Friday, June 13, 2008

The Sun, the Sand, and Thou

Amidst assorted and onerous editorial responsibilities (none of which supply anywhere near the funding necessary to support the lifestyle to which I have become accustomed), I haven’t yet had time to post my own rundown of the novels I most look forward to reading this summer. Fortunately for the Los Angeles Times, it has significantly greater resources and is ahead of me in deploying them.

Its selection of this season’s best reads includes: The Spies of Warsaw, by Alan Furst; Chasing Darkness, by Robert Crais; The Last Embrace, by Denise Hamilton; The Lemur, by Benjamin Black (né John Banville); Palace Council, by Stephen L. Carter; and Blackout, by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza.

There’s also this most curious non-crime story on the list: The James Boys: A Novel Account of Four Desperate Brothers, by Richard Liebmann-Smith. The description of that work reads, “What if the younger brothers of psychologist William and novelist Henry were the outlaws Frank and Jesse?” Even one as thoroughly jaded to the possibility of unique plotting concepts as yours truly cannot help but be taken aback by the conceit of such an idea.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought I read somewhere that the new novel from George Pelecanos will be published in August but the LA Times didn't mention it. Has it been pushed back?

J. Kingston Pierce said...

As far as I know, Scott, George Pelecanos' The Turnaround is still scheduled for publication in August. I can't say why the L.A. Times failed to include that book on its list. Perhaps it was a matter of too little space. Great journalistic errors are made because of the physical limitations of print journalism.

Cheers,
Jeff