THE WRIGHT STUFF

Another off topic post but I can't ignore another triple award winner in Edward Wright, and I think I will have to widen my mission statement to include anything that interests me, in the crime field.


Wright's first book Clea's Moon won the debut dagger of the British Crime Writer's Association. His second While I Disappear won a Shamus, and now his third Red Sky Lament has won the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger.

I have a purely personal objection to a book set in the late 1940's winning a historical award; it makes me feel old.

I did not read Clea's Moon and did not particularly enjoy While I Disappear as I thought it was too much like a poor man's Raymond Chandler, LA Confidential, or the Lone Ranger and Tonto.

But I will probably give Red Sky Lament a read because among other reasons the subject interests me.

Los Angeles, late 1940s: all over Hollywood, the U.S. government is ordering people to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee as part of the crusade to uncover Communist influence in the movies.

Also after reading a little about Edward I am more prepared to give him a second chance, and hope his B movie star character John Ray Horn behaves a bit less like a B movie star.

From www.edwardwrightbooks.com

Ed Wright grew up in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where his father sold hardware and his mother raised three children and taught arts and crafts. He spent a year at Hendrix College in Arkansas, then transferred to Vanderbilt University, where he majored in English lit and graduated with honors. After graduation he signed up for the Navy and served as an officer for three years, mostly aboard destroyers.

My father sold hardware, and my wife's family are Navy people so another book for the to be read pile. Not exactly a literary way of selecting one's future reading but fun all the same.