Charles Finch

For fans of traditional mysteries, including those who liked A Beautiful Blue Death, I heartily recommend GM Malliet's first novel. Great historical fun.

I've mentioned in this space how much I admire George Orwell, not as much for his fiction (though Coming up for Air is a good book and 1984 did what falls to very few books and invented a language) as for his essays and memoirs. The best of these, his masterpiece Homage to Catalonia, is a moving long meditation on his role in the Spanish Civil War.

And yet anyone who has read Orwell's letters knows that in 1939 Victor Gollancz's well-meaning Left Book Club rejected it, because Orwell was (presciently and bravely) an anti-Stalinist when much of England's left fully embraced Russia's leader. Another of Orwell's greatest books, The Road to Wigan Pier, the Club only accepted after revision that downplayed the book's criticism of certain socialists.

The Left Book Club's checkered history ran through my mind when I read the other day about the new Progressive Book Club, which will apparently serve a similar purpose. In an age of fractured political movements, the people running the club would do well to remember that ideologies can infect and splinter the Left just as easily, perhaps even more easily, than the Right.

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The good early reviews for The September Society continue to pour in. Kirkus Reviews, notoriously the most astringent of the pre-publication reviewers, devoted most of their review to a summary of the plot, but also called it "exciting and cerebral." I'm really proud of this book and hope it will prove to be a great August read.

When I was in high school I read exactly three mystery writers: Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Elizabeth George. I expanded my tastes thereafter but I remember how nothing else would do it for me back then. Notwithstanding, I was very pleased that the School Library Journal, which reviews books for children and teens, gave my second book The September Society a positive review, calling it a good choice for older teens with "good writing, good plotting, an intriguing setting, and agreeable characters." I doubt I would have read it in when I was sixteen - but hopefully kids in high school now are more open-minded mystery readers than I was. Or at least their librarians may be!

I met Tim Russert once. I was working for Howard Dean's presidential campaign in Des Moines, Iowa, in a building the size of a Home Depot along one of the city's main streets. There were press everywhere, both in our headquarters and especially at the hotel bars and diners where the exhausted staffers from every campaign collected near the day's end. But only in the last few days did the big hitters (Brokaw, Jennings) show up in town. On election day itself I heard Russert was in the building, and I darted down from the upstairs office (where we were mostly speculating about whether there would be jobs for everyone in the White House - those were the days) to tell him I was a fan.

"Obviously I can't speak to any press," I said, "but just wanted to say hi."

"Thanks for coming over," he said as we shook hands. He had a reddish, good-natured face, and didn't seem as groomed or self-pleased as some of the other TV men and women, who never seemed quite as serious as the print journalists. "Good luck tonight."

"Thanks," I said, and started back upstairs.

"Back up to the secret lair," he said, and gave me a big grin. His whole crew laughed.

Doesn't sound like much, but it left me with the impression of those qualities of generosity and boyishness that have dominated the eulogies for him. I disagreed with Russert on his reporting (or lack of it) before the war in Iraq, and I sometimes felt exasperated at what he emphasized in this year's debates, but I loved watching him on Sunday. My friends and I were talking about who would replace him on Meet the Press, and it seems appropriate that nobody sounded right for the job.

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Working on a new book, I've taken a hiatus from writing on this blog. But I have two books coming out this summer, the paperback of A Beautiful Blue Death and the hardcover of the next Charles Lenox mystery, The September Society, and as I get ready for my second go around in publishing I'll update this space far more regularly. Look here for all the news.