Hit Parade -- Lawrence Block
So, there's something wonderful
about this deadpan description of a hitman with existential angst, but only if you like Block's schtick: the carefully debated jokes,
the inquiries into slang, the unemotional violence, and the solid, carved prose. I like it, and Keller (our hitman hero) is more of a
character than Matt Scudder ever will be again, but there's no denying that this is only slightly elevated genre crap--a hitman! For
fuck's sake!--and it won't convert anyone.
Talk Talk -- T. C. Boyle
A good book with a premise that's simple and
evocative enough to be a straight-up genre thriller, but Boyle, of course, won't let that happen; he twists and perverts every last
standard for the chase thriller and gets as deep into the character's heads as his ironic pose will allow. When the reviewers call a
book "an intelligent thriller," I wish books like Talk Talk were what they were talking about.
Visits From The Drowned Girl -- Steven Sherrill
A sad trip, a
rough read, and an eccentric redneck world laid out in fable and contemplation. The book is updated Southern
gothic--Pentecostal ecstacy gives way to fear and trembling, the weight of history and race thins out into the question of
postmodern identity, and existential suffering becomes ill-advised sex. It's a satisfying mess.
