RARA-AVIS: Recent reading

From: William Denton ( buff@pobox.com)
Date: 08 Jun 2004


What all have you folks been reading? I recently finished Brian Garfield's RELENTLESS (1972), which I picked up a couple of months ago and Mr. Doherty recommended. He said:

| The best of the post-Hillerman Indian cop characters is Sam Watchman,
| the hero of RELENTLESS, who is a full-blood Navajo working as a trooper
| in the Arizona Highway Patrol. RELENTLESS is a particularly good example
| of a type of cop story that is fairly prevalent in procedurals with
| rural Southwestern settings, the "wilderness pursuit" story. ... In
| RELENTLESS, Watchman, his partner, and an FBI agent are
| on the trail of a gang of military-trained bank robbers who have killed
| two cops (including Sam's uncle) and taken a hostage. They have fled
| into the snow-capped Sierra Nevada mountains along the Arizona/Nevada
| border. Excellent use of setting. Excellent story-telling. Compelling
| characters. [1]

And that's exactly what it is. I might say "masterful craftsmanship" instead of "excellent story-telling," but they're about the same. There isn't much question how a book like this will develop, but you know you're in very experienced hands and all the requirements of good melodrama will be met perfectly.

I have a bunch more things stacked up, and more on the way, and it's hard to know what to read next. Luckily, I can solve that problem by reading more.

Bill

[1] http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/archives/200404/0256.html

-- 
William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.

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