Miscellany – February 2008

February, unexpectedly, allowed for some reading even as things began to fall in chaotic showers from the sky.

1. John Zakour and Lawrence Ganem's The Plutonium Blonde and The Doomsday Brunette are the first two in (so far) five novels starring the last private eye on Earth, Zachary Nixon Johnson. Hardboiled homages to Chandler and the like, with a whiff of Larry Niven, these are excellent semi-comic reads with good puzzle plots. The hero isn't very hardboiled, but the cheesecake is an amusing send-up. Two thumbs up!

2. Kim Newman's The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club reprises the oddball virtuosity of his previous The Man from the Diogenes Club. The eponymous club is, of course, the place where Mycroft Holmes was occasionally the British Government. Weird tales and zany, horrific ones and amusing ones can all be found here. Newman makes use of many of his own characters and characters you might find in Alan Moore's Albion and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Sort of. This book is hard to find, and good to keep.

3. Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas boasts a superbly unreliable narrator who is mostly reliable. His is a supernatural existence, made odd by the fact of his own existence and his own terrifying sanity. He sees things. He can guess at the future. And he can see the horror about to descend – but not all of it. Excellent reading if you want Stephen King style horror with a bit more brain and a lot fewer pages.

4. David Baldacci's Simple Genius is a tightly-woven thriller about cryptography and secrets which lots of people with guns will work hard to obtain. There are some deaths. What's good is the psychological background and plot; what's bad is the horrendous overuse of jokey names.

That's it for mid-February!