Passages: David Housewright's "What the Dead Leave Behind"

 

This tough guy line from David Housewright’s What the Dead Leave Behind (2017), the 14th book in the McKenzie series, caught my eye because of its simple truth. Of course, being a hardboiled mystery that truth is cached in bravado and a promise of violence. But still, it is a truth—bullies break the rules while expecting and using the rules to shackle their victims. A tactic we’ve seen almost daily over the past decade in national politics and one we haven’t figured out, as a society, how to deal with.  *               *               *

I spoke slowly and succinctly. “Pricks like you get away with your bullshit because you refuse to play by the rules, but you expect everyone else to. I’m not that guy. You dare threaten the people I care about? You should have done better research.”

Passages: John D. MacDonald's "The Deep Blue Good-by"

A marvelous descriptive passage from John D. MacDonald’s first Travis McGee novel, The Deep Blue Good-By (1964):

Willy Lazeer is an acquaintance. His teeth and his feet hurt. He hates the climate, the Power Squadron, the government and his wife. The vast load of hate has left him numbed rather than bitter. In appearance, it is as though somebody bleached Sinatra, skinned him, and made Willy wear him.