If you're looking for a good, lengthy, high-end-diversion read, let me suggest The Twenty-Year Death, by Ariel S. Winter. Cover shown at right, when I was reading the book at Thanksgiving time. This is part of the "Hard Case Crime" series that I've discussed over the years, for instance here back in 2008 and here about a year ago. The series is a combination of resurrected noir classics, with 1950s-and-earlier cover art, and original works. Twenty-year is in the brand-new category, and is quite a tour de force. It is long because it is actually three novels, with an overlapping set of characters. The first is in the style of Georges Simenon; the second, Raymond Chandler; and the third, the immortal (and amoral*) Jim Thompson. The Simenon story is set in France in 1931, and the Chandler and Thompson episodes in greater L.A., in 1941 and 1951 respectively. For my taste, Winter's evocation of each writer's stye and sensibility becomes steadily more effective as the book goes on, so that by the end the Thompson section could fit right along such bleak classics as The Killer Inside Me. If you're in the mood for this kind of thing, this is the thing to read.
This is Winter's first novel. Keep writing!
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* For later discussion: Why I am drawn to the noir writers who portray amoral-and-worse characters from the inside, ranging from Thompson to Patricia Highsmith to Gillian Flynn of Gone Girl. Hmm, maybe this is a question I should not ask.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/01/reading-tip-the-twenty-year-death/267108/
