New Purchases (Book Sale Part 2)

More books from the Planned Parenthood Book Sale, held from September 18 - 27. This selection is mostly based on hardback or trade paperback covers I love.

Description of Goodbye Mickey Mouse (1982) by Len Deighton from a post about a new edition at The Deighton Dossier blog:

The story follows a group of American fighter airmen based at Thaxted in East Anglia, flying escort missions over Germany in 1943-4 at the height of the air war when the Americans were bombing during the day, at great cost to their men. Central to the novel are two contrasting characters - the reserved Captain Jamie Farebrother and cocky yank Lieutenant Mickey Morse. It is his Mustang Fighter -Mickey Mouse II with the cartoon mouse on the cowling - which gives the novel its title...

That is all I know about this book at this point and all I want to know before I read it.

There is more on the book and the cover for the edition I have at The Deighton Dossier website.

Stephen Greenleaf wrote a series of P.I. novels featuring John Marshall Tanner. At MysteryFile, Ed Lynskey describes the series:

Like Greenleaf, Tanner was also a lawyer and a member of the California bar. Clocking in at fourteen novels published from 1979 to 2000, the PI Tanner series enjoyed a solid, if not spectacular, run of critically well-received entries. Though the Tanner books didn’t grab big commercial pots, devoted mystery fans hold them in exceptionally high regard.

And Book Case...

Number seven in the series was Book Case, which appeared in 1991. This is a first-rate biblio-mystery. Tanner’s client this time is Bryce Chatterton who runs Periwinkle Press, a regional press financed by his wealthy wife Margret. A manuscript entitled Homage to Hammurabi arrives at their offices, “a thinly disguised expose that will blow the lid off some of Cow Hill’s sexiest secrets,” and it is a veritable blockbuster. PI Tanner’s quest is to track down the anonymous author. Excerpts from Hammurabi prefacing each chapter also tell a story as Tanner’s search takes him into darker crimes.

I also have the first book in the series and I will read it first.

Description of Les Robert's P.I. series at The Thrilling Detective website:

Cleveland's the stomping ground for tough, likeable, blue collar private eye MILAN JACOVICH ...  He's an ex-football player, well-educated, and fiercely proud of his Slovenian heritage, his working class roots and his hometown.

Author Les Roberts was born and bred in Chicago, but currently lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He moved there from Hollywood where, among other things, he produced The Hollywood Squares and wrote for The Andy Griffith Show and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

A Shoot in Cleveland (1998), the ninth book in the series, is about a Hollywood film that is being shot in Cleveland. This is doubly interesting to me because my husband is from Ohio and I like books about film sets. 

I am not familiar with William Boyd, the author of Restless (2006). I now recognize his name as the author of Solo, a James Bond continuation novel. My husband found the book at the book sale and thought I might like it, considering the time period it covers and that it is espionage fiction.

Description from Boyd's website:

It is 1939. Eva Delectorskaya is a beautiful 28-year-old Russian émigrée living in Paris. As war breaks out she is recruited for the British Secret Service by Lucas Romer, a mysterious Englishman and under his tutelage she learns to become the perfect spy, to mask her emotions and trust no one, including those she loves most. Since then Eva has carefully rebuilt her life as the very English wife and mother Sally Gilmartin — but once a spy, always a spy.

This book has been adapted for TV in the UK.

I found the perfect description of Queenpin (2007) at the author's website. Brief, and just enough information. 

A young woman, hired to keep the books at a down-at-the-heels nightclub, is taken under the wing of the infamous Gloria Denton, a mob luminary who reigned during the Golden Era of Bugsy Siegel and Lucky Luciano. Before she knows it, she's ushered into a glittering demimonde of late-night casinos, racetracks, betting parlors, inside heists, and big, big money.

The review by James Reasoner at Rough Edges has this praise for the book and the author:

What it comes down to is that Megan Abbott is just a damned fine writer. Short, fast, and mean, like good noir fiction is supposed to be ...

And it is there that I found out that several of her covers were illustrated by Richie Fahey. Check out the post on Megan Abbott's covers at The Casual Optimist.

I have heard so many good things about Sycamore Row (2011) by John Grisham that I want to read it. But first I want to read A Time to Kill, because Jake Brigance features in both books. Last year I could not find a copy of Sycamore Row at the book sale; this year there were lots of them.

Summary from the hardback edition:

Seth Hubbard is a wealthy man dying of lung cancer. He trusts no one. Before he hangs himself from a sycamore tree, Hubbard leaves a new, handwritten, will. It is an act that drags his adult children, his black maid, and Jake into a conflict as riveting and dramatic as the murder trial that made Brigance one of Ford County's most notorious citizens, just three years earlier.

The second will raises far more questions than it answers. Why would Hubbard leave nearly all of his fortune to his maid?

I purchased Chance (2014) because I had heard about Kem Nunn's books AND it has a great cover. Set in San Francisco. What could be better?

Well, reading the description of the book, I am not so sure:

A dark tale involving psychiatric mystery, sexual obsession, fractured identities, and terrifyingly realistic violence—Chance is set amid the back streets of California’s Bay Area, far from the cleansing breezes of the ocean. Dr. Eldon Chance, a neuropsychiatrist, is a man primed for spectacular ruin. Into Dr. Chance’s blighted life walks Jaclyn Blackstone, the abused, attractive wife of an Oakland homicide detective, a violent and jealous man.

But it is set in San Francisco, and my husband wants to read it too. So worth taking a chance on.