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While I traveled to and in Japan I brought my usual magazines to toss as read, plus several paperbacks to do the same with. The books I read were:

The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes (Victor Gollancz) is an entertaining tale about a conspiracy afoot in Victorian England and the stage conjuror who is called up on to save the threatened city of London. The utterly unreliable narrator, the tall, silent titular character, and a cast of the grotesque makes for magical, bloody fun.

Bottom Feeder by B.H. Fingerman (M Press) is a debut novel by a writer better known for his graphic novel writing. A reluctant vampire from Queens, New York is turned at age twenty –seven by an unknown attacker and loses his wife, his home, and his job and forced to make it on his own in his strange new world. His only friend is a total loser he’s known since high school who just won’t let go. Funny, ironic, and ultimately even moving as the guy meets other vampires and see the possible lifestyles he could be “living.”

Remainder by Tom McCarthy (Vintage) is a first novel about a man who received an 8 ½ million pound sterling settlement for an accident in which he almost died. The reader never finds out what actually happened but upon the guy’s recovery, he becomes convinced that he has lost his connection to the world and that the only way he can recover is to recreate a specific living condition that he remembers. Hiring a facilitator, he does this by buying up property and peopling it with hirelings who will follow a specific script that he supplies—on call to his every whim. The pianist upstairs must practice a specific piece of music and when he makes mistakes, he has to practice over and over again. The concierge must stand by the door all day –in a mask—as the employer doesn’t remember the actual face of the original concierge. Black cats must roam the red slate roof across the way. His fraying mind demands that he re-enact scenes that he has viewed in life and his wealth makes it possible to do so. The end result is inevitable—monstrous, terrifying, and in a way funny.

Deadstock by Jeffrey Thomas (Solaris) is a “Punktown” novel, and like all of Thomas’s fiction in his world, is absorbing and well told. I love his world building…I was a bit put off at first by some clunkiness in the writing, but ultimately the story carried me along.  A private eye is hired by a rich man to find the missing, very expensive and unique doll that he has bioengineered for his daughter. In the meantime, an abandoned apartment building defends itself by bloodily slaughtering all intruders and a young girl has disappeared.

And started Michael Connolly's Echo Park.

Just before I left I finished William Gibson's remarkable new novel, Spook Country and loved it. It's smart, funny, policially saavy, and possibly one of his most satisfying works.