Longtime Loves

Years ago I had a stint in Los Angeles while I toiled as a young reporter at the LA Times. Boy was I homesick.

Sticking a twenty-something native Baltimoron (who believes that if you drive too far on I-95 you will  drop off the edge of the earth) out on the Left Coast is cruel and unusual punishment. Yeah the weather was great, but many of the people were weird and not Baltimore weird which is such a weird unto its own that we think it’s normal.

As I usually do for comfort, I drowned my sorrows in the pages of books. It was during that time I discovered two life long loves…Andrew Vachss and Walter Mosley.

My first introduction to Burke and Easy Rawlins were complete accidents. With the former, I wandered into a tiny Burbank library and literally almost tripped over a copy of Flood which someone had left on the floor. I picked it up, began to read and by the time I glanced up, I had a cramp in my leg from standing in one spot too long and the branch was about to close.

Me and Easy became acquainted when I spent the weekend with a friend who was a television writer. She had some things to do but was nice enough to put me up in a very comfortable room which also happened to have a copy of Devil In A Blue Dress on the night stand. I don’t think I saw my friend again until that Sunday night when I was leaving to go back home.

Thanks to my affiliation with BookLoons.com, I got my hands this past month on galleys for Mask Market by Vachss and Fear of the Dark the latest Paris Minton/Fearless Jones adventure by Mosley. My two words for both these books? Loves it!

These authors could write the back of a cereal box and I would stand in line to get autographed copies. Their writing is so good that I alternate between wanting to race through their books and being upset when I have finished the last page. Pure genius.