouldn’t quit. They’re both wonderful characters, and I know their voices as well as I know the voice of an […] More >>