I swear this summer’s Waterstone’s 3 for 2 sale was the best in years. Included were all crime and science fiction books. I work near the UK's biggest branch, so I went for it. I’m trying to cut down on the number of books I buy, but I’ll usually make an exception for writers I haven’t read before: I left the Elmore Leonard on the shelves and took some chances. Fuck me this book is good. It’s one of the Crime Masterworks series. Sure, there’s some crime in it, but it’s no more a genre novel than The Outsider or Crime and Punishment. The story concerns the actions of a vile pimp and thief scoring some prosperity in a country under occupation (never named, but presumably this is Belgium under the Nazis). I went into this completely fresh, so I’m not going to give you anything else on this. Suffice to say, it’s extraordinary.
Now, it seems as if Simenon is prolific like a motherfucker. So here’s another author for me to catch up on. It’s the best and worst thing about reading - the volume of books out there. You think you have a rough idea of what’s available, then you look at another country, or genre, or period, and there’re hundreds of great things you’ve never heard of. You’ll never read the tiniest fraction of things you’d enjoy - there are hundreds of potential favourite novels out there for you. Great, isn’t it?
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