Killer’s Wedge – Ed McBain, 1959 ★★

Squadroom in the Soup

A key difference between mysteries and crime fiction is that the former are about solving crimes, while the latter focuses on committing them.

Like if a dangerous robber was sent to prison, and he dies there, what will his wife do if she’s the kind of person that wants revenge?

The Ghost Sonata – August Strindberg, 1907 ★

Doing the Swedish Limbo

One reason August Strindberg appeals so much to scholars is because he was so many different people in the course of his life. He’s like getting to study a half-dozen writers in one.

He started out composing history plays, became a father of modern drama, an authority of that oxymoron called theatrical naturalism, and finally a pioneer of stage expressionism and surrealism.

By the time we get to The Ghost Sonata, he has reinvented himself again, this time as the metaphysically-focused developer of what are known as “chamber plays,” productions performed in a small space by a handful of actors. The ground he covered was varied and impressive; yet the shape of his work is hard to gauge.

McCartney – Chris Salewicz, 1986 ★★

Portrait of an Artist as a Young Ted

Pain can be a midwife to great art. So it was with Paul McCartney and the Beatles. At least that’s the theory Chris Salewicz offers in this engaging if thin biography.

McCartney was just 14 when his mother died from cancer. The loss cut him deep, but the lad hid it well. Less than a year later, he would meet an older boy, John Lennon, soon to lose his own mother. From that shared anguish came an outpouring of music that would shape a generation and change a world.

Still the pain continued.

Asterix And The Golden Sickle – René Goscinny & Albert Uderzo, 1962 ★★½

Partnering up in Paris

Something is different very early in the second volume in the Asterix The Gaul comic-book series: Asterix is joined for the first time on an adventure by a roly-poly boar-devouring buddy named Obelix.

Even before that, in the very first panel, something else about Asterix And The Golden Sickle stands out: The art. Simply put, it’s amazing, exhilarating in perspective and detail, and consistently amusing. Another partnership came together here, that of writer René Goscinny and illustrator Albert Uderzo, who emerges as the real star of this affair.

Who Goes Here? – Bob Shaw, 1977 ★★★★

Dying for Shrimp Sauce in the 24th Century

Science fiction and comedy are not genres I associate with each other unless it’s Douglas Adams or another Robot Chicken Star Wars parody. Give it up for someone who did it earlier, and did it well.

His name was Bob Shaw.

Imagine a future where young men are sent off to distant planets to fight man-eating trees in the cause of selling shrimp sauce, signing away their life so that they (and the law) can forget a past crime via a patented process called an engram erasure.

Winston Churchill: An Informal Study Of Greatness – Robert Lewis Taylor, 1952 ★★½

Winston Triumphant

Can greatness actually inhibit one’s appreciation of a fellow human being? If you are a biographer, oh yes, indeed!

Robert Lewis Taylor’s enthusiasm for Winston Churchill is boundless, from first page to last. His Churchill divides his time between running governments, fighting wars, and writing best-sellers, then for an encore goes on to save the world from the horror known as Adolf Hitler.

Meanwhile, whatever exists of an inner man slips away unnoticed. For such a public figure with so much written by and about him, Taylor’s Churchill feels a bit thin.

Libra – Don DeLillo, 1988 ★½

Conspiracy? Lone Gunman? Why Not Both?

If only every awful moment in history was as suited for fictionalization as the assassination of John F. Kennedy, with its strange characters, bizarre circumstances, and world-changing events.

Of course, many – perhaps even a majority – of Americans say that already happened with an outlandishly false and ridiculous piece of writing called the Warren Commission Report. In Libra, Don DeLillo dubs the Report “the Joycean Book of America…the novel in which nothing is left out.”

October 1964 – David Halberstam, 1994 ★★★½

How Success Got Untrenched

Some World Series mark time; others define them. The 1964 World Series belongs in the latter category; David Halberstam explains why.

Players were still regarded as property then; their careers dictated by greedy, sometimes capricious owners. Television amplified and monetized their success. Pitchers were becoming more dominant as the strike zone was expanded and raised.

Most importantly, the racial divide of the game was changing, if slowly. Nearly 20 years after Jackie Robinson integrated baseball, there were still many whites who didn’t care for blacks, including some American League club owners.

A Pocket Book Of Robert Frost's Poems – Robert Frost [Edited by Louis Untermeyer], 1961 ★★★

Pondering Seasons and Reasons

Once upon a time, Robert Frost seemed the most important poet in the world, America’s answer to Shakespeare, standing over us Mount Rushmore-like with his thick shock of snowy white hair, his quotations decorating every classroom door at my Connecticut boarding school.

Then I grew up, and just like that, Frost’s stature seemed to dip. Like the Eagles or Judy Blume, his outsized success became the very reason not to take him seriously. Since I’m not a poetry lover, I have no idea how prevailing a view this might be; I just sense his stock is not what it was.