Andy Henion's Blog

Lou Berney is your Huckleberry

Read Lou Berney. Yes. If you like mystery/thrillers that explore the human condition without being predicable or falling into cliche, he's for you. "The Long and Faraway Gone" is one of my favorite books. His others are solid as well.

Also, enjoy a pic of everybody's favorite Beaglier, Jacks.

NYT calls 'Blood Sugar' one of the Best Thrillers of 2022. Agreed.

I hadn't heard of any of the NYT's (six) Best Thrillers of 2022. But being a newly avid e-book reader, I could read a sample of each before I decided to take the plunge. I settled on two: "Blood Sugar" by Sascha Rothchild and "The Island" by Adrian McKinty (more on that one later). "Blood Sugar" is an indeed a thriller more than a mystery; we know the main character is a killer, no suspense there, but the question becomes, is she a justified killer? Rothchild is a great pace-setter, adept at creating suspense, and this book hums along nicely. I found the protagonist's relationship with her best friend and lawyer, Roman, as well as their plan to find her justice, somewhat of a stretch. But overall "Blood Sugar" was a refreshing take for those of us used to reading mysteries and thrillers of a certain ilk.

Long Live Holden Caulfield

I just read J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” for the first time since high school. Nearly 40 years later, it’s still as powerful as it was in the late 1980s, when I was trying to make sense of the effed-up world around me in lily white northern Michigan. I don't know that I've seen a fictional character brought to life quite like 16-year-old Holden Caulfield, warts and all. Published in 1951, this book, which takes place over a period of just two days, addresses teenage alienation, bullying, mental illness, sexual assault and suicide. It was banned, of course, when in fact it should be required reading in high school.

 

“… What I’d do, I figured, I’d go down to the Holland Tunnel and bum a ride, and then I’d bum another one, and another one, and another one, and in a few days I’d be somewhere out West where it was very pretty and sunny and where nobody’d know me and I’d get a job. I figured I could get a job at a filling station somewhere putting gas and oil in people’s cars. I didn’t care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn’t know me and I didn’t know anybody. I thought what I’d do was, I’d pretend I was one of those deaf mutes. That way I wouldn’t have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. ..."

Kevin rubbed his hand across his scalp until his blond hair stood up like naked winter trees.
... Page 9. No matter how good this mystery/thriller might turn out to be, I just can't take it seriously after that B.S. Naked winter trees? Back to the library it goes ...

Boone was raising his head in a drunk's delayed response, features changing comically to surprise, outrage. Delaney, swinging an arm from the shoulder, hit the sergeant across the face with an open palm. It smacked the man's head around, left him quivering, race reddening. 

"Cocksucker," Delaney said, without expression.

Delaney, a retired chief of detectives in NYC, and his subordinate Sgt. Boone, an alcoholic, are partners trying to solve a high-profile killing. Boone gets shit-faced drunk. Delaney goes to his home to set him straight. He does, and then some. Delaney is a bastard when he has to be, charming most other times, but always relentless in hunting the killer. Sanders does a masterful job of character development in his 1977 novel. I don't read many 443-page books, though I'd gladly read another by Sanders. A marvelous writer who knows his stuff -- cops, crooks and often fine line between them.

Note to self, Ricky thought: The next time you need to make your mortgage payment, try to do it in a life-affirming and legal way, like getting a second job flipping burgers, instead of handing over fifty pounds of pot for a lunatic Russian to sell. Read story here.

The Obama administration has done things people like me strongly disagree with. But America is in better economic shape than any other major nation on earth. Crime is down. Abortion rates are down. Fourteen million new jobs have been created in five years.

A conservative columnist wrote this in The New York Times. It's about the latest GOP presidential candidate's "atmosphere of apocalyptic fear."

It's not Trump. Does it matter at this point? Please ... pull your heads out of your respective asses, gentlemen.

Read it here.

I turned back around to face her crotch—a tender triangle swollen and divided by the thick protuberance of her zipper fly, thick thighs pulling at the weave of red wool. A tiny key hung from a coiled loop of white telephone cord wrapped around her left wrist. She fingered the coils with long, chipped black nails. I had to marry her. If I couldn't, I would kill myself. I broke out in a sweat as though I was about to vomit.
Like Raymond Carver, but with a bit less restraint (and that's not a bad thing), Ottessa Moshfegh writes about relationships, losers and the commonplace with unparallelled vitality and unpredictability. There are no guns, murders or mayhem that typically drive the stories I read/write, and yet I don't miss them whatsoever. The mystery, the desperation, are in the story itself. The characters. Amazing.
In this first-person story, "Dancing in the Moonlight," in The Paris Review, Moshfegh writes as a man, and nails it.
Later that night, leaning against the crumbling, mildewed tile of the shower stall back home, I looked down at myself. I was beautiful, I thought. Legions of curious fingers should be reaching out to touch me. My arms were thick and strong. A spurt of wiry black hair rose from my wrist, trembling in the warm spray like a delicate morning tendril in the dew. There I was, spectacular and alive, and the whole world was missing it.
This story is only in the print edition, but read one of Moshfegh's previous stories in TPR, "The Weirdos," here.

She communicated with me only by asking questions, and by talking dirty to me. Read story here.

But also true was how often she considered harming her child, just a little. Taser gun. Mace. Roundhouse kick. Judo chop. Good old windmill. Tires crunching over toes. She had never done any of it, she had once lobbed a small decorative pumpkin at his head, but that was the extent. Read story here.