Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Home Is The Sailor by Day Keene

A Hard Case Crime

In my continuing quest to read though the Hard Case Crime series, I have found another winning entry. Day Keene’s Home is the Sailor is a quick Hard Bolied blow of a book. It’s the story of a sailor who has not business getting off the boat, as it’s nothing but trouble for him. He drinks to much, he falls for the wrong dame, and gets himself in trouble. I should take umbrage at the disparaging of my heritage in the fact that he is called Swede and is think, then again he is from Dumbasota, so let me just assure you that all the dumb Swedes did end up the land of gods frozen people… us Michigan Swedes are a cut above, kinda like those living 08… but anyway, what I like about the book is it’s pure unapologetic dumb muscle guy getting past a head full of booze, lust and good old fashion dumbness and figuring out how he’s being set up and how he has to get out from under… more than anything this book reminded me of the joy of reading Vikki Hendricks Miami Purity recently (see review), they had similar plots, and the same quick prose…. Speaking of prose there were two great passages in this book:

“The magic madness of the cliff was gone. Now all there was between us was flesh.”

and

“Love. A Will-o’-the-wisp. St. Elmo’s fire. A biological deep rooted urge of the male to propagate his kind. A packet of cigarettes. A Hershey Bar. A Ten-thousand dollar mink coat. Five Dollars.”

And this gem of wisdom:

“I had to stop spending my life like it was money”

I also have to say that this was one of my Fave Hard Case Crime covers….

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