yeah, I saw when I looked him up that he was more a mystery guy than Sci Fi... which is crazy to me since the sci fi was really good! I always find it kinda amazing that there are just so many great authors out there!

Stiletto
Harold Robbins, 1960

To the world at large, Count Cesare Cardinelli is an internationally renowned cross-country racecar driver, the licensed US dealer of high-end sports cars made by several European automakers, and a jetsetting playboy. However, unbeknownst to all but a few, he’s also an incredibly efficient hitman for the Mafia, who slays his victims at extremely close range using a stiletto – and usually they don’t see him coming (or even have any idea of what just happened to them as they drop dead). The story here follows Cardinelli as he takes down several key witnesses in a big organized crime trial in New York, but then eventually learns that a few of the very top bosses also want him dead as well (for reasons that are initially obscure). Also, an FBI agent who had worked on the aforementioned organized crime case with the NYPD eventually begins to suspect Cardinelli of perpetrating the hits and the chase is on.
This is a kind-of, sort-of mob/crime thriller, but Robbins spends more time explaining the background of Cardinelli (how the scion of a minor Sicilian noble family became an assassin for the mob), as well as the three women in the story who either were or become his lovers over the course of the story, and also delving into a little questionable pop psychology to explain their motivations. In conclusion, so far I’ve read two of his books and have yet to truly understand why this guy was one of the bestselling authors in the US and beyond for several decades.

Battletech: Mercenary's Star
William H. Keith Jr.


The Gray Death Legion finds itself out of work and forced to take a training gig on a backwater planet that turns into a whole revolution.

Much like the 1st book, there was a bit too much repetitive technospeak and specs... almost like the author wanted the reader to be able to have the game in front of them while reading and roll out the battle. If one was actually doing that it would be great, but if you are reading for the story it definitely bogs down some. The characters are pretty interesting though, that defnitely helps carry it through.. alot of the action scenes are pretty similar and the good guys seems to have really strong plot armor. Fun to read for sure though!

Maybe it was a cute reference to this guy?

"Pogo" was everywhere in those days. Probably still ran in 400 newspapers in the early 60s.

The Alienist by Caleb Carr 

I first read this when it came out in paperback after it had been a big thing when published.  I wasn't reading much in the way of historical fiction or historical mysteries at the time, but I remember being pretty enthralled with it.  I hadn't read it since then, though I watched the first season of the television show which adapts it and have zero memory of that program.  I was floundering for a historical novel to read and decided to slot this one in. 

The book is narrated by John Moore, a crime beat reporter for the New York Times in 1896.  Teddy Roosevelt is the reform Police Commissioner of New York City.  The city itself is teaming with immigrants as it is transforming from a shipping hub to a manufacturing and banking behemoth.  The plan is in place for the consolidation of the outer boroughs in to the current NYC.  Into this setting comes a serial killer who preys (predominantly) on very young male prostitutes who dress as ladies.  Roosevelt gathers together Laslo Kreizler, an alienist (early psychologist), Moore, two young eager reform police detectives, and a female police secretary (the first in the city) to stop the killer, in the face of vehement and violent opposition from the entrenched New York police force and the upper strata of New York society. 

The plot itself is good and it's more of a procedural than a true mystery.  We learn enough about the main protagonists to maintain interest in them.  It's made clear that while this isn't an entirely new situation (there is mention of H. H. Holmes and Jesse Pomeroy appears as a character), but the recognition of the existence of serial killers is still quite new.  I think where Carr really excels is in portraying the stratified society of the time and the entrenched backwardness of the New York police department (how little things have changed).  

A Night to Remember by Walter Lord.




Originally published in 1955, Walter Lord's A Night to Remember details the sinking of the Titanic following its collision with an iceberg on April 15th, 1912, resulting in the loss of over 1,500 lives. A huge critical and popular success upon initial publication, the book was later adapted into a popular and still very well regarded film in 1958.

Lord undertook a lot of research in preparation for the book, as well as conducting hours of interviews with many of the survivors to obtain first-hand accounts. It's a testament to the author's diligent methodology and rejection of anything that smacked of hearsay or exaggeration that, even though the discovery of the ship's wreck in 1985 shed much new light on the events of the sinking, almost everything Lord wrote in this book still holds up today as accurate.

Unlike other books I've read on the subject, the author isn't interested in setting up the story up in advance, with a history of the White Star line or the Titanic's construction etc; instead, he focuses exclusively on the events of the night of the sinking. Sure, he does provide some background details as he goes along, but the main purpose of this book is to give an almost minute-by-minute account of the night of the disaster.

The book is also concerned with the mores and etiquette of the era. An era when gentlemen offered chivalrous 'protection' to women who were travelling alone; when men put women and children into the lifeboats first and subsequently went to their deaths stiff-lipped and in full evening dress; when First Class passengers assumed that their lives were of more importance than the many Third Class passengers who died trapped below decks. It really is a fascinating study of people from a bygone era in a horrific crisis.

On a related subject, something I hadn't quite appreciated before reading this book was that the wealthy aristocracy on board the Titanic really were the A-list celebrities of their day. In 1912, there weren't really any movie stars or celebrity musicians or famous sports personalities, so it was the aristocracy whose lives and adventures filled up the newspaper gossip columns and allowed the public to live vicariously through their glamourous lifestyles. This, I think, goes a long way towards explaining why the sinking was so shocking to the world at large and why it became such a newspaper sensation at the time.

An area where the book really scores over other Titanic books that I've read is in its coverage of the freezing night that the survivors spent shivering in their lifeboats, waiting for the arrival of the Carpathia, the ship that rescued them. There's a tremendous amount of detail about this part of the story that usually just gets ignored in other books.

Overall, A Night to Remember is an utterly riveting and very readable account of the great ship's sinking – I whipped through it in just 2 nights! Lord has a dispassionate, journalistic style that works well in this context, as he coverers the varying viewpoints of the large shipboard cast, with its entrenched upstairs/downstairs class divide. Highly recommended if you're interested in the Titanic's sinking.