James’s Comments (group member since Mar 28, 2010)

James’s comments from the Detectives! group.

Wendy wrote: "Lawrence Block's Tanner and Keller series are both pretty amusing, as well as being good mysteries."

I really like the Keller series and the Bernie Rhodenbarr series as well for good laughs and good mysteries. For some reason, though, I never got knocked out by the Tanner books.

Yes, I've been a fan of JLB since the very beginning, although again, I like the Robicheaux series better than anything else he does. He hooked me right away with "Black Cherry Blues" early in the series, because it was set in my native northwestern Montana.

I started with Scudder, the went to Bernie Rhodenbarr, and then to Keller. I think that the Scudder series is far and away his best. I really enjoy Keller, and I liked the earlier Bernie books, but I thought that the more recent ones got a little too cute. I tried a couple of the Tanner books, but they just didn't resonate with me. I'm wondering if LB really is serious about not writing any more novels. I hate to think that would be true.

Paul, You might look at James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux series, or Harlan Coben's Myron Bolitar books (before he started writing stand alone thrillers), or Loren Estleman's excellent Detroit series featuring Amos Walker.

My own favorite series is Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder series. Scudder is a great--and very human--protagnoist, and Block allows him and the supporting case to evolve over time in very interesting ways. The stories themselves are all very good, but in the end, you wind up reading these books for the great characters.