My Cup Runneth Over--and Whoops, My Bookcase Just Collapsed

As I’ve written before, one of the best things about being a judge on a book prize panel is that you’re never short of reading material. My UPS man and my FedEx guy are my new best friends, dropping off kilos of goodies every day. Here are the best of the books I received and read just this week:

D.C. Noir 2: The Classics, edited by George Pelecanos (Akashic). Wonderful stuff, starting with a story by the famed African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, set in the nation’s capital in 1900, when corruption ruled even more than it does today. Pelecanos’ favorite crime writer, Edward P. Jones, is also a strong presence, as are Ward Just, Richard Wright, Ross Thomas, James Grady, and the editor himself, giving us a story you might remember called “The Dead Their Eyes Implore Us.” How many Akashic books do I dare nominate?

The September Society, by Charles Finch (St. Martin’s Minotaur). I liked Finch’s new, second book about an upper-class London detective called Charles Lenox even more than I did his first, the much-revered A Beautiful Blue Death (2007). It contains lots of great eating scenes, a worthy mystery, and an evocation of Victorian Oxford that makes me wish I’d been there then.

A Cure for Night, by Justin Peacock (Doubleday). As the book jacket blurbs on this debut legal thriller shout, this is the best courtroom drama in recent memory, as good as what Scott Turow and John Grisham gave us in their prime. It features two marvelous lead characters, both Brooklyn public defenders--a disgraced former up-and-comer turned uptown druggie and a tough, vulnerable woman who really believes she’s doing good.

More soon--if I can get that bookcase in shape ...