Bad Actors, Mick Herron
The library finally came through with a copy of this, the most recent entry to date of my favorite COVID-era series obsession (Slough House / Slow Horses, running ahead of Dalgliesh, even a bit ahead of Muderbot), and it was, entirely predictably, entirely satisfying. I like almost everything about these books, especially Herron’s unmatched ability to balance consistency and change in his recurring characters, and I liked this one a lot.
Dolphin Junction, Mick Herron
Evidently, I’m in a Mick Herron completist phase. If you have a line on his early poetry career output, drop a line. This was a fun, illuminating set of short stories. Herron’s way with a fun twist reveal is, and this is a compliment, Twilight Zone level, and nobody plays with hiding info in a way you can only do on the page better. Super fun read.
This Is What Happened, Mick Herron
Classic non–Slough-House Herron: great twists, grim, probably glad to be described as “a nasty little piece of work”. Without spoilers, this is a dark look at three people, one of whom is a very bad person, and all three people are well observed: eacy variously upsetting, infuriating, and sad. Herron’s humor is tamped way down here, but he rremains the unchallenged depictor of people’s exasperated responses, and his narratorial sardonic encapsulations of society’s failings have a kind of … charm. (The difference between urban anonymity for poor people and rich people hit me particularly hard.)
Black Ball, Theresa Runstedler
This wonderful work of history offers both a detailed account of the labor history that influenced the NBA throughout the 70s, with particular reference to the way that history played into the NBA / ABA competition (and then the NBA / ABA merger), and a series of case studies, including Spencer Haywood (once married to Iman!), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (once considered violent and inarticulate!?), and others, which illustrate and illuminate the living workers who made that history. If you think the “modern NBA” started with Larry Bird and Magic Johnson “saving” the league from drugs and bad marketing, you owe it to yourself to read this.