Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Another shout-out for Huston
Just finished Charlie Huston’s Caught Stealing, and wow, what a read. The plot is pure MacGuffin — Hank Thompson, a Californian transplanted to New York City, does a favor for the guy across the hall. He looks after his neighbor’s cat while the guy is away seeing to an ailing father. But there’s something in the cat’s carrying case that some very bad men want, and before long, Hank’s world is breaking into pieces. For starters, he gets the shit kicked out of him and loses a kidney.
Pure Maltese Falcon, only a hell of a lot more violent.
Hank’s such a likable guy that when he starts doing bad things, I didn’t feel alienated from him; no, I said to myself, “Yeah, I would have bashed that guy’s head in with a baseball bat, too.” He cares a lot about people (his sort-of-girlfriend, his parents, his neighbor’s cat) and that made me care about him. I wanted very much to see him come out of this mess in one piece, preferably with all the loot, and if he had to step of a few toes or blow away a leg or a neck, well, so be it.
Huston has a blog, too. He updates infrequently but his posts are interesting — like this one on the agony of having to write thousands of beats.
And now I get to start his just-released My Dead Body, his latest Joe Pitt novel (a series I blogged about here).
So, um, gotta go . . .
D.
