Using the perhaps obscure, to people outside of Scotland and Orkney, conceit that the Orkney Earl Thorfinn and the the Scottish King Macbeth (he of the Scottishplay) were one and the same person, Dunnett launches boldly like the Vikings of old on a magnificent epic, challenging in its depth and scope, dense with the tangled undergrowth of family and allegiance and geography and history and politics and strategies and power. The young Thorfinn has interest only in preserving his Earldom, the older Thorfinn, having secured it, becomes King of Alba in spite of himself, and only reluctantly assumes the role, but when he does he commits himself to an ambitious programme of nation-building that will encompass decades of effort, and may not, in the end, ever be enough. 

Rich with allusions and scraps of learning, heedless of obscurity, it does not resemble the famous play, though there are plenty of references scattered around in the often tart and hilarious dialogue, but does ponder, in brief pauses from the more practical business of marying widows of men you've had killed, and all the fighting and the maneuvering and the wrangling and the general husbandry, how men are remembered long after they are gone, and the thorny questions of legend, symbolism and prophecy. There are battles on land and sea, there is hardly a page without intrigue of some sort, there is romance, and there is an extraordinary pilgrimage across Europe to Rome, all driven by an extraordinary man haunted by the knowledge that he will never know whether he will succeed or not. A tragedy, of course, but it made me laugh out loud no less than three times, and the Scottishplay never managed that.

Listened again. Still epic and heartbreaking, layered with irony.

Affecting and endlessly fascinating journey skipping across time in search of a weapon to infect humanity and save the planet - but is the future one they have saved or one they are going to destroy? What starts out as a temporal adventure into dystopian futures becomes a cosmic meditaiton on loneliness and solitude.

A mash-up of Thompson and Lovecraft should be in my bailiwick, and it is, but this is more pastiche than anything else. His first encounters with sinister figures doing weird things tends to leave both parties puzzled and at cross-purposes, which shiuld be funnier than it actually is, but the gonzo patter and the solemn threats belong on different planets. Later on, politics get involved and that's where it gets properly lively and Thompson incorporates cosmic monstrosities into his worldview of US politics with relative ease and is more at home with plitical figures worshipping or defying Cthulhu than run-of-the-mill high priests and such and his verbal fireworks are more at home with the horror.

Post climate change world, lots of people infected with a weird parasite, a young woman is invoted to attend college at one of the domes where the rich and powerful sat it all out. This is all about wrestling with the decision to leave her mother and her efforts to secure her future without her than it is about the journey and discovery of whether the college is real or not or what it's actually like. Great writing and characterisation and a well-realised and interesting setting

The last book Ellroy wrote in conventional prose, it's still packed with violence, corruption, racism, misogyny, drugs, murder, sexual violence, sexual obsession, bad cops, and bad cops tormwented with a sliver of conscience. The search for the killer of Elizabeth Short is riven with politics and venality, and one cop who becomes utterly obsessed and his partner tagged along reluctantly for the ride, becoming drawn into the madness. Still, at heart, a tightly plotted whodunnit that unravels amidst the high-strung psychosis and melodrama. 

I think this was my first Ellroy, or was it LA Confidential? Anyway, the clipped prose confused me, demanded attention, but the characters and the plot and the setting all came to life in their seedy, nasty, bloody glory, which overcame any diffictulties with the reading. An ugly New Year's Eve murder leads a repressed but ambitious young detective on the hunt for a dangerous killer. An anti-communist hearing, mostly designed to get the mob-connected Teamsters to supplant the existing studio union, gets underway, digging for dirt and blackmail to extort confessions and more names. The two are connected, and will draw in three cops, all basically terrible human beings, into a struggle to acheive a shred of redemption.

LA Confidential was Ellroy going into overdrive. Stylistically clipped, allergic to the definite article, psychologically compressed to the point of claustrophobia and psychosis, it has a massively complex plot that's tightly controlled under all the fireworks, but those fireworks to spray the story wide and loud. Ugly violence, characters that are near-universally loathesome (softened considerably in the iconic adaptaion) with the exceptions being largely compromised and/or weak and ineffectual. The Bloody Christmas beatings and the Nite Owl Massacre unleash consequences and investigations that tear at the underbelly of LA like the wolverines in The Big Nowhere. Jack, Ed and Bud are an unholy unheroic trinity enmeshed in violence, corruption and cowardice, united, eventually, only by a destire to solve the case, whatever the cost. Toxic masculinity rules - literally, it's everywhere and it's in charge - occasionally they feel bad about something horrific they've done, and while the book doesn't exonerate, it sure as hell isn't interested in the victims. Buzz Meeks checks out early, probably for the best. Still compelling and propulsive, though. 

The terse, staccato language approaches self-parody, saved by the psychological intensity and the white-knuckle ride into violence, corruption and depravity taken by the plot as it ensnares the utterly rotten Dave Klein, who arguably gets off lightly in the end, but at least he ends up help take down a bunch of people even worse than he is, which, if anything, is the major theme of the LA Quartet. Furiously paced, densely complex and constantly shitfting and swerving, it feels like the crescendo it was presumably meant to be. 

An evil old couple is kidnapping people and imprisoning htme in their basement, but to what gruesome end? Holly Gibney is hired by a desperate mother to find her missing adult daughter. Her partner is sick, her mother just died of covid, and she has distinct hypochondriac tendencies - but it probably ain't hypochondria when the pandemic is really out to get you. Holly tenaciously follows the trail while the old couple do their evil thing.

It's nice that we've got past the point where every King was a massive bloated thing that could have done with heavy editing to shorter, solid, highly readable thrillers and shockers like this, still easily capable of giving us a slice of US life and culture with all the added thrills and chills. 

Also between covid and the old people feeding off the young, I think I detect a wee political subtext. Just a wee one.

As World War I ramps up, a group of mentally ill asylum inmates and one art therapist try to sabotage the terrible art of Dr Caligari which is being used to fire up the troops of all nations. Caligari is wily and ruthless and also he has a cat. More great and terrible satire from Morrow - art versus war, art as an engine of war, art as madness, madness as art, madness love and art jumbled together, are either art or love eternal? Funny, fast, clever and sharp as a needle.