I posted my review of Ken Bruen’s Cross last night. A decent book, though relentlessly bleak and hard to orient to because he doesn’t recap what’s gone before.
I’m halfway through The Blue Hammer by Ross MacDonald. An intricate book with involved and interconnected family histories. People who may or may not be dead. Affairs and liaisons and illegitimate children, along with troubled young women. Lew gets laid, too, which is somewhat unusual for his books, as I recall. Also a rather frank discussion of bisexuality, which must have been risqué for its time.
Did a serious edit of the old noir story last night and keyed in the changes this morning. The story grew by 400 words in the process, which is unusual. My editing passes usually shorten, but in this case I needed to add some nuances and subtexting that was there in the original version but only barely. I also had to tweak some character relationships, because in the original the culprit was a little too calm and normal to be as twisted as he’d have to be to do what he did. If you know what I mean!
