I have been addicted to books since around the fifth grade
You can read the longish introduction to the series in either
Let’s Talk BOOKS 2023-04-02 Genre: Romance
Let’s Talk BOOKS 2023-04-16 Genre: Mystery & Thrillers
Other previous editions of Let’s Talk BOOKS:
Let's Talk BOOKS 2023-04-23 Genre: YA (Young Adult)
Some of my favorite books over the years which have been read and re-read will be the focus of this series, as long as it lasts. I’ll cover a different genre and at least two books in that genre in each edition.
Genre — Detectives
Once upon a time Detective books were just about Detectives, you know, wrinkly suits, badly tied ties, a bottle of Bourbon in the desk drawer and usually a murder to open the story with. But there are all kinds of detectives written about over the past few decades. These are some of my favorites.
First up is the long running series by Jim Butcher — https://www.jim-butcher.com/
The protagonist in this series, which began back in 2000 with the publication of Storm Front, is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, Chicago’s first (and only) Wizard P.I.
A funny aside, I recently saw an image of the author for the first time outside of a tiny headshot on an inside cover of a hardback of one of the Dresden books; and danged if Jim Butcher couldn’t be a model upon which Harry was based. Tall, dark haired, a bit of an angular, long face. Jim himself is 5’ 11” so he’s on the tall side, too. And even though Butcher sports a rather long hippy ‘do these days, with locks well past the shoulders, back in the day he wore his hair fairly close cut, much like the Detectives of old in noir films like The Maltese Falcon.
Now I know some of you may have watched or read a terrible review of the TV series The Dresden Files, which was based on the Butcher books. Do NOT let that show influence your ideas about the character Butcher created and still writes about today (Butcher says: The series is slated to run 23-24 books and right now published entries are up to #17). Everything which made me love Harry was lost in that stupid show. The VW with odd colors and replacement parts and no real seats. Harry’s 30 lb cat named Mister. Harry’s useful familiar “Bob” who inhabits an old skull and is a non-corporeal being, and Bob is bound to that Skull for all time and Harry sort of owns Bob’s skull, so he barters for time out of the skull for Bob in return for help with his cases. In the TV show Bob was just a guy.
How did I come upon my first Harry Dresden tale? Like a lot of my best loved stories, the person who introduced me to these stories by Jim Butcher was my baby sister. Because she was my door to everything Dresden, I know that I read book #1, Storm Front, first.
Just that one book was all it took to make me long to meet Harry in person. He’s smart, he lives a very eccentric life (not always by his own choice) and he is a fighter for Justice.
Here’s the blurb for Storm Front from Jim’s URL:
https://www.jim-butcher.com/books/dresden/storm-front
Harry Dresden is the best at what he does. Well, technically, he’s the only at what he does. So when the Chicago P.D. has a case that transcends mortal creativity or capability, they come to him for answers. For the “everyday” world is actually full of strange and magical things — and most of them don’t play well with humans. That’s where Harry comes in. Takes a wizard to catch a — well, whatever.
There’s just one problem. Business, to put it mildly, stinks. So when the police bring him in to consult on a grisly double murder committed with black magic, Harry’s seeing dollar signs. But where there’s black magic, there’s a black mage behind it. And now that mage knows Harry’s name. And that’s when things start to get… interesting.
Magic. It can get a guy killed.
I’ve read all of those books multiple times, and they never get old.
Isaac Asimov’s The Robot Series
(Asimov died 1992, well before the era of online linked URL sites)
This is a trilogy of books about a human / android detective team, and years after writing them, Asimov incorporated the main characters into an astounding 31 book Robot series
[Goodreads link to all of them compiled into a single book https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50091.The_Complete_Robot].
Blurb from a Wikipedia entry on Caves of Steel (the first book):
The novel's central plot device is a murder, which takes place before it opens. (This is an Asimov trademark, which he attributed to his squeamishness plus John Campbell's advice to begin as late in the story as possible.) The victim is Roj Nemmenuh Sarton, a Spacer Ambassador who lives in Spacetown, the Spacer outpost just outside New York City. For some time, he has tried to convince the Earth government to loosen its anti-robot restrictions. One morning, he is discovered outside his home, his chest imploded by an energy blaster. The New York police commissioner charges Elijah with finding the murderer, in cooperation with a highly advanced robot named R. Daneel Olivaw who is visually identical to a human and is equipped with a scanner that is able to detect human emotions through their encephalographic waves.
That’s a bare-bones, but fairly good, introduction to Elijah Bailey and Daneel Olivaw (the android). But it doesn’t give you the most important part. Elijah is resistant to working with a Robot due to the societal push to keep highly over-populated, mostly poor Earth robot-free. Unlike the Spacer Worlds where low population and massive numbers of robot workers keep their worlds beautiful and their people wealthy. Like most of the stories I end up loving, this one isn’t really about the intersteller human species or even the cases which Elijah and Daneel investigate together.
It’s about the main characters and their evolving relationship. Which was amazing to me reading about them in Junior High School in the mid 1970s.
But the cases they investigate are also interesting. Not surprising, as Asimov was one of the most gifted writers this world has ever seen. He could make anything interesting. Possibly an outcome of his prolific writing. He not only published a massive amount of fiction but over 100 textbooks on science, as he had a background in Chemistry and in 1959 he was approached to join DARPA.
If you have read any of these books or any Detective story you’d like to talk about, c’mon in, sit down and put your feet up and Let’s Talk BOOKS!
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