Poker is my sanctuary

I love playing poker. I could play with pretty much anyone as long as real money is involved. But the poker game I was at last night had two innovative twists that have just increased my love for the game.

-- Not allowing people to get out of the hand unless they use a metaphor for "fold" or "out". "I fold like a crisp linen sheet", "I’m out like Kevin Spacey",* ""I’m folding like a stinky, hippie tent outside the Phish concert". That’s what you get when you play poker with a bunch of writers.

-- The game "Daddy" where 7s and 8s are wild but only if you say "Thank you Daddy" to the dealer when you receive them. That’s what you get when you play with a bunch of pervs.

Thanks to everyone, especially the wonderful host final_girl.
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*actually that caused confusion. "are you saying you’re not really out?"

Suggestions anyone?

I know many of you out there are Sci-Fi folks. Beyond a couple of obvious titles and authors ( The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin is one of my favorite novels ever) I’ve never really gotten it. My genre guilty pleasure is reading mysteries.

When I was a kid I loved mysteries. My favorite series was the Three Investigators which, despite a commercial tie-in to the Alfred Hitchcock media empire was really well-written for y/a books. Besides, the super-genius main character lived in a junk yard and was fat. What’s not to love? The kids were still pretty much goody-goodies, but not like the diabetic-coma-inducing Hardy Boys twerps.

But when I got all politicized I stopped reading mysteries cold. I was moving on to adult books (you know what I mean, not kids books) and the mysteries seemed to be too right-wing, involving good-guy cops and the idea that "the system" would actually provide justice, if sometimes just needing a little push. Fuck that. Smash the state. I was a teen anarchist. Watch me be self-righteous.

Not that my analysis wasn’t partially correct. Most mass-market mysteries, especially in the late-‘80s were insipid, badly-written, odes to the police state. Happily though, and with suggestions by jactitation I discovered the joys of the lesbian feminist mystery.

I picked the most political ones to start with. Barbara Wilson’s Murder in the Collective, The Dog Collar Murders and Sister of the Road. These are a little dated now, the killer is found out in Murder because porn is found in his room proving he must be completely evil!. Oh, the ‘80s! But they’re worth reading. Dog Collar is a great account of the lesbian sex wars of the ‘80s with a murder backdrop and Sister has an intense ending that undoes the assumptions one makes as a reader.

Eventually I found authors and presses that I liked, and mysteries again became my guilty pleasure reading of choice. Grafton, Paretsky, Muller, etc. Then I found Chandler and realized where a lot of the good stuff was coming from. No one metaphors like he did. I can even read some cop mysteries now without filling full of hate. At least ones like Kate Allen’s.

However, because I was cherry-picking the good and political stuff for so long, I forgot how bad some mysteries could be. Recently, my Dad discovered my reading habits and started loaning me books. First was The Da Vinci Code, which has the unique ability to not only be the most cliched-filled waste of time I’ve read in years, but somehow is so bereft of interesting phrases that I can feel it’s memory black-hole-sucking original thoughts out of my head when I try to describe it. I must stop writing of it now or risk permanent brain damage.

Then he leant me a John Dunning book. John Dunning writes mysteries about a book dealer so he’s kind of a darling among people like my dad who collects and sells hunting and fishing books. I’m only on page 28 and the cliches are wounding me so bad that I may have to stop reading. Example: (the narrator dealing with an insult by a pompous author) "Normally at this point I would take off my kid gloves and bring up my own verbal brass knucks" My eyes! They’re bleeding!

But there’s a creepiness which both intrigues me and makes me want to throw the book into the corner and never pick it up again. (Of the narrator’s future love interest named Erin d’Angelo) "Her name suggested an Irish-Italian clash of cultures but to me she looked only like the best of America. She might have been a freshman college student straight from the heart of the country, a professional virgin with taffy-colored hair, a lovely oval face, and big eyes that radiated mischief." "Professional virgin"? I don’t even know what this means but I think it somehow reveals too much about the author.

Anyways, this is a roundabout way of asking for suggestions of mystery writers to read. Anyone?

I should have included this in my last post

I should have mentioned my favorite mystery writers. I mentioned Raymond Chandler, Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton and Kate Allen (the earlier ones) and Marcia Muller (the later ones)*. I should also say that I love the Lawrence Block burglar series, Walter Mosely,** Liza Cody, Gar Anthony Haywood, Eric Ambler, Val Mcdermid,(I like the early ones and the later ones both, but in different ways) GM Ford, Manuel Vazquez Montalban, Michael Nava,(the later ones) and Charles Willeford. I like Dashiel Hammett but he disapoints me because he’s not Chandler. I always wanted him to be better because he was writing in SF and Chandler was in LA. Eventually I just had to concede. Also if you see any mysteries on Pluto Press, pick ‘em up because they did a whole series of Lefty mysteries that I’m pretty sure are now all out of print.

I’m sure I’m forgetting a bunch because I try and get all my mysteries from the library.



*ok, I like her books, but it drives me nutty the way that some character will ask the main character at least once a book about her Native American background (I don’t remember I think like 1/16 Cherokee or something) that never comes up in any other way but to make the character a little more exotic. And some of those early books are unreadable, she became a much better writer over time.

** I really wanted to hate him when Bill Clinton said Mosely was his favorite author. But Mosely’s too good. I just decided that Clinton was just lying instead.