November's Best Reads

November hit the ground running and never let up. A great month. (For my reading, at least.)

Devils and Dust, J.D. Rhoades. Few can tie together an ending as well. The beginning is a departure from others in the Keller series, but Rhoades tightens the slack and reels you in from multiple points of view, letting the reader know exactly as much as is necessary to build the tension for the well-constructed finale.

Police at the Station and They Don’t Look Friendly, Adrian McKInty (pre-release). Volume 6 in the Sean Duffy series shows McKinty is far from running out of different angles from which to view the situation of a Catholic cop in Protestant Northern Ireland during the Troubles.

True Blue, David Milch and Det. Bill Clark. A dual memoir in some ways, as Milch details the first few seasons of NYPD Blue from his perspective, including bits of Clark’s career and telling how they were spun into episodes. A quick, entertaining, and educational read that shows several sides of Milch’s character. Oh, and David Caruso is apparently a real tool. This time Duffy investigates a drug dealer killed with a crossbow and comes up against potentially crossed allegiances between paramilitaries and the police. The ending is classic McKinty, surprising yet inevitable.

Rough Trade, Todd Robinson. Big Daddy Thug does it again with another Boo and Junior adventure. Robinson has a gift for combining humor, action, inappropriate language and behavior, and empathy. The story never lags, yet the pace is never out of control. There’s a lot of craft hidden under the entertainment here that most readers probably won’t notice. That’s fine. There’s entertainment enough for everyone here, with another level available for those who want it.

Rumrunners, Eric Beetner. I’ve yet to read one of Beetner’s books that didn’t end up playing as a movie in my head. This story of an outlaw family entering its third, and possibly fourth, generation coming to grips with changing times and adapting the family philosophy to those changes. There’s no honor among thieves but there is an outlaw code, which the McGraw family does its best to live up to.

KINDLE COUNTDOWN REMINDER

Still hoping to grab a Kindle copy of The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of for 99 cents? You snoozed, you lost. Worry not. TSTDAMO is available today and tomorrow for $1.99 before returning to its regularly exorbitant price of $2.99 on Saturday.

Next Week:  Shamus nominated The Man in the Window.