Friday's Forgotten Books, June 22, 2012war in gaza, palestine today, israel and terrorism, is gaza palestine, israeli west bank

Friday's Forgotten Books, June 22, 2012

Next week is an off week for FFB unless someone else can pick up the links. Maybe we all need a rest anyway.

Ed Gorman is the author of the Dev Conrad and Sam McCain series of books. You can find him here, blogging about just about

everything.

Forgotten Books:Home Town by Georges Simenon

Home Town is one of two short novels that appear in the book On The Danger Line. When the two stories first appeared (1944) The Green Thermos, the second of the pieces, was thought to be the superior of the duo. But time has changed some minds.

deRitter has lived on the edges of the underworld for many years. He is basically a small-time con artist who needs particularly gullible victims to be successful. For a reason even he can't understand, he returns to his home town with Leah, a prostitute, in tow. He has a fake emerald he hopes to make serious money with.

The story moves up and down the timeline. The reader sees deRitter as a boy growing up in a small, dull town--very much like the one that Madame Bovary despised--filled with trouble. Off to war he went in his later teen years and after that he discovered how to beat the monotony of regular employment by working minor cons short and long.

In town again he sees old friends and old relatives; his strange relationship with his mother being the most disturbing. He also runs his con with the emerald and here the reader comes to see that he is not good at his work at all. And even when he scores he's unhappy. Which is where Leah the prostitute comes in.

She is plump--as he never forgets or forgives--she is ignorant in many ways and she is eager to get out of the town and back to what she consider civilization. But she also understands deRitter in ways he never understands himself.

He does not seem to know, for example, that he is afraid to let go of her. They have sex occasionally but their real bond is a version of the familial. More than girl friend she is mother/sister/consoler. And forgiver. She even manages to be amused about the occasional shame he feels for traveling with a prostitute. And she knows that the con he's running will lead to the tragedy that ends the short novel.

deRitter is a familiar figure in hardboiled crime fiction. The nickel-dime grifter that the real players use and toss away. Simenon turns the stereotype into a real human being. And his story into a bleak snapshot of self-unawareness and despair.

THE ICE HOUSE, Minette Walters

When a copy of the soon-to-be released INNOCENT VICTIMS by Minette Walters fell into my hands, it reminded me of two favorites by her from some years back. I had a difficult time

deciding which one to to because THE SCULPTRESS is such a powerful story. But eventually I decided on THE ICE HOUSE.

Winner of the John Creasey Award, THE ICE HOUSE was a terrific debut novel.

Three women live in seclusion in English country house and have served as a topic of gossip for their neighbors for years: witches, lesbians, murderers. Or all of the above since one of their husbands disappeared years before. Did he walk out as she suggests or was it murder? So when a faceless corpse turns up in Streech Grange ice house, Chief Inspector Walsh can't wait to make a case of it. While Walsh attempts to arrest Phoebe for murder, his colleague takes an interest in one of her roommates.

Walters is a terrific writer and I have enjoyed all of her books. This one was made into an excellent TV movie. THE SCULPTRESS is brilliant too.

Joe Barone