I am currently reading three books, and hope to read at least seven this month. I'venot been reading much, though, and generally suck at sticking to TBR's (I tend to see a  shiny, get distracted, and run off chasing flutterbies and pretty new books), so don't expect to see all of these books come my monthly wrap-up.

1.   Swag - Elmore Leonard  - Currently Reading

    A couple of low-level scumbags start committing armed robberies in pursuit of the good life in 1970's Detroit. Fun thus far, but not one of Leonard's best. I've been told the ending's a pip, though. I'm about a hundred pages in, and it is picking up.

2.   The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov,Diana Burgin,Katherine Tiernan O'Connor   - Currently Reading

    One of my occasional stabs at reading a classic, in this case Early Russian Magical Realism. So, the Devil comes to Stalinist Moscow to see what Hell is really like. There's also a giant talking cat named Behemoth. Not a quick read, only fifty pages in, but delightfully bonkers.

3.   The Wolf's Hour - Robert R. McCammon  - Currently Reading

    Or, The Bourne Lycanthropy. A WW2 set spy thriller with a werewolf in the lead. Not as campy as it sounds, but doesn't seem to take itself too seriously, either. This is the second McCammon for me, after Boy's Life, which I didn't like as much as I wanted to. Still, the first hundred pages of this have been nifty, so...

4.   The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead - Max Brooks  - To-Read

    Have read bits and pieces (heh), and it seems fast, fun, and funny. Cool.

5.   World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War - Max Brooks  - To-Read

    Seems like a natural next step, yeah?

6.   The Song of Roland - Anonymous,Dorothy L. Sayers  - To-Read

    Because, deep down, I want to be the guy who reads classics for pleasure, even if that means reading epic poetry. Besides, wouldn't it be funny if I, a life-long mystery fan, read Sayers's translation of this before any of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels? I thought so, anyway.

7. TBD

    Look, I have hundreds of books, as well as access to book stores. I'll think of something.

Carl Webster comes to Detroit looking for some escaped German POWs. Will Honey, the ex-wife of a friend of the POWs, be his salvation or his downfall?

Yeah, I made the teaser way more exciting than the book. I hesitate to call any Elmore Leonard book bad but this one was definitely on the shitty side of good.

For my money, Elmore Leonard does his best work when pitting guys with various degrees of sleaze against each other in either Miami or Detroit and peppering it with slick dialogue. While this one has a Detroit setting, it's set in the 1940's which kind of removes a lot of the cool factor. Also, German POWs who barely speak English do not have the slickest dialogue in crime fiction.

I felt like I missed something regarding Carl Webster's past relationships with the POWs and why he was so determined to go after them. Turns out I was since that was previously detailed inComfort to the Enemy and Other Carl Webster Stories.

While I thought Carl Webster was a cool guy, I also feel like he was Raylan Givens with a lick of paint. Actually, since Carl Webster has about as much written about him as Raylan Givens, maybe the writers of Justified drew some material for Raylan from Carl. Either way, I felt like this could have easily been a Raylan Givens story with minimal modifications.

My biggest gripe with this was that nothing happened for most of the book. I think the book suffered because the time period was a departure from Leonard's usual and the characters didn't lend themselves to his usual magic. Two stars. I refrained from giving it one star because the book didn't actually suck but it's definitely a bottom shelf Leonard.

I wouldn't call it bad but it's definitely on the shitty side of good so far.

8/5 - I had real trouble getting into the plot and unusual dialogue style and ended up giving up at page 95. I'm not sure if it was the book or my preoccupation with my recovery, so one day (hopefully this year) I'll give it another go.