Sunday, January 1, 2023

highlights of my 2022 reading

Some books I reviewed in 2022 that particularly impressed or interested me.

Bill S. Ballinger's Portrait in Smoke (1950). Intriguing use of split narration.

Poul Anderson's Swordsmen from the Stars. Not quite sword-and-sorcery and not quite sword-and-planet tales but a bit of both, and highly entertaining.

John Gardner's The Liquidator (1964). A tongue-in-cheek saga of a very unheroic spy.

Gardner Francis Fox (using the pseudonym Simon Majors), The Druid Stone (1967). Sword-and-sorcery combined with travel, through space and time, and with occult thriller elements as well.

James O. Causey's The Baby Doll Murders (1957). Solid noir.

Alistair MacLean's The Last Frontier (1959).  Maclean was just starting to reach his peak at this time.

Len Deighton’s Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy (1976). Underrated Deighton, featuring (possibly) his unnamed spy).

Robert Tralins, The Chic Chick Spy (1966). Silly crazy sexy spy fun.

William Knoles' Sexperiment (1966). Sex research goes horribly but hilariously wrong. Very funny.

1 comment:

  1. If you like McLean and Deighton give Bill Fairclough a try - only one fact based thriller issued in The Burlington Files to date - he was one of Pemberton's People - see this https://theburlingtonfiles.org/news_2022.10.31.php

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