Customer Comments

The four Patrick Melrose novels contained in this collection are outstanding. Edward St. Aubyn is a master of the telling detail. These novels are part Waugh, sure, but they made me think of Bukowski, too, if Buk had been to boarding school instead of stuck on skid row. I rushed through these in a couple of days.

Ken Wells's first novel, Meely LaBauve, portrays a young man's coming of age in the Cajun country of lower-Louisiana during the 1960s. Though the coming-of-age novel has been done many times over, it's never been done quite this way and seldom has it been done this well. Though the book is often laugh-out-loud funny, Meely LaBauve is no less poignant because of its honed sense of humor. Wells has carved a sincere and courageous portrait of a boy becoming a man under uneasy conditions from what might have seemed hackneyed material in less capable hands.

The near perfect beginning to a near perfect mystery series. Lehane is a powerful writer, and the Kenzie-Gennaro series has sweep. I've been giving this as a Christmas gift for years, and no one I know has ever stopped by reading just one.

Forget the Sinatra film. Read this book. A perfectly plotted neo-noir western by an author who threw plot out the window in his later novels.