response 25 of 53:

Jul 11 12:17 UTC 1998

I don't normally contribute to this item...but...

"Nimitz Class", by Patrick Robinson.  GRabbed it at the library as more summer
book fodder.  Very Tom Clancy-esqe, with liberal bashing, military worship,
etc.  Reminds me vaguely of WWII era teen propaganda (See the "Dave Dawson"
series sometime for a laugh), just not quite as extreme.  I'm halfway through
and I'm hoping for a twist at the end, but it's hard to see how the author
will get himself out of an obvious, already set-up outcome.  And mistakes,
despite all the detail and claimed research!  "No, couldn't be sabatage, those
nuclear warheads are *very* hard to get to explode since you need to do [xxx]
just the right way (ignoring the fact that the bomb would have to include the
capability to *do* [xxx] in order to be of any use at all as a weapon), and
also you'd have to have a high level pass to get past multiple guards (whoops,
assuming multiple guards can't be compromised or killed)". 

I'd give up on this book normally, but it's like rubbernecking at an auto
accident or perhaps like reading "Dondi" every week.

response 27 of 53:

Jul 13 11:49 UTC 1998

All the ones I have read (3 & a fraction, now) are also first person.  That
limits things a bit; yet he does it so *beautifully* that they're a joy to
read.

To an extent Jan's description seems right on target.  Yet it could give the
entirely wrong impression.  For the ones I've read, anyway, the hero is not
(aside from being a jockey or former jockey, a profession given to
self-starvation, painful injuries, etc.) out there looking to be tough.  Not
at all.  He's in one way or another pushed into the situation, pretty much.
Agreed that it's more admirable in fiction than reality.  We can *see* that
these guys' egos aren't the problem (that's a big distinction between the
heros & some of the bad guys), but that's rather more unlikely in real life.
But these are very far from being the one-dimensional tough guys 
that a capsule summary might suggest.

What Jan said about the heroes' livelihoods is indeed a big part of the
attraction, for me anyway.  The first one I read (_Longshot_) involves a
wannabe novelist.  He's till now made his living writing survival manuals,
field-testing them first by having his publishers dump him in the arctic or
on a desert island or whatever with minimal equipment.  Having decided that
he's got to write a novel instead, he's currently starving for real.  Does
that sound unbelievable?   It's told so that it's absolutely solid &
believable.  I expect to read anything of Francis's that I can get my hands
on, over time.

response 29 of 53:

Jul 14 15:50 UTC 1998

Eh?

response 31 of 53:

Jul 17 17:15 UTC 1998

I share some of Jan's interest in world-building mysteries, so 
I'll pass along a list of some I have enjoyed.
You may have to dig in the used shops for some of these:
 
Peter Dickinson:  his earliest novels all featured the same detective, 
      whose name escapes me; a man of decidedly average talents who
      stumbles into a series of murder cases in bizarre, closed mini-
      societies.  THE GLASS SIDED ANT'S NEST is set in a tribe of 
      aboriginal people who have been uprooted and relocated to a 
      group of London row houses.  SLEEP AND HIS BROTHER is set in an 
      asylum for children suffering from a strange neurological disorder.
      The last in the series, ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE, begins with the 
      detective, confined in a nursing home and suffering from dementia, 
      deciding to end his life; on the way to implement his decision 
      he stumbles over a corpse...
 
      Dickinson stopped writing series but continues working in odd 
      worlds.  KING & JOKER is set among the British Monarchy in an 
      alternate history.
 
James McClure:  novels mostly written in the 1970s and set in South 
      Africa, pairing a white policeman and a black policeman.
      Exceptionally high paranoia content.
 
William Marshall:  best known for a series of police procedurals 
      written in the 70s and 80s (and some in the 90s) set in colonial 
      Hong Kong, in the fictitious run-down neighborhood of Yellowthread
      Street.  Marshall's stock story structure intercuts one pretty grim 
      mystery with a pair of sillier ones; the sillier stories come to 
      happy endings and the grim story proceeds to its ending in a 
      cinematic explosion of violence.

Lindsay Davis:  has a series featuring a "private investigator" which 
      is set in Rome, 70 A.D.

Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo:  In a series of ten novels they set out to draw 
      portraits of contemporary Swedish society.  I consider the 
      "Martin Beck" series to be the most artful mystery series I have read.
      These should probably be read in order due to the slow-moving changes 
      in the detectives' lives which stretch through the series.
      If you're looking for cheerfulness, the Martin Beck stories may not 
      be your cup of hemlock; I love the characters but most of the stories
      are grim.

response 33 of 53:

Jul 17 23:01 UTC 1998

I recommend Kate Ross's Regency mysteries. Alas, she died earlier this year,
with only four written, but they are the BEST mysteries I've read in a long
time. Ken, can I borrow that alternate history mystery?
/

response 35 of 53:

Jul 19 01:19 UTC 1998

I've been reading mysteries off and on for most of my adult life.
In fact, I've gone through periods of extreme addiction, although
nowadays I just read an occasional one.

In regards to mysteries with an exotic setting, don't think anybody's
mentioned Robert Van Gulik's "Judge Dee" series, in which the
protagonist is a provincial magistrate in medieval China. The
depiction of life and society at that time and place is fascinating.

Judge Dee was an actual historical character, and the first of
Gulik's Judge Dee books is a translation of an old Chinese stories
about him. The rest are Gulik's own creations.

response 37 of 53:

Jul 20 13:13 UTC 1998

I haven't actually read them... So has anyone here read anything
by the woman that took my name <grumbles> Anne Perry?

response 39 of 53:

Jul 20 19:30 UTC 1998

Anne Perry has two series out there -- one is the Monk series, with 
a protagonist who starts out by being in a cariage accident and then
losing his memory, and who has to reinvent himself along the way. There
are about eight books in that series, and I like them, although she
seems to be running out of things to say, but I will continue to read.
The other series, which I don't like as well is about Inspector Inspector
                     Thomas Pitt, the low-born London copper with a
better-born
                     wife, Charlotte. Set during the Victorian era, Perry's
mysteries
                     usually examine the dark underbelly of aristocratic life.
                     Homosexuality, adultery, and pedophilia have all been
subjects of
                     her previous books; in Ashworth Hall she injects a new
                     ingredient: politics.  (Yes, this last was stolen
from a blurb I had handy.)

Anne Perry is interesting as well for her involvement in a real-life
murder -- you know that movie that came out a few years ago about
the Australian girls who murdered one of them's mother? (That sounds
really icky, but I'm not cleaning up my grammar right now.) she was
the girl who actually did the head-bashing. So I think that it's 
fascinating that she knows the criminal mind so well....

response 41 of 53:

Jul 23 11:50 UTC 1998

I've seen "Heavenly Creatures". It's an early Kate Winslet film.
Did Winslet play Hulme or the other girl?

response 43 of 53:

Aug 24 19:37 UTC 1998

After janc's resp:30 and my resp:31 , I got interested enough to 
dig my Peter Dickinson books out of storage.  I reread the first of the 
six Jimmy Pibble stories, THE GLASS SIDED ANTS' NEST; the setting 
of the story is fascinating, the resolution of the mystery somewhat
less so.  But it was Dickinson's first novel.  I'm currently 
trying to figure out how to simultaneously read these books and 
loan them to Twila.  :)
 
Just started this weekend: Greg Egan's PERMUTATION CITY, a science 
fiction novel which seems to have a pretty promising start.  We'll 
see how it goes; I haven't been able to complete reading an SF novel
in maybe five years.

response 45 of 53:

Sep 1 02:49 UTC 1998

        Ken, why not just read them to Twila?

response 47 of 53:

Sep 1 10:37 UTC 1998

Browsing the poetry section at Borders I noticed a slim volume
by someone named Billy Collins with the title "Picnic, Lightning."
The title is a celebrated quote from Nabokov's "Lolita": "My very
photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning)
when I was three."  Collins uses the quote as an epigraph to the
title poem, which is about how thinking about the various ways
people can die suddenly tends to heighten one's perceptions of
reality.  A couple of the individual poem titles also caught my
eye: "Lines Composed Over Three Thousand Miles from Tintern Abbey";
and "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes," which concludes:

"What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in the windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye."

Readers of Emily Dickinson will hear a pleasant series of bells
going off in their heads when they read that.  Anyway, I bought
the book.  Highly recommended.

response 49 of 53:

Sep 2 00:23 UTC 1998

I think it's your kind of poetry, John.  In fact, some of it sounds 
like something you might have written, only this Collins guy got 
there first:

"We have listened to their dismay,
the kind that issues from poems
the way water issues forth from hoses,
the way the match always gives its little speech on fire."