Simon’s Comments (group member since Jun 29, 2019)

Simon’s comments from the Point Blank group.

I am reading Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker... as I am currently taking a break from crime fiction to read more science-fiction and fantasy insted.

On the other hand I have started reviewing more old favourite crime novels I remember fondly, most notably Ross Macdonald's The Way Some People Die and Find a Victim. Also The Barbarous Coast by the same author, which I found not up to the author's usual standard but very entertaining nonetheless.

I am right now reading House of Fear by Leonora Carrington, which tangentially relates to horror but certainly not the realistic crime fiction this group is dedicated to.

Robert wrote: "As I read the book, I saw Deckard as a villainous protagonist (little more than a state sanctioned serial killer) but listening to Kurt on the podcast made me do a rethink.

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I remember "Blade Runner" playing up that angle more, though it's a definite theme in the novel.

I am currently reading Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell. Surprised at how it spends as much time on building atmosphere and the protagonist's incredibly dysfunctional private life as on the plot mechanics, though there's a couple of action scenes in here which feels too "Hollywood action movie"-ish to be believable in the context of the rest of the book.

I am reading Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, a science-fiction novel from the 1960s set in an overcrowded dystopian future and written in a weird invented futuristic slang that isn't explained to the reader. The plot follows an important businessman who slowly finds out that he is being spied on, the overall effect is something that feels like it could be set in the same universe as A Clockwork Orange except told from the upper crust's viewpoint instead of the lower classes.

Finally finished Don Winslow's The Force last night. Almost took an entire month to finish thanks to the long, complicated story with tons of characters and subplots as well as the disturbing subject matter. It's hard to read it and not come away with a very cynical view of politics and society, but it's also quite funny in its own bleak way.

"i really like Korean noir films, there's been some good ones the last 20 years" In particular Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy.

PKD himself wasn't terribly satisfied with "Electric Sheep" either. "Ubik" was also interesting and more of futuristic take on spy novels the same way "Electric Sheep" is on police procedural novels. I have yet to read "Martian Timeslip" and "Palmer Eldritch" though.

That is a great novel to pick!

I am a huge fan of Ross Macdonald, whom I actually prefer over Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett most of the time, so this should be right up my alley but I guess I'm not missing out on that much? Thanks for the warning.

Japan produces some of the most disturbing crime thriller movies of any first world country - see the oeuvre of Seijun Suzuki or Takashi Miike for examples - so I am curious to see what their hard boiled crime fiction is.

Looks interesting. There's probably a huge untapped universe of crime fiction from outside North America and Western Europe that most readers haven't even heard about. I am grateful for Point Blank bringing attention to all this.

I remember seeing this book a lot in Danish translation at local libraries, with cover art that looks like a Siouxsie and the Banshees "best of" compilation CD.

Snowpiercer's definitely a level more cartoonish and escapist than the director's previous movies like "Memories of Murder", "Mother" and even "The Host". I actually haven't seen "Parasite" yet.

I wager a lot of people in a group like this would only really like "Memories or Murder" and "Mother" anyway.

Maigret Has Scruples by Georges Simenon (1958) and A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. (1887) I also feel that Virtual Light by William Gibson should count. Like most of Gibson's later books, it basically plays like a contemporary crime thriller set in the weirder subcultures of the modern world... which might as well be science-fiction to a mainstream audience.

Gibson's 1990s novels (eg Virtual Light) are much easier to read than his 1980s books, but in my opinion nowhere as interesting. The appeal of something like Neuromancer is getting thrown headfirst into a strange and confusing future with not much in the way of exposition, making it up to the reader to figure out how things work. Gibson's later books just play like conventional crime/espionage thrillers set in the weirder subcultures of contemporary society.

I actually found "Roseanna" pretty boring and I don't think the series gets good until "The Man on the Balcony" let alone gets really great until "The Laughing Policeman".

Saw the South Korean science-fiction movie "Snowpiercer" yesterday. Interesting how much it felt like a throwback to the dark, gritty and violent post-apocalyptic science-fiction films of the 1980s, I could very much imagine this being something that Paul Verhoeven could have directed between "Robocop" and "Total Recall". Even had a similar type of humour as him, right down to the fake commercials.

I am reading The Force by Don Winslow. I'm quite the fan of Winslow but all of the books of his I've read are those that take place in Southern California or in Mexico - surprised at how well Winslow here captures the feel of all the cultural and ethnic divisions in New York City which has a totally different atmosphere.

The plot is also very interesting, the main character is basically the type of ultra-corrupt police officer who'd be the villain in a typical detective novel. Other than the setting being NY rather than LA "The Force" basically feels like L.A. Confidential as told from Dudley Smith's viewpoint!

In addition to that, I am re-reading Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow, a work which I still consider the gold standard for futuristic police procedurals, for the third time. There's a ton of nuances in the political drama that I missed the first couple times I read GITS.

No problem. Good choice for a place to start with science-fiction/hardboiled crime crossover novels, certainly easier to read than William Gibson.