The Books of 2013

I have always included a year end post in The Grandstander about the books that I read during the year, but I just never got around to doing so before this past New Year's Day.  So, before 2013 retreats too far in the rear view mirror, here are some thoughts coming from among the fifty-five books (yes, I keep track of such things) that I read in 2013.

Among my favorite authors who released new books in 2013: Jonathon Kellerman, Sue Grafton, Jeffery Deaver, John Sandford, Carl Hiaasen, and John Gresham.  None of these offerings disappointed.  

One non-fiction book from 2013 that I would recommend to anyone is this one....

Hugh Aynesworth was a young reporter for a Dallas newspaper who was in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963 when President Kennedy was shot.  He immediately went to work reporting and covering this story, and he has been doing that pretty much for the last fifty years. This book was published in connection with the 50th Anniversary of the JFK assassination.  If you lived through it, this is a great book to read, but it might be an even better book to read if you are under than age of fifty and your only knowledge of the Kennedy assassination is an Oliver Stone movie, Cyril Wecht, or a bunch of goofball conspiracy theories (none of which, by the way, have ever been proven!).

As far as fiction is concerned, and in addition to the offerings of the authors listed above, I want to touch upon the work of Max Allen Collins, a writer that I had the good fortune to "discover" in 2013.

Collins has been writing mystery and detective fiction, in one form or another (he wrote the Dick Tracy comic strip for a number of years, for example) , for over thirty years and he is incredibly prolific.  This past year, I read nine of his novels and two collections of short stories.  My favorites concern a series character of his, private investigator Nathan Heller.  The stories are told in the form of Heller's memoirs, and begin in 1930's and lead up to, most recently, the 1960's.  The hook to these stories is that they involve real historical figures like Al Capone, Elliot Ness, Frank Nitti, Sally Rand, John Dillinger, Marilyn Monroe, Hugh Hefner, Jack Ruby, and Jack and Bobby Kennedy.  In an introduction to one of the short story collections, even Collins says that one must suspend disbelief a bit to think that Nate Heller was involved in EVERY major crime investigation of the twentieth century!   I have read five novels of the Heller series, and I plan on reading more.

Collins has also written a series of historical mysteries that he calls his "disaster series". I have read three of those that have taken place on board the ship Titanic,  in London during the Blitz in WWII, and in Pearl Harbor in the days leading up to December 7, 1941.  Like the Heller stories, real historical people (Jacques Futrelle, Agatha Christie, Edgar Rice Burrougsh) are characters in these fictional novels.  As with the Heller stories, the research that Collins puts into these stories is incredible.  And even if you don't buy the premise of some of the stories (for example, Collins is big into JFK Assassination conspiracy theories), they are very entertaining reading.

Collins is also a disciple of the late Mickey Spillane, and he has another series of books involving a hit man named Quarry that is written in the same style as Spillane's hard boiled stories from the 1950's.  Now Spillane was never my particular cup of tea, so I probably will not be reading any other Quarry stories, but they're out there for you if that is what you are into.

One problem is that Collins is not real "mainstream" so his books are not always available at your local Barnes & Noble, but you might find them at used paperback stores, and you can definitely find them at the library and at Amazon, where they are relatively inexpensive if you buy them for your Kindle.

So, if you are looking for some entertaining reads, check out any number of the works of Max Allen Collins.  Start with the Nate Heller stories.  "True Detective" was the first of the Heller novels.  I don't think you will be disappointed.

Recent Books and Movies

Time to catch up on some recently read books and recently viewed movies.

First in the store will be Gillian Flynn's first novel, "Sharp Objects".  Ms. Flynn is the author of the amazingly successful best seller, "Gone Girl", which was her third novel and which I liked but found the characters to be remarkably unlikable.  I thought I would try "Sharp Objects", and guess what?  All the characters in this one were pretty much unlikable, too.  The story is about a young female reporter who returns to her small hometown in Missouri to report on a couple of murders of young girls in the town.  It is a good mystery, well written but, as I said, you can't really root for anybody in this one.  This won't stop me from reading Flynn's second novel, "Dark Places", but I'm going to wait a while before I do.  I mean, reading about the people about whom she writes kind of takes a lot out of you.

Next up is John Sandford's latest Virgil Flowers story, "Storm Front".

This one involves the theft of an archaeological relic from a dig in Israel.  The stone, and the guy who stole it, winds up in Minnesota, and Virgil has to recover the item and return it to the Israeli curator who has traveled to Minnesota to get it.  There is less violence in this one than usual in a Sandford story, and this one, in my opinion does not live up to the usual standards of a Virgil Flowers case.  Virgil is still a great character, and the dialog, as usual, is terrific, so if you are a fan, you need to read it.  However, if you are just going to dive in and "meet" Virgil Flowers and John Sandford, you need to start with earlier stories in the series.

A chance run through the TV remote last weekend landed me on C-SPAN's Book TV where I discovered a panel discussion about the JFK assassination, which led me to get this book:

Aynesworth is a Dallas newspaper reported/columnist who found himself in Dealey Plaza that November 22 morning fifty years ago.  He did some of the very first reporting on those events, and he has found himself pretty much wrapped up in this story ever since.  This book tells about the reporting that he did covering the shooting of the President, the shooting of police officer J.D. Tippett, the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby, his meetings with people like Ruby, Margueritte Oswald, Marina Oswald, and various cops, FBI agents, and others who were a part of that story.  Aynesworth also, for better or worse, has found himself tracking down every oddball conspiracy story that has emerged over these past fifty years.  (It started, believe it or not, when some nut showed up at Aynesworth's home on the very evening of 11/22/63 claiming he had evidence of a conspiracy to kill the President.)

If you are a conspiracy buff, this book will disappoint you, as Aynesworth tells you that he has never found anything that purports to show anything other than what the Warren Commission reported - that lone gunman / total loser Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he shot and killed President Kennedy.  And he pretty much lays waste to New Orleans District Attorney  Jim Garrison and his theories, which were made more famous by Oliver Stone's "JFK" movie.  

I'm in Aynesworth's camp on this one.

As to movies, we took in two this past week, "Last Vegas" and "Gravity".  The silly one first.

Lifelong boyhood pals Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, and Kevin Kline, known as the "Flatbush Four" get together for a weekend in Las Vegas to celebrate the upcoming wedding of Douglas, who just got engaged to a woman half his age.  Old friendships never die, despite some resentments, is the theme of this one.  While the four stars can claim six Oscars among them, this is no Oscar winner, but it's always fun to watch four great actors do their thing, and the movie was funny and enjoyable to watch.  A good time!

We also took in box office and critical smash, "Gravity". 

I will start by saying that this movie is visually beautiful, almost stunning, with its views of Earth from outer space.  It will probably win a boatload of awards for design and cinematography.  It was also tension filled and gripping as you watched to see just what was going to happen. When it was all over, though, we both found ourselves saying, "wasn't much of a story".  I suspect that we will be outliers with this point of view, but before you push back at me, let me offer this juxtaposition.

In the car on the way home, I said that as really gripping space stories go, Ron Howard's 1995 movie "Apollo 13" was better than this one, and I made a mental note to pull out the DVD and watch it again soon.  Then, as fate would have it, the performance of the Pitt Panthers at Georgia Tech last night caused me to reach for the TV remote, and guess what was on one of HBO's sub-channels?  You guessed it:

Don't get me wrong, "Gravity" is worth seeing, if only for the technical wizardry that produced it, so go see it.  But "Apollo 13" will give you a better ride.

One man's opinion.