Aw, man, Deb. I'd not read many of his books, but we who are fans and writers in that genre-ette owe him a big debt. I lift a virtual glass and send him some virtual bagpipes...he wrote till practically the last second, which I think is very cool. Susan, congrats! The death thing: I remember being very confused when my mother called 1968 "the year we lost everybody" because I was very young and didn't get that the "we" was, like, Woodstock Nation, not some giant familial disaster. Not long after that, John Lennon was shot. If my mom talks about Bobby, there's still just the one.

My mom was a huge McBain fan- she'd read all of his 86th(?) precinct books. I emailed her to tell her and she said she hadn't read it anywhere yet, and how did I know? I told her Buffistas are better than a news wire.

Your mom's a crime junkie, too? Mine is very impressed by my ability to look at crime scene photos in Practical Homicide Investigation I tell her it's all her fault...Wambaugh in utero and all. (And thank God, one can't smell a photo.)

Oh, yeah she is. Lehane is her favorite, I think, but she was always reading McBain when I was growing up.

She eats dinner watching CSI.

She should read Pelecanos...he likes carrots. Sometimes Greek carrots or sometimes urban, soulful carrots. Wow, Dinner during CSI... that is hard-core. I used to eat during The Wire sometimes, but the grossout is pretty minimal outside the shooting galleries, if profanity is not a problem for you.

Nice. Instead of recommending it, Ima save it for the next gift giving occasion. It's hard to find her a book she hasn't already ordered for herself on ILL.

ETA: Yeah, she told me about eating during CSI after she took the opportunity to mention my aunt's nail fungus just as I was going for my first bite of steak. Thought I was being squeamish.

There are two Pelecanos series(he must write fast like Deb) One that starts with "The Big Blowdown" and one that starts with "Right as Rain" He's like Lehane but a tiny bit more optimistic, just enough so I don't finish the books and hope to die young. ;)You know? And we share a musical obsession with the soul of the seventies. (/my literary boyfriend likes carrots. Opa!) Oops...not quite done. If anyone here cares about the future of the crime novel, read "Hard Revolution"...sorry to use the "t-word" Susan, but it really did "transcend".

Although (and this is totally the wrong thread!) a fair amount of Pelecanos isn't mysteries -- they're crime fiction. There's no real whodunit.

Oh, lordy, the genre definition discussion. That's one I'm staying all the way out of.

Jesse is right...a lot of times we do know the "who" and "how"...it's mostly seeing if the Mostly Good guys can stay ahead of the Mostly Bad guys.(because both sides usually have somebody who could fit in with the other crowd.) Look out for bad tippers and people that don't respect good music when they hear it...bad stuff happens to them. And Deb, you know I'm not doing that... not with an urban, noirish, feminist, "defective detective" novel with class issues and procedural overtones.