August 19

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Luke Deckard

Welcome back to the Decades Library and the opportunity to add five highly recommended new titles to your TBR.  I say “new titles” yet the five books which have been recommended by my guest curator this week are actually all over forty years old. Indeed one was actually published in 1940 so it is more accurate to say five books which are new to the Decades Library, if not actually “new” to some readers.

The Decades Library, should this be your first visit, is a collection of unmissable and much loved books which have been recommended to me by the guest curators who have joined me here at Grab This Book.  I set the challenge of filling a brand new library (no books on the shelves) and ask my guests to help me assemble the very best library of books which visitors to the library could enjoy. My guests are set just two rules when nominating the books they feel should be added to my Ultimate Library (the Decades Library):

1 – Choose ANY Five Books
2 – You May Only Select One Book Per Decade From Five Consecutive Decades.

 

I’m closing in on the one hundreth Decades post so please do take time to browse the rest of the site and take in some of the previous recommendations you may have missed. You may also find some book reviews during your browsing – a happy accident should you read one of those too.

Enough from me, time to pass you over to the care of my guest this week.  It is with real pleasure I welcome Luke Deckard to the Decades Library…

 

Luke Deckard is the author of BAD BLOOD, a 1920s hard-boiled thriller set in Edinburgh now available at AMAZON  UK and AMAZON US. He is also the creator and co-host of the film noir podcast MEAN STREETS, a weekly show dedicated to investigating the best, worst and forgotten movies of the genre. Find Luke on Twitter/X or on his website! 

  

Amazon UK 

 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Blood-Logan-Bishop-Thriller-ebook/dp/B0D69CBWKL/ref=sr_1_6?crid=1Z6CYQC4CADO2&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.s1ftWd2JKB6R3cwM0E_Xijcda6sCzj2ktYfLFNwor5C9YyrGpeMpjxNtSkpqAJsg-KQ2M2WTNy0FbnuyPMCBs-lpT-bYpDDmirymC-pu9pqTW9QSLJL3lHa9wZvFKg-rRxw1h2-jr-gJ8U1GQxblpWWysq5oUsnXAsV1P4ERFxBQuSbN6oLP0ZFTy5slqweItfKTwKGjKp3mO8ExzVcSLjW2ZNrih7TFKD9b_YBbFs4-6FoX05AU0RaWtPfAjh0KyHVB99Zghp6wUBF5wvajbANqW7xmfVb8TeIqbHesl6A.hiw5lMyzsn1F1K1pm305tDcUWZHvZtEv_obSj8mCh2I&dib_tag=se&keywords=bad+blood&qid=1721746792&sprefix=bad+bloo%2Caps%2C81&sr=8-6

Amazon US  

https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Blood-Logan-Bishop-Thriller-ebook/dp/B0D69CBWKL/ref=sr_1_6?crid=1Z6CYQC4CADO2&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.s1ftWd2JKB6R3cwM0E_Xijcda6sCzj2ktYfLFNwor5C9YyrGpeMpjxNtSkpqAJsg-KQ2M2WTNy0FbnuyPMCBs-lpT-bYpDDmirymC-pu9pqTW9QSLJL3lHa9wZvFKg-rRxw1h2-jr-gJ8U1GQxblpWWysq5oUsnXAsV1P4ERFxBQuSbN6oLP0ZFTy5slqweItfKTwKGjKp3mO8ExzVcSLjW2ZNrih7TFKD9b_YBbFs4-6FoX05AU0RaWtPfAjh0KyHVB99Zghp6wUBF5wvajbANqW7xmfVb8TeIqbHesl6A.hiw5lMyzsn1F1K1pm305tDcUWZHvZtEv_obSj8mCh2I&dib_tag=se&keywords=bad+blood&qid=1721746792&sprefix=bad+bloo%2Caps%2C81&sr=8-6  

 

WEBSITE:  

lukedeckard.com  

 TWITTER: 

https://x.com/LukeWritesCrime  

 Podcast:  

Mean Streets The Film Noir Podcast  

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/luke-deckard  

 

DECADES

1940 

Farewell, My Lovely – Raymond Chandler  

Book Quote:

This was the time to leave, to go far away. So I pushed the door open and stepped quietly in.” – Philip Marlowe.

It’s hard to beat Chandler. There’s hardly a crime thriller today that isn’t somehow inspired or influenced by him. Farewell, My Lovely has always been my favourite of his novels, even more so than The Big Sleep. Unlike “Sleep,” Chandler didn’t write “Farewell” by Frankensteining several short stories. It’s easy to read “Farewell” for what it is: a hard-boiled thriller with numerous quotable lines, but the novel is an onion—layered and complex. Here, Chandler presents a slickly plotted story, a much darker and meaner L.A., and a stronger and more brutal social commentary about city-wide/police corruption.

 

 

1950 

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – C S Lewis  

Book Quote:

Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools.” – The Professor.

I wanted to include a children’s book in my list. I can’t think of a better one than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It is the first book I really remember from my childhood. It ignited my imagination as a kid. It’s fantastic and terrifying. I have always loved the professor and his rattling about what they teach in school these days. The clash between the professor’s open mind and Peter’s, Susan’s, and Edmund’s desperation to be adults and logical is pure magic on the page. Children’s books are often far more layered and rich than given credit, and this is no exception! Also, anyone sitting down to read the Narnia books for the first time should not read them chronologically, which is how they are published today, but in publication order. The door to Narnia starts with the Wardrobe.

 

 

1961 

Thunderball – Ian Fleming  

Book Quote: “What’s the good of other people’s opinions? Animals don’t consult each other about other animals. They look and sniff and feel.”

Book Bond is very different to cinematic Bond. At least until you get to Casino Royale (2006). I didn’t read Fleming until my twenties for that very reason. I liked the exaggerated, swinging silliness and gadgets of the films. As a reader, you approach Bond at your own risk. When I finally turned to Book Bond, I was captivated. For whatever reason, I didn’t start at the beginning; I read Thunderball, which is my second favourite Connery film; From Russia With Love being my first. I quickly realised that while cinematic Bond was a hero, Book Bond is Britain’s anti-hero. He may do heroic things and save the day but Bond isn’t a ‘good guy.’ This often isn’t discussed or acknowledged. There’s truthfully nothing honourable about him. He’ll die for the Crown, but he is a sad, repressed alcoholic with nothing to lose, which makes him dangerous. And you can see that on every page. It also makes him a terribly interesting character to read. Not because he’s someone to aspire to be like but to see how far he’ll go for Britain.

 

 

1975 

The Wrong Case – James Crumley 

Book Quote: “This is the great American West. Where men came to get away from laws…You can murder your spouse and the lover in a fit, preferably of passion, and the maximum sentence is five years.

I picked up The Wrong Case in Edinburgh’s Waterstones around 2018. I was on the hunt for something tough and gritty and splashed on the back cover was a quote from Ian Rankin that read: “As sweetly profane a poet as American Noir could have asked for.” And boy, he isn’t wrong. Crumley took the hard-boiled genre somewhere darker, nastier, and more real than anyone before him. He could wax lyrical like Chandler, be tough like Spillane, but never feel cheap or comic-book-like. His detective, Milo, is one of the few fictional private detectives who you believe suffer the trauma of war; in Milo’s case, the Vietnam War. Crumley expertly tackled the disillusionment and seedy, sweaty corruption of the 70s. Read him and you’ll never be the same!

 

 

1980 

Looking for Rachel Wallace – Robert B Parker  

Book Quote: “And I will always remember that you cried.” – Rachel Wallace

Robert B Parker is my favourite author in the hard-boiled genre, and Looking for Rachel Wallace is my number one Parker book. Parker’s genius was his ability to tackle sociopolitical issues head-on without preaching and offer multiple perspectives without necessarily making one side good or bad/right or wrong. Life is complicated, and so are his stories. Despite his novels being short, they are packed with complex, three-dimensional characters. The beauty of Looking For Rachel Wallace is how Parker explores two people on different sides of the political spectrum and how they come together, respect each other, and build a genuine friendship. This is one of the few crime fiction novels that I would dare call important. Seek it out. You won’t regret it.

 

 

 

Huge thanks to Luke for these excellent recommendations. My frequent returns to the Decades Library are a constant reminder of the thousands of books which have brought joy to readers over the years and a regular reminder to me of how few books I’ve actually read during my 50 years on this planet. I’ve only read Thunderball from Luke’s selections so I clearly need to do even more catching up – my TBR is braced for impact.

If you are in the Manchester area this week you can meet Luke along with Emma Talon and, former Decades Curator, Chris Lloyd at Manchester Central Library. The chat kicks off at 6pm on Thursday 22nd August in the Manchester Central Library.

 

DECADES WILL RETURN

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May 4

Guest Post – Alan Jones: Serial Heroes

Day Three of Serial Heroes and after Steven Dunne and Caroline Mitchell both discussed authors that have had success in print and on the silver screen I find that my latest guest is keeping that trend running.

When I first asked Alan Jones if he would like to contribute to my Serial Heroes feature his first response was that he didn’t really follow any series of books or characters . However, I don’t think 60 seconds had passed before he suggested a name – possibly one of the most famous names from literature – and from that point I don’t think I gave him the option to back out. Thanks Alan, it’s over to you to explain:

 

The series of books I love most may be a surprise to many. If I tell you that they are action stories based loosely around crime and the cold war, and involve a lot of  shooting, car chases and beautiful  women with  a cool and sophisticated protagonist, you’ve probably narrowed the list down a bit.

But if I told you that at one point in the series, the main character suffers the death of a loved one in violent circumstances and has mental health issues because of it, culminating in a breakdown and a period in his life when he goes completely off the rails and works for the other side of the ‘law’, would that make you think again. Maybe something Scandinavian or old school American Noir?You Only Live Twice

The books have all been made into films; tremendously successful but each one in the series getting further and further away from the books, which would make those unlikely.

To confuse you further, the author of this series also wrote a very successful children’s book, published after his death, that also led to a major blockbuster when it hit the big screen.

The lead character is an English gentleman and manners play a big part in all the books of the series.

The series?

Casino RoyaleWhen Ian Fleming penned ‘Casino Royale.’, the first of the series of sixteen books that introduced James Bond to the world, he could have no idea that he would spawn on of the longest running and most successful screen franchises ever, with each film outdoing the one before in terms of gadgets, stunts and humour.

And yet, the books themselves are a great read, giving an insight into how the establishment in the post war period saw themselves. Bond, an Englishman in the books, is ever so well mannered, even when he is killing his villains. The books are partly a throwback to the days of the British Empire but underneath it all, they are short detective stories set in exotic locations, usually with world peace and prosperity at stake.

They’re deeper than you would think, and Bond even gets married in one of them. And he has that nervous breakdown, starts working for the Russians and even goes back to nature, living as a fisherman for a year on a Japanese Island.

There is an element of gadgetry, fast cars and gorgeous ladies, but the storylines are grounded enough to make you believe they could almost have happened, and read incredibly well. Bond on paper, in contrast to his screen persona, is darker. He still has that cruel, ruthless streak, he’s decadent, with a  lack of ethics, he’s sadistic and he’s a snob. But Ian Fleming injects a little bit of glamour and a hint of humanity into him, and the reader ends up rooting for this flawed but fascinating and exciting character. OHMSS

My personal favourites are On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,  where Bond is at his most human, and the next one after that, ‘You Only Live Twice, which tells of Bond’s descent to probably his lowest point in the whole series.

But they’re all good. Short, succinct, exciting and clever. And if you can find copies with covers from the fifties and sixties, they look bloody great in your bookcase!

 

 

And that children’s book?

It surprised me to find out, years after I’d read both it and The James Bond series, that Ian Fleming had also written ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’!

 

 

 

BloqAlan Jones’s Amazon page is here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Alan-Jones/e/B00ONBKHLE/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1462315938&sr=1-2-ent where you can order copies of all his books.

 

Alan’s latest book BLOQ scored a 5/5 when I reviewed it recently, you can order a copy here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bloq-Alan-Jones-ebook/dp/B01CLH5AUE?ie=UTF8&keywords=bloq&qid=1462316048&ref_=sr_1_1&s=books&sr=1-1

 

You can find Alan on Twitter @alanjonesbooks or at his own website: http://www.alanjonesbooks.co.uk/

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