I arrived at this volume rather randomly, and picked it up to read likewise, being familiar with the name Eleanor of Aquitaine and being aware that it was evocative of... something, but I couldn't really remember what. About halfway through, I realised I was thinking primarily of a childhood Christmas viewing of The Lion In Winter, so yay for nostalgia. Anyway, Eleanor's story puts her dead centre at the pulsing heart of the formation of Europe, for all that as a person she ends up sidelined a lot. Even when at her most powerful and effective as a personage, it's the other, male actors who are running around fighting and redrawing the map every month or so. This sidelining is a function of her femaleness in a male world, and it also tends to get her written out of a lot of histories, but still, if this was really her life, as opposed to the Rise of the Plantagenets, we'd know more about what she was doing and where she was living. Instead, An empire forms consolidates, rocks with internecine, not to say legendary, family squabbling, and ultimately falls apart and Eleanor's life is revealed only where she intersects with it. But she intersects a lot, and the story of Henry the Second and his wife and sons and Richard and John and warfare and crusades and marriages and annulments is a blazing, torrid epic. 'Every family has its ups and downs,' as Katharine Hepburn is wont to say.

I burnt my fingers. Typing is hard. So is thinking. These deserve a bit better than what they're going to get, but at least Adam Roberts has already made the joke about multi-volume fantasy novels versus mutli-volume literary novels so I don't have to. I noted that the narrator is the one character who seems to actively take an interest in others, particularly their inner lives, and an empathy even with the unsympathetic seems to be the key, if nothing else, at least to being a writer.

And now: ouchie.

Quintessential Parker novel full of no-nonsense violence. Parker gets trapped with a bag full of money in an amusement park closed for the winter with mob soldiers and crooked cops closing in. A deadly game of cat and mouse told in Stark's trademark style. Brilliant.

Outrageously good third novel in Kim Newman's alternate world Anno Dracula series, where Dracula won and vampires were outed. After Victorian London and the trenches of France, this outing takes place in the bustling, lively, swinging city of Rome, 1959. Kate Reed arrives to see the aged and infirm Charles Beauregard one last time, only to find herself witness to the brutal murder of two vampire elders. Genevieve is also in Rome, caring for Charles, and Dracula himself is nearby, living out the years of his exile in the Castle Otranto, but engaged to be married, thus possibly signalling his impending reemergence onto the world stage. Keeping an eye on things for British intelligence is the suave, deadly, if rather shallow, newborn agent, Hamish Bond. Running Dracula's household is one Penny Churchward, an old friend of Kate and Charles, and under her spell is the American, Tom Ripley.
Faces familiar and unfamiliar, fictional and real, human and vampire jostle in the crowded streets and scenes and parties. The Crimson Executioner cuts a flamboyantly bloody swathe through more vampire elders, rival powers stalk each other and jockey for position, but who is behind the killings? And what does Dracula intend when his dynasty is joined to another?
I love this stuff, this clever, multi-referential, sharply written, bloody confection that mixes murder and comedy and spies and stars, that looks at death and life and undeath and unlife and tries to make some sense of it all, or at least come to terms with what little sense there is. Included in this edition is the novella Aquarius, a tale of murder and revolt and a wide variety of coppers and plods set in swinging London, 1968, featuring Kate and her investigations on the behalf of the Diogenes Club into the murder by a vampire, of a young woman, as the dark tides and passions of the sixties' underbelly roll towards a violent explosion.
If I have a criticism of this volume, it's the annotations, which I enjoy. Only annotations for Cha Cha Cha are included, and even they feel a little sparse. I could have done with a run-down on some of the bit players in Aquarius. It doesn't detract from the novel or the novella, but it would have added to them, for me, anyway.

I read this in an omnibus edition, but I want to review them singly.

I've never really cared for the Sam Peckinpah film of this, though I think that's just down to mostly not caring much for Sam Peckinpah films. In fact, I rather preferred the trashy 1994 remake, which was, if nothing else, a good deal pacier. It is interesting, though, that the film versions of Doc McCoy, seem to respectively reflect the then current notions of what made a good bad guy: Steve McQueen's cool icy glare and Alec Baldwin's brooding intensity. Neither of them fit with Thompson's original, a warm, attractive, personable charmer who's friendly and reassuring right up until the point where he shoots you in the mouth.

In the novel, Doc and his wife along with a damaged and unstable accomplice named Rudy stage a daring bank heist and get away more or less scott free. There's one other accomplice, but he doesn't make it out of the bank. There's a double cross, leaving Rudy supposedly dead and Doc and Carol go on the run. Rudy isn't dead, however, and the getaway isn't clean.

Doc and Carol's relationship is put to the test as her inexperience and his ruthlessness chip away at the genuine love they have for each other. They leave a trail of bodies in their wake, as does the loathsome Rudy. They are ruthless and pitiless criminals who do whatever needs to be done to protect themselves, ultimately damning themselves to a pretty, perfectly constructed little corner of hell.

It's a brilliant, perfectly-formed little novel. The characters are vivid, and it's a sign of the very best sort of writer can make the the reader become so involved in what happens to such terrible people. The book is full of acute psychological insights - translated to film as callow misogyny and macho cool - and there are many dark, memorable and wretched ordeals for them to endure and many innocent lives for them to destroy. The book was originally published as throwaway pulp in 1959. Time has transformed it into an enduring piece of savage, unsettling literature.

Energetic and onrushing second volume in Vance's brilliant fantasy trilogy. less set-up this time, more incident and plot and occasional detours and wanderings as King Aillas consolidates his hold over South Ulfland and King Casmir plots and schemes against him and the Ska gather at his borders and magicians conspire to create mischief. It's cracking stuff full of weird characters and battles and chases and captures and escapes all written in a grand ironic style.

Lovely biographical study of a circle of friends oh God I'm in too much pain after dancing like a lunatic at my sister's wedding, I'll review this anon.

Smart, sharp, fast thriller with Ross's perennial ex-spies reunited in Washington DC where McCorkle has opened a bar and Padillo turns up stabbed on the docks. Someone wants to hire Padillo to do a job and to ensure his co-operation they kidnap Mac's wife. To get out of this situation, they have to bring in three operators who may be more dangerous to them than the kidnappers.