Once I hit my teens I think I fell in love with Dick Francis (here). Had never been to a horse race, but reading about his adventures around the horse racing world was spectacular to me. Also, I loved the way the story didn't necessarily have to do with racing, racing was sometimes tangential.
Then, later, as an adult, I ran across Archy McNally. What a fun character. But I ran out of them quickly and for more than a decade I was Lawrence Sanders-less.
It wasn't until just a few years ago that I did a bit of research and found out that Lawrence Sanders (here) wrote some much more gritty and more interesting detective stories with New York City as the backdrop. I fell immediately in love with them.
Sadly, I think I've read my last of these.
I just finished The Third Deadly Sin (here) and although it wasn't the best, I sure do love the way Sanders writes. I'll miss being able to read things like:
SOME DAYS LASTED FOREVER; some were never born. She awoke in a fury of expectation, gone as soon as felt; the world closed about. Once again life became a succession of swan pecks.
Zoe Kohler, blinking, woke holding a saggy breast, soft as a broken bird. The other wrist was clamped between her thighs. She was conscious of the phlegmy light of late winter, leaking through drawn blinds.
Outside, she knew, would be a metal day, no sun, and a sky that pressed. The air would smell of sulfur. She heard traffic drone and, within the apartment house, the dull thumps of morning doors. In the corner of her bedroom a radiator hissed derisively.
Sanders, Lawrence - The Third Deadly Sin
So, now that I've read my last, I'll be sad for a bit. But, it was serendipity that lead me to the Edward X Delaney series in the first place, perhaps a bit of serendipity will come again and I'll find some more.
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