I read a Lee Child recently - he is the best-selling thriller author from the UK based in the US. His hero is Jack Reacher, loner, ex-military cop, tough guy. The plots are intricate and ludicrous, but satisfying in a Charles Bronson meets Tom Clancy sort of way. When younger I enjoyed Alistair MacLean's novels a great deal, published in Fontana editions. One point though - Reacher is very very ruthless. He kills, on average, ten to twelve people in each book, I'd reckon, by strangulation, throat-slitting, and brain smashing (usually using powerful guns). He is usually "justified" because the killers are ultra-sadistic killers or terrorists threatening the American way of life, and people Reacher loves or cares for. Of course, he takes the law way into his own hands, and squeezes it there until it looks all broken and funny. Good clean fun? No. Red-blooded pulp for boys? Maybe. More Spillane than Chandler, Child is a good terse prose writer, with a touch of style. But hasn't his "hero" murdered about 150 to 200 men and women through the series, by now? That's serial killing, more than vigilante justice, no?
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
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When I was in France recently I started reading 'Nothing to Lose' by Lee Child. I was half-way through it when our holiday ended. I am mildly tempted to buy a copy so I can finish it off - a feeble temptatation that I have thus far successfully resisted!
Best wishes from Simon