Crime books to read

As a new year starts, I am starting to plan what I will read in the upcoming weeks and months. More specifically, what crime books I will read. I mostly read crime fiction all year round, except from August to October inclusively. A quick search on my shelves made me discover that I don't have so many unread crime novels. And I promised my wife I would not hoard books this year. So I will behave. Or will try to. Worst case scenario, I borrow from the library or reread some titles, like D.C. Noir, an anthology of short stories edited by DC local (and one of my favourite crime writers) George Pelecanos. Apparently they adapted it into a movie. I must find it and watch it too. Anyway, any suggestions are welcome, please comment.

The wisdom of Nick Stefanos

"Mai had an Abba CD playing on the house system. It bothered Stefanos that groups like Abba and the Carpenters were considered hip now. Stefanos figured that anything that blew the first time around still blew, period. Retro appreciation was nothing more than blind nostalgia."

I guess I should have apologized to all my readers who loved ABBA (and the Carpenters, but I don't know them). That said, there is so much to love about this quote from Shame the Devil by George Pelecanos. Because what private eye Nick Stefanos says is so darn true. I often compare his stories to classic Greek tragedies or Greek mythology set in Washington D.C. You know, since Pelecanos is of Greek origins and all. Now I add Greek philosophy to this. Because this is pure wisdom. Object of nostalgic appreciation, and this comes from a nostalgic, has to be earned. And yes, I think ABBA blew the first time around.

The rebirth of the private eye?

Quick plug for a novel that has not yet been published: The Double by George Pelecanos will be released on October the 8th, 2013. This will be the second adventure of Spero Lucas, the first being The Cut, which I read already (well, of course). I am trying to keep up to date with my Pelecanos, who is by far my favourite crime writer (yes, more than Elmore Leonard, there I said it). Spero Lucas is his new hero, or antihero, a 29 years old Iraq war veteran turned private investigator. A private eye. It might sound like a cliché, a commonplace, but it is so not. Because Spero Lucas works in contemporary Washington D.C. Because he is scarred and haunted by contemporary events and belongs to our time and age, because he is not a living anachronism but has a history that belongs to our time, the background of a man his age, I think he just made the private eye a relevant archetype again. Although Spero Lucas is not an archetype. On the contrary, he is a full, grounded, complex character, in a complex world, a world that may sometimes be in black and white but has plenty of shades of grey. Thus, I think Pelecanos may have, consciously or not, given us the rebirth of the private eye. I was enthusiastic when I read the first novel, I am impatient to read the second one. And I am uploading here the preview (!) of the novel, to give people a foretaste of the character and his world. I am not a big fan of video trailers for novels, I think they don't belong to the same medium, but I don't mind this one.

The Best Sandwich in America (?)

This is a post about guilty pleasures. Tonight I watched an utterly stupid TV program, an d I am actually enjoying it. It is called Adam Richman's Best Sandwich in America. With Adam Richman. I know zilch about the guy. I usually hate, hate, HATE that kind of television program. I mean it is really stupid: a contest with different sandwiches from different places in the US. How braindead is that? That said, I do LOVE sandwiches, I am a real sucker for them. And the episode that caught my attention and made me watch it as if it was a high standard BBC documentary was set in Baltimore and Washington D.C. I visited neither place, however Baltimore was immortalised of course in The Wire and Washington in the novels of George Pelecanos. Who also wrote on the aforementioned Wire. And both Pelecanos's novels and the TV series describe the cultural aspects of both cities, including the food they eat. The contender from Baltimore was a crab sandwich, made in a diner I think I saw in The Wire, the contender from Washington D.C. was a club sandwich made by a French chef.

The club sandwich won, and however intrigued I was by the crab sandwich I agreed with Richman about the club sandwich. I love club sandwich, how "classic" a sandwich it is, this one had an originality to it. It had avocado and a fried egg. My mouth was watering just watching it. I am a bit of a connoisseur when it comes to club sandwiches, I have tried them all around, in greasy spoons in Montreal and here in the UK (I know where to find decent ones and even one excellent open club sandwich). And this one was standing out from all the ones I remembered seeing or tasting. You can find more about it here. I will not watch more of the show, however I love sandwiches. I can eat plenty of junk, but junk TV I watch it at small doses. But this episode, just like a good club sandwich, was a guilty pleasure. And I know where to eat if I ever go to Washington D.C.