Reading in April 2016

In April I read seven books; six of them were crime fiction. The seventh book was True Grit by Charles Portis, a novel of the American West set in the years following the Civil War, the early 1870s.

The six books of crime fiction I read were:

• The Defection of A. J. Lewinter by Robert Littell
• Call for the Dead by John le Carre
• Trouble on the Thames by Victor Bridges
• Sweet Silver Blues by Glen Cook
• The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing
• Moonraker by Ian Fleming

Of the six crime fiction books, four can be categorized as spy fiction. Two of the spy stories (Trouble on the Thames and Moonraker) were more adventurous and not so bleak as the other two (The Defection of A. J. Lewinter and Call for the Dead). April was a great reading month, with a lot of variety, even with the preponderance of spy fiction.

Sweet Silver Blues by Glen Cook  is a cross-genre book, combining fantasy and a detective novel. It is the first novel in a series of fourteen books, written between 1987 and 2013, so I would say the series has been fairly successful. Glen Cook has written many books of science fiction and fantasy, but he is most well known for his Black Company fantasy series.

True Grit by Charles Portis, published in 1968,  was one of my favorite reads of the month. This type of book is not one I would normally read. In early April, when we decided to get a copy of the 2010 film adaptation, I decided I wanted to read the book first. (I had never seen the adaptation starring John Wayne and Kim Darby.) So I quickly acquired a copy of the book and read it almost as soon as it arrived.

If you are not familiar with the story, this is from the summary on the back of my edition:

True Grit tells the story of Mattie Ross, who is just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shoots her father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robs him of his life, his horse, and $150 in cash. Mattie leaves home to avenge her father's blood. With the one-eyed Rooster Cogburn, the meanest available U.S. Marshal, by her side, Mattie pursues the homicide into Indian Territory.

My favorite crime fiction read of the month was The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing, published in 1946. I had seen the movie starring Ray Milland and Charles Laughton within the last few months, and after reading the book we watched it again. Both book and movie are good but there are significant differences. The book has an unusual narrative structure; each chapter is told from the first person point of view, but there are several narrators. Most of the story is told from the point of view of the main character, George Stroud, but several other characters narrate at least one chapter.

The Crime Fiction Pick of the Month meme is hosted at Mysteries in Paradise. Bloggers link to summary posts for the month, and identify a favorite crime fiction read for the month.