He’s a great writer, and the story was mostly good and generally entertaining. Didn’t quite hold up as a crime caper story which is the basic genre. But it’s good enough on that level, with plenty of humor and history and social analysis kind a f eased in without you (mostly) noticing along the way. Very good but not great. I’ve just started the sequel, Crook Manifesto.
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The House on Via Gemini is a book by Italian writer Domenico Starnone. Really powerful and compelling story of his childhood, focused on the dominating and violent but also magnetic character of his father. Was filed in with fiction at my library, so I was 2/3 of the way through before I realized it was a memoir and not a first person novel, which threw me for a loop. The father character didn’t seem like a real person, but maybe some of that was because the story was told through a boy’s eyes? Not sure. A really good book, though, although not a comforting read. Won the Strega prize, Italy’s top literary honor.
The Years is a major work mixing history and memoir by French nobelist Ernaux. Mostly told in the collective voice with interludes focusing on her personal experience from her birth in 1941 through to 2010 or so. Really great work, and she does an excellent job maintaining distance and objectivity about her generation while still telling her/their story with sympathy. Doubles as an insightful work about postwar European society.
And Klan war, a nonfiction book about the struggle between the federal government and the Klan during Grant’s presidency. I only knew the really brief HS thumbnail version of reconstruction, and had no idea how violent it was. The South basically engaged in a wide scale terrorist insurgency that was ultimately successful at reimposing white supremacy for another 80 years after the North grew tired of the continuing fight.
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Not a Slough House novel, but gives backstory on some Slough House characters. Obviously not the place to start if you haven't read Herron.
The latest entry in the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, System Collapse. It's exactly what you would expect, recommended for any sci-fi fans.
The End of the Wasp Season by Denise Mina. police procedural set in Glasgow, one of a series. Mina is an excellent writer, I think these are among the best in the genre.
I also have been rereading the original Uplift trilogy by David Brin, still find them enjoyable.