Theodore Roosevelt famously said, “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” So often it seems that we want to work easily at work worth doing.

After the book launch and some downtime to re-charge, I’m starting to gear up to write the next book. Why write another? Because it’s challenging and you rarely have regrets in life when taking on and completing challenging work.

Here are 3 crime fiction links, 2 quotes, and 1 question for this week:

3 LINKS

• The Guardian’s thriller round up looks at Winslow’s first in a new trilogy CITY ON FIRE set in Providence, RI in the 80s, plus another in a rush of Japanese-translated thrillers, and plus others.
  
  
• The Seattle Times’ Plot Thickens column collects reader recommendations on mystery series set in the past. Not a lot new to genre fans but maybe a good reminder if that’s what you’re feeling. Personally I’d add Rennie Airth’s John Madden series, especially the early ones.
  
  
• The Guardian reviews Samuel Jackson’s “rip-roaring” audiobook narration of Chester Himes’s grimly comic, fast-paced and intermittently blood-spattered novel, A RAGE IN HARLEM. Could be just what’s needed to bring Himes’s novels to a wider, modern audience.

2 QUOTES

Quotes from Chester Himes this week:

• “Don’t ever lean your whole weight on happiness, Jimmy. You fall too hard too hard when it gives away.”

• “It was the code of Harlem for one brother to help another lie to white cops.”

1 QUESTION

• Have you ever read any of Himes’s Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones novels? What did you think?

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Until next Thursday, happy reading,

Mike

Author the Max Strong thriller series