book reviews – Edward Trimnell Books

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, and the secret lives of the middle-aged

In the spring of 1981, my seventh-grade English teacher assigned our class “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, a short story by James Thurber.

The eponymous lead character is a middle-age man who has gone into a trance in his day-to-day life. Walter Mitty is married, but there is no spark between him and his wife. (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was published in 1939, before the advent of no-fault divorce.) The story’s sparse 2,000-odd words don’t tell us much more about the details of Mitty’s circumstances, but we can easily imagine him as a low- or mid-level administrative employee in an office somewhere.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) theatrical release poster

To escape the dullness of his actual life, Walter Mitty retreats into various daydreams. He is alternately a US Navy hydroplane captain, a bomber pilot, and a brilliant surgeon. Mitty’s daydreams of a more glorious existence are inevitably interrupted when someone—often his wife—scolds him for zoning out.

I was twelve years old when I read this story for the first time. I remember enjoying some of the imagery of the story. But as a seventh-grader, I simply could not get my arms around the ennui and resignation that often accompanies middle age. I had not yet been on the planet for thirteen years. Everything was still new to me.

I recently reread Thurber’s story at the age of 57. What a difference 45 years can make, in the way one interprets a work of fiction.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a Walter Mitty. I don’t daydream about flying a navy hydroplane while I’m driving a car, as Mitty does. But at the age of 57, I do understand how a person can become disconnected from the larger world.

American society is forever fixated on the future, and that naturally tends toward a youth obsession. Once you reach a certain age, you tend to fall off society’s radar. People are much more interested in what younger folks are doing.

The flip side of that is that you, in turn, are much less interested in what most other people are talking about. This doesn’t necessarily lead to constant daydreaming. But it does lead to a sense that you are not as fully a part of this world as you once were.

This process might be unavoidable, and it might not be completely unhealthy, either, for aging individuals or for society at-large. Society would never change if the concerns of the same cohort of people forever dominated the zeitgeist. For the individual, gradually losing touch with the world—even in late middle age—might be viewed as an advance preparation for leaving the world entirely.

Anyway, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” has apparently struck a chord with a lot of people since it was first published. The story was made into a movie in 1947, and then again at 2013.

I found “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” in the recent anthology, A Century of Fiction in The New Yorker: 1925-2025. You can also find the story on The New Yorker’s website.

-ET

Book descriptions, and the perils of not reading them

A few years ago, a reader reviewer of The Rockland Horror complained, “I’m not sure I would have read this if I knew [sic] it started in the late 1800s…”

That’s fair enough. Some readers like period novels, some don’t.

But the reader put himself (and me, I suppose—as I aim to please) through an unnecessary ordeal. The opening line of The Rockland Horror’s book description begins, “One night in March 1882..”

The Rockland Horror is very much billed as a historical horror series. All the reader had to do was to read the book description.

But who am I to judge? I, too, have been guilty of failing to read a book description. I recently ordered a copy of The Scary States of America: 50 Weird and Terrifying Stories Based on True Events by Michael Teitelbaum.

I assumed that I would be getting a nonfiction book about paranormal phenomena throughout the USA. That is, after all, what the title suggests. Continue reading “Book descriptions, and the perils of not reading them”

A story that scared me in 1977

I can recall the first time that I was actually scared by something that I read.

It was the summer of 1977. Somehow a book of short horror stories had come into my possession: Stories of Ghosts, Witches, and Demons. This slender 80-page volume, edited by Freya Littledale, was published by Scholastic in 1971.

Although I read the book cover-to-cover, I have forgotten all of the stories—except one: an especially creepy tale called, “The Demon of Detroit”.

This is the story of a married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Adams, who move into a house in the Motor City. They soon discover that they aren’t alone. Something horrible inhabits their back bedroom.

After a series of disturbing events, the couple decides to move out of the house. The last lines of the story are particularly haunting: They indicate that the Adamses “admit defeat”. Whatever lurks in the back bedroom will now have the rest of the home to itself, too.

The full text of the story (along with a clip of the artwork appearing in the original Scholastic publication) is available online. I do recognize the artwork. I can’t say for certain if the transcription of the 1971 text is one hundred percent faithful. (I was nine years old in 1977, after all.)

“The Demon of Detroit” seems to be based on an urban legend from the 1960s, which has enjoyed a modest contemporary revival. Urban legends, I’ve found, often make good source material for horror films and short stories, because urban legends are instantly relatable and easy to grasp. They aren’t overly complex. That’s important in horror film and fiction.

“The Demon of Detroit” also demonstrates the effectiveness of the short form in horror. This short story is perhaps a thousand words long. Obviously, they won’t all be that short. But as a rule of thumb with horror: the longer the story, the harder it is to maintain the suspension of disbelief. (Notice that Poe, Lovecraft, and even Stephen King are at their best when writing in the short form.)

“The Demon of Detroit” is a story that begins with a subtle atmosphere of darkness, and builds, over about a thousand words, to something truly malevolent.

“The Demon of Detroit” scared the bejesus out of me in 1977. I reread it today (the online version). It still brings a chill to my spine, forty-eight years later.

Suzy Favor Hamilton: Gen X ‘Fast Girl’

Suzy Favor Hamilton and I have two things in common: we were both born in August 1968, and we were both drawn to running at a young age.

That is where the similarities end. Hamilton made it to the Olympics in 1992, 1996, and 2000. I made it only to the Ohio State Cross Country Championships in 1985—where I placed about midway through the pack.

After her running career ended, Hamilton also worked as a high-price escort in Las Vegas for a while. As in running, her competitive instincts took over. She explains in an interview (above) how she became fixated on achieving a top ranking on The Erotic Review, a website where clients review escorts.

By this time she was also a wife and a mother. Hamilton’s husband was aware of her activities. Whether this was some kind of a kink for him, or merely something he tolerated, is unclear. But he knew what she was doing.

One thing is clear: she got careless. By 2012, Hamilton was in her 40s, and her Olympic career was in the past. She was never a household name or a major celebrity, in the way that Bruce Jenner, Michael Phelps, or Kristi Yamaguchi were. Nevertheless, she was a public figure of some renown, and she was asking for trouble when she revealed her identity to several clients. Continue reading “Suzy Favor Hamilton: Gen X ‘Fast Girl’”

‘Texas’ by James Michener (mini-review)

I have just finished reading Texas (1985) by James Michener.

James Michener (1907-1997) specialized in vast historical novels, usually centered upon the history of a particular place.

For example, Hawaii (1959) covered the history of Hawaii. Alaska (1988) covered the history of our 49^th state.

His books are long and vast in scope. A thousand pages is a typical length. Michener wrote novels that today’s short attention-spanned, Internet-addled American finds daunting. But he was quite popular during his heyday, the 1950s through the 1980s.

Because of the historical scopes involved, Michener’s novels span many generations, with wide casts of characters. His books are less novels, in the conventional sense, than collections of interconnected novellas. If James Michener were alive today, and publishing on Amazon Kindle, he would almost certainly be publishing his long books as series of novellas. But that wasn’t what the brick-and-mortar-centric book retailing industry of the 20^th century wanted. And so James Michener’s long tales were delivered as doorstop-sized novels.

Texas follows the usual Michener formula. There are storylines from the Spanish colonial period, the obligatory story about the Alamo (of course), and characters from more recent times.

I have sometimes found James Michener to be a bit too didactic. (In the historical fiction blockbuster space, I much prefer Edward Rutherfurd and John Jakes.) A novel based in historical events is fine; but if I want to read an actual history, I’ll turn to nonfiction. But in Texas, Michener emphasizes story and mostly avoids the dreaded info-dump.

I am not even going to attempt a plot summary of Texas. There is simply too much to describe. Any plot summary I might write would run on for five thousand words, the length of a long essay or a middling short story.

Suffice it to say: Texas contains many plots and characters related to the history of Texas. It’s also a very entertaining book, if you aren’t daunted by the 1096-page length.

-ET

The Best Short Stories 2024: The O. Henry Prize Winners (quick review)

I’ve been reading more short stories of late. I find that I often enjoy them more than novels. A good short story contains no fluff, no filler. Short stories, moreover, are well-suited to this era of cell phones and short attention spans.

Short stories used to be almost as popular as novels, back when Americans read middlebrow, general interest magazines. (F. Scott Fitzgerald earned most of his income from short story sales.)

But that was in the distant past. For as long as anyone can remember, every fiction writer has dreamed of being a bestselling novelist. Publishers have been wary of short fiction collections, unless every story in the collection was authored by Stephen King.

I recently picked up The Best Short Stories 2024: The O. Henry Prize Winners, edited by Amor Towles and Jenny Minton Quigley. I bought the audiobook edition, so I listened to these stories as I mowed my lawn and did my bench press sets in the gym.

This collection contains a strong mix of stories. This isn’t to say that every story is a gem. As is always the case with multi-author anthologies, the reader’s mileage may vary. There were a few stories in this collection that left me cold. But most of them are good, and a handful of the stories are very good.

My favorites were:

“Hiding Spot” by Caroline Kim

“The Paper Artist” by E. K. Ota

“The Dark” by Jess Walter

Recommended reading…especially if you’ve been waiting for the right time to jump back into short-story reading.

-ET

View on Amazon: The Best Short Stories 2024: The O. Henry Prize Winners

Rediscovering F. Scott Fitzgerald

In the fall of 1984, I was a junior in high school. I had a passion for the novels and short stories of Stephen King.

My high school English teacher, not so much. He was a devotee of two twentieth-century writers: Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. So I read a lot of Hemingway and a lot of Fitzgerald that year.

I was 16 years old, and really two young for either writer. Hemingway and Fitzgerald wrote about adult concerns, and concerns of what was already a long-ago, bygone era. As a teenager of the Reagan-era American suburbs, I had little interest in the social conventions of the Jazz Age, or the moody ramblings of World War I veterans.

As an adult, I’ve developed a new appreciation for both writers.

I’ve recently begun digging into The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A New Collection. This collection, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli, contains all the Fitzgerald short stories I remember as a junior in high school: “Winter Dreams”, “A Diamond As Big As the Ritz”, “Babylon Revisited,” etc.—as well as many that my high school English teacher never assigned.

Fitzgerald wrote his short stories long. Not all of them can be read in a single sitting. Many of his short stories resemble compressed novels more than typical short stories, as they deal with events stretching out over many years, even decades.

Fitzgerald’s writing style is accessible to modern readers, but his subject matter is a hundred years removed from our time. It takes some effort to put oneself in the mindset of an adult living in 1925. (I am soon to turn 57 years old, and that is the era of my great-grandparents. The one great-grandparent I knew was born in 1895, one year before Fitzgerald.)

Still, there are some universal themes in Fitzgerald’s fiction. One of my favorite stories is the aforementioned “Winter Dreams”. This is the tale of a man who, between adolescence and early middle age, mistakenly projects all of his ideals onto a woman with whom he has a fleeting romantic relationship.

1922 magazine illustration for “Winter Dreams”

“Winter Dreams” is basically a story about the pedastalization of femininity. The theme is as relevant in 2025 as it was in 1922, when Fitzgerald wrote the story.

(Note: When I first read “Winter Dreams” in 1984, I “got” what Fitzgerald was trying to say. Some years would pass before I learned the real-life lesson.)

You might be hesitant to dive into a book of century-old stories. I would encourage you, though, to give Fitzgerald a try. Many of his tales, like The Great Gatsby and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, have been adapted for film in the modern era.

There is a reason why Fitzgerald endures, when so many other writers have fallen by the wayside. Fitzgerald was a skilled and insightful storyteller.

-ET

Gen X memories: How and Why Wonder Books

So much was superior about the Gen X childhood. We had decent schools, conscientious teachers, no social media madness, no “AI” nonsense, and no smartphone obsessions.

We also had a thriving children’s book industry. And no—I’m not referring to Harry Potter. (Most Gen Xers were in our 30s when Harry Potter appeared.)

We had comics and storybooks, of course. But there were also plenty of children’s books that respected the intelligence of children. Many of these books were quite sophisticated by today’s standards, what might accurately be called “middlebrow”.

Among these was the How and Why Wonder Books series. Most of these were published in the early 1960s.

I owned this volume: The How and Why Wonder Book of The Moon.

This title, targeted at the casual juvenile reading market, went into considerable detail about the science of the moon and the history of lunar observation. Since this was published before the 1969 lunar landing, that event was not covered, but plenty else was.

In the 1960s and 1970s, it was still assumed that intelligent people would spend more time reading than staring at electronic screens. How and Why Wonder Books, though written for children in the 1960s, would be beyond the reading comprehension levels of many adults born after 1990. Make of that what you will.

-ET

Paul Hirsch, the man who edited ‘Star Wars’

I had never heard of Paul Hirsch until I read his memoir, but I have been watching his movies since the age of nine.

Paul Hirsch is a longtime film editor and Hollywood insider. He edited the original Star Wars (1977), along with its 1980 sequel, The Empire Strikes Back. Other films in Hirsch’s editing oeuvre include: Carrie (1976), Creepshow (1982), Falling Down (1993), Source Code (2010), two Mission Impossible films, and The Secret of My Success (1987). All movies that I’ve enjoyed watching, literally for my entire sentient life.

I recently read Hirsch’s book, A Long Time Ago in a Cutting Room Far, Far Away: My Fifty Years Editing Hollywood Hits—Star Wars, Carrie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Mission: Impossible, and More.

I don’t read a lot of Hollywood books, but I made an exception in this case. I am not a movie editor, nor do I aspire to be one (aside from the editing of my YouTube videos). Hirsch’s memoir, however, provides some insights that can be applied to any creative process. Hirsch is observant, and he’s been doing what he does for a long time.

For those who are interested in Hollywood, this book contains tidbits like: the challenges of working with the late John Hughes, Tom Cruise’s fitness and diet routine, and the bad blood between Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte that turned I Love Trouble (1994) into a flop. The chapter on the ill-fated The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002), starring Eddie Murphy, is also worth reading.

Hirsch adds enough of his own life and beliefs to this book to personalize it, but not enough to turn it into a manifesto or (heaven forbid) yet another Hollywood political screed. Hirsch makes his left-leaning politics fairly clear in his memoir, but he doesn’t beat the reader over the head on the topic.

My only real disappointment with Paul Hirsch is that unlike me, he does not enjoy horror movies, even though he edited several of my favorites (Creepshow and Carrie). Fair enough. Supernatural horror is not for everyone, including, perhaps, some of those who have a hand in making it.

-ET

Reading notes: ‘Flint Kill Creek’ by Joyce Carol Oates

Amid all the current events and weather-related entries of late, here is a quick mini-review of Flint Kill Creek: Stories of Mystery and Suspense. I have recently worked my way through the stories in this volume by the extremely prolific Joyce Carol Oates.

Speaking of Oates: she was born almost exactly 30 years before me, in the summer of 1938. Oates will turn 87 this year, and she continues to write and publish. This is a testament to both a sharp mind and a solid work ethic. Her style has not deteriorated, nor even changed much in recent decades. Her latest books are very similar to the ones she published years ago.

Flint Kill Creek, as the full name of the book implies, is a collection of dark tales. Many of these stories involve a crime, but not all of them do.

These stories are what JCO does best: explorations of the dark corners of the human mind and its motivations. These stories often have surprise twists. Oh…I didn’t see that coming.

Joyce Carol Oates is known as a writer of literary fiction. This means, among other things, that her work sometimes requires some effort to get through. And so it is with Flint Kill Creek. Some of these stories are quite accessible and fast-paced. (I particularly liked the opening, titular story.) Others are slower and more abstruse.

As is always the problem (for this reader, anyway) where JCO is concerned: few of her characters, even the innocent ones cast in victim roles, are very likable. I often find that in a JCO story, I have no one to root for.

If you already like Joyce Carol Oates’s work, you’ll like Flint Kill Creek. If you don’t like her style, this book will do nothing to change your mind.

As for me: I have always been somewhere in the middle regarding Joyce Carol Oates’s fiction. I most always admire her work; but I enjoy it to varying degrees.

-ET

**View Flint Kill Creek: Stories of Mystery and Suspense on Amazon

‘You Like It Darker’: one of the best Stephen King collections in years

I’ve pulled no punches about the fact that I am not a fan of many of Stephen King’s post-1990 novels. Last year, I was less than thrilled with the overlong and rambling Fairy Tale.

In recent decades (King’s career is now so long that this is the most meaningful unit of measurement), his best work has often been his collections of short fiction.

No, I won’t give you another endorsement of Night Shift (1978). I already did that five years ago. King has produced plenty of good short fiction since the beginning of the new millennium, including Everything’s Eventual (2002), Full Dark, No Stars (2010), and The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (2015).

And most recently: You Like It Darker (2024). I purchased this book in hardcover within days of my disappointing read of Fairy Tale, because—when King is at his best, he hits them out of the park.

I only recently got around to reading this latest short story collection, though. (I have a rather large TBR backlog.) I am happy to report that You Like It Darker is one of his best short story collections in years—probably since the aforementioned Everything’s Eventual. Not every story in You Like it Darker is a home run. But a handful of them are.

“Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream” is a long short story about a man who is framed for a murder he did not commit. The whole thing starts with a recurring bad dream about a buried body.

“On Slide Inn Road” is a shorter tale about a family trip gone wrong. It reverses some of the usual age dynamics that you see in stories. This one is more of a crime story than a horror tale. (There are no supernatural elements.) But it’s a good one.

Rattlesnakes is a novella set in Florida. This is also a sequel to Cujo (1981). The main protagonist of that book, Vic Trenton, is now in his seventies, and he’s been through a lot in the intervening years. He goes through a lot in this story, too.

The Answer Man is another novella. In 1937, a young man meets a roadside hawker who can foresee the future—for a price. The young man interacts with “the Answer Man” over the next sixty years.

This is ultimately a story about finding meaning in life’s unexpected challenges and tragedies. This one is an absolute gem, and worth the entire price of the book.

***

Stephen King is now 77. I started reading his books in the 1980s, when he was only in his thirties, and I was in my teens. (Note: I’ve gotten older since then, too.)

I hope that Stephen King continues to write for many years to come. That was my overriding thought, as I finished this collection.

-ET

**View You Like It Darker on Amazon

Raymond Carver’s short stories

Some time ago I purchased Where I’m Calling From, the final collection of short stories from Raymond Carver (1938 – 1988). The collection also includes some of Carver’s early published stories.

I have just gotten around to reading this collection. Overall, I would rate these stories quite favorably, for work produced during the mid-20^th century.

That doesn’t mean that Carver’s stories will suit everyone’s taste. This is not genre fiction. These are not tales of horror, crime, adventure, romantic fantasy, or alien invasions. Carver’s fiction has been described as minimalist and realist. Kind of like Hemingway at his driest, on steroids. Carver mostly wrote stories about working-class life. And when you add in the generation gap, some of these stories can seem a little dated.

And yes, there are a few that are…not exactly boring…but you finish them wondering, “Now, what was the point of that?”

That said, Carver was a master of bringing narrative passages to life. He was a master of microtension. Even when he is writing about outwardly mundane circumstances, you want to read on, to find out what will happen next.

Raymond Carver lived only 50 years, and published fiction for about 20 years. He wrote only poems, short stories, and screenplays. No novels. As a result, he did not leave a massive body of work behind. But what he did leave is well worth exploring.

-ET

View WHERE I’M CALLING FROM: SELECTED STORIES on Amazon

‘The Dead Zone’ and narrative drive

At the end of 2024 I read Stephen King’s The Dead Zone for the second time.

I had read this book for the first time back in 1984, when I was fifteen going on sixteen. In the intervening years, I had never revisited the book. (I did see the 1983 film adaptation starring Christopher Walken. While this was a valiant effort on Hollywood’s part, the movie simply didn’t capture the essence of the complex, multilayered source material of the novel.)

‘The Dead Zone’: an experiment in rereading

I decided in December 2024 that forty years was enough time to wait between readings of The Dead Zone. I therefore gave the book another reading. While I remembered most of the major plot points, I had forgotten enough that the book was “fresh” in my rereading.

I also did this as an experiment of sorts. I have been disappointed by Stephen King’s recent novels. Last year I plodded my way through the meandering Fairy Tale (2022), and I struggled to finish it. I was glad when Fairy Tale was over. I nearly gave up on The Outsider (2018) and Doctor Sleep (2013). I did give up on Cell (2006), Under the Dome (2009), and Lisey’s Story (2006), abandoning all three books midway through.

And yet, I recalled loving Stephen King’s early novels so much. Seemingly everything published under his name between 1974 and 1983 was pure gold. Carrie, The Shining, Cujo, The Stand…I had gone through all of those books like a hot knife through butter. And that was back when I had the distracted mind of a teenager.

I wondered if my tastes had changed, or maybe matured. For example, I still enjoy the music of the Canadian rock group Rush. But I have backed off from my teenage assertions that Neil Peart’s lyrics are absolutely brilliant, a complete system of philosophy set to music.

The fifty-something eye can simply not see the world through the teenage lens. Therefore, a rereading of The Dead Zone would be a worthwhile test. Had Stephen King changed? Or had I changed?

‘The Dead Zone’: not quite a horror novel

The Dead Zone is the story of Johnny Smith, a Maine English teacher who emerges from a car accident and a four-year coma with psychic powers. Not long after his awakening, Smith discovers that he has an important mission to perform, one involving an act of political violence. But in committing this one act, Smith will literally save the world.

Although there is a serial murderer subplot, The Dead Zone is not a horror novel in the conventional sense. If Stephen King hadn’t written it, The Dead Zone would have been shelved in the science fiction section. The Dead Zone reminds me of something the late Michael Crichton would have written.

View ‘THE DEAD ZONE’ on Amazon

The results of my reread

So what did I think? Forty years later, I will tell you the same thing I would have told you in 1984: The Dead Zone is an absolutely brilliant novel. I enjoyed The Dead Zone just as much as a 56-year-old as I did at the age of not-quite-sixteen. In fact, I enjoyed it more, because there were some layers and references that went over my head forty years ago, that I appreciated this time around.

The power of narrative drive

Why is The Dead Zone such a good novel? The premise? Well, yes, the premise is an intriguing one. But Stephen King, in the early years, made magic with vampires in ’Salem’s Lot, his second novel. Vampires were hardly original by the time ’Salem’s Lot was published in 1975. Bram Stoker had already done them seventy-eight years earlier.

The Dead Zone has a compelling premise and strong central characters. More than that, though, The Dead Zone has a strong narrative drive. Although by no means a short book, there is not a single wasted scene in The Dead Zone. There are no meandering subplots.

The problem of the Frankenstory

Fairy Tale, by contrast, is what I would call a Frankenstory. It lacks a coherent wholeness. If you read the book, you’ll find that it is actually two novels in one. There is the “in-this-world” story that comes in the first half of the book. And then there is the portal fantasy.

Or, no…that isn’t exactly right. It would be more accurate to say that Stephen King devotes a full novel’s worth of space setting up the main story premise in Fairy Tale.

I first noticed that Stephen King’s style had changed back in 1986, when I read It. Whereas before his novels and stories had moved along a straight narrative throughline, now they meandered to and fro.

What else makes a novel a Frankenstory? A story with too many characters, especially point-of-view characters. (This is a particularly pernicious trap for many fantasy authors.)

***

Anyway, I very much enjoyed my reread of The Dead Zone. The book really is that good. I recommend it for those who would like to read Stephen King at the top of his game.

-ET

Reading notes: Michael Connelly’s ‘Chasing the Dime’

One day in 2004, I was browsing through the bargain books bin at my local Borders bookstore. (Yes, we still had brick-and-mortar bookstores back then, though only for a few more years.)

I came across a hardcover copy of a mystery novel, Chasing the Dime. The author was Michael Connelly, whose name I recognized, but whose books I had yet to read. The price of the hardcover book was cheap, even by 2004 standards: $5.99, or something like that. I decided to give Chasing the Dime a try.

Drawn in by the story, I read Chasing the Dime in a few days. I then moved on to Michael Connelly’s series mysteries: those of Harry Bosch and Jack McEvoy, and then Mickey Haller, aka the Lincoln Lawyer.

Chasing the Dime is a standalone novel, of the “amateur sleuth” genre. Originally published in 2002, this is the story of a tech entrepreneur, Henry Pierce, who gets a new phone number after he changes his residence. The new phone number was recently held by a woman named “Lilly”.

Pierce gets numerous calls from men, many who are phoning from Los Angeles-area hotels. These men all seem eager to make evening appointments with Lilly.

Pierce quickly determines that Lilly is an escort. He also learns that Lilly went missing about two months ago. The phone company reassigned her number when she failed to pay the bill.

Pierce becomes obsessed with finding Lilly, or discovering what happened to her. (Not far into his investigation, Pierce concludes that foul play is involved.) This leads him to neglect his work and personal life. The search for Lilly also leads him to risk his physical safety.

**View CHASING THE DIME on Amazon**

Twenty years have gone by since I first read the novel. I recently decided to listen to the audiobook version of Chasing the Dime. As is often the case when I watch a film or read a story for the second time, I noticed things.

There are two major challenges in any “amateur sleuth” story. The first is: how does the amateur sleuth become involved in the mystery? The second: what motivates the amateur sleuth to investigate?

Michael Connelly plausibly answers the first question. In a big city like Los Angeles, just before the iPhone era, it is easy enough to imagine the phone company quickly recycling abandoned phone numbers, with some odd coincidences resulting.

The amateur sleuth’s motivation is less believable here. Connelly does create a childhood backstory for Pierce that partially explains his sudden obsession with Lilly’s fate. Also, Pierce has just broken up with his girlfriend, so he is emotionally vulnerable.

But as numerous secondary characters tell him, missing persons cases are best left to the police, or a trained private investigator. Also, Henry Pierce is a very busy man in the middle of some all-consuming, high-stakes endeavors. Would such a man really devote so much time to investigate the whereabouts of a stranger?

But that’s a flaw I noticed on the second reading/listening. There is no such thing as a perfect story, and Chasing the Dime is not a perfect novel. But this was the book that got me hooked on Michael Connelly. Twenty years later, I’ve been a fan ever since.

-ET

‘Salem’s Lot’: then and now

I was poking around on YouTube when I discovered the above trailer. Apparently Max (formerly HBO Max) has created a new screen adaptation of ‘Salem’s Lot, Stephen King’s 1975 novel about vampires taking over a small town in Maine.

I saw the original TV miniseries when it aired back in November 1979. I was 11 years old, in the sixth grade. There were some scenes in the 1979 original adaptation that were genuinely creepy–especially to the 11-year-old me.

When I started reading Stephen King’s novels in 1984, ‘Salem’s Lot was the one I started with. About five years had passed since my viewing of the miniseries. And I was then a sophomore in high school instead of a sixth-grader.

I read ‘Salem’s Lot in about three days. I found the book an absolute page-turner. (I seem to recall doing poorly on a geometry test, because I was reading ‘Salem’s Lot when I should have been studying!)

I’ve reread the book several times since then. From my more critical (and more jaundiced) adult perspective, I can see some flaws that I didn’t notice back then. But no matter. ‘Salem’s Lot is still a humdinger of a story, at the end of the day.

‘Salem’s Lot has a modern (1970s modern, anyway) feel to it. You don’t get the sense that you’re reading a story set in a remote location in 19th-century Europe, like Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). ‘Salem’s Lot therefore seems like a story that could happen. (If vampires existed, that is!)

Moreover, ‘Salem’s Lot is a real vampire story. Not a fake, teen girl romance tale masquerading as a vampire story, like that Twilight nonsense. (Don’t even get me started on Stephenie Meyer’s high crimes against the vampire genre.)

The 1970s/80s paperback version of ‘*Salem’s Lot* that I read in 1984

The new Max film version of ‘Salem’s Lot looks scary, based on the trailer. I will doubtless get around to seeing it a some point, but this is one that can wait, in my case.

‘Salem’s Lot, great story that it is, is one that has been with me for 45 years now, in one form or another. I watched the original TV miniseries at age 11. I read the novel for the first time at age 15. I’m now 56, and I know this story so well that I cannot help anticipating all the major plot points before they occur.

But such are the vagaries of age, and of rereading books, and watching their screen adaptations over decades. If your history with ‘Salem’s Lot is less extensive than mine (and it probably is), you’ll want to rush to the new Max version of it. A younger version of me would have felt the same way.

-ET

View ‘Salem’s Lot on Amazon!