The Friday Book Report

This past week I was all over the place. I read...

The Husband by Dean Koontz. At Amazon Fishbowl, host Bill Maher asked Koontz to describe this book's plot. Koontz said: Guy gets a call from people who have kidnapped his wife, and demand $2 million otherwise he'll never see her again. Maher cracked: "For some guys, that would be a fantasy." Joking aside, this is Koontz in Cornell Woolrich mode, with some of his sharpest writing since last year's Velocity and 1996's Intensity. I love Koontz in this mode.

Loveless: A Kin of Homecoming and Superman: For Tomorrow (Volume One), written by Brian Azzarello. Two new titles from my favorite comic book writer. One's a brutal western set in the South right after the Civil War. The other is about a guy in a red cape with a horrible case of the guilts. Both are fantastic.

The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont. This has been receiving huge props in the blogosphere, and it's easy to see why. I loved that Malmont fused a history of pulp writers with a rockin' pulp-style plot. Malmont also sent me looking for old Doc Savage paperbacks--something I never thought I'd do.

Art in the Blood, by Craig McDonald. A must-read collection of interviews with crime writers at the top of their game by an interviewer who's at the top of his. It's brand-spankin' new from PointBlank Press.

And I've just picked up: Vintage PKD, a Whitman's Sampler-style collection of Philip K. Dick stories and novel excerpts, and We'll Always Have Cleveland by Les Roberts, because of the mention over at The Rap Sheet.