Just finished listening to Dashiell Hammett - Red Harvest. A hoot to listen to. Prohibition, the Continental Op, the 1920s colloquialisms. Starting The Dain Curse next week.

Round the Bend by Nevil Shute. Shute is a premier storyteller.

Also just finished The Sandburg Connection by Mark de Castrique. de Castrique's novels are set in the North Carolina mountains and are a lot of fun. His Buryin' Barry novels are a riot. His Blackmand Robertson novels are also entertaining. All pretty lightweight, but you find yourself drawn to his characters.

Starting The Drop by Michael Connelly tonight. 11/22/63 is also on the bedside table, though that's more than a little daunting.

One more - finished last week. Michael Ridpath's Where the Shadows Lie. A sort of hybrid American/Scandinavian murder mystery. An American of Icelandic descent is a homicide detective in Boston. He needs to lie low for a while and ends up in Reykjavik advising the Icelanders on the American approach to homicide investigation. This approach seems to involve running around aimlessly and without checking in with his superiors. Add in a dose of Icelandic sagas and Tokien's Ring novels, and that about sums it up. Lightweight, entertaining, though it has nothing on the genuine Scandinavian writers. Talk about a bleak group of writers. I love it.