Travel stuff

Here are a few things I've come across in my recent travels that I can recommend:

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman -- I picked this up in the airport in Hong Kong because I'd enjoyed a previous book by Gaiman, Good Omens, and after I picked it up I couldn't put it down again. It's a book about a meek, downbeaten guy named Fat Charlie who comes around to discovering that his recently departed dad was actually a god, and gradually he begins to realize he's got it in him, too.

King Suckerman by George Pelecanos -- another great Pelecanos crime and suspense novel set in DC. This one is reminiscent of Pulp Fiction, if only because of the high level of violence that unpredictably erupts . Pelecanos takes us back to the 70s in DC, when Dupont Circle was thronged with head shops, Springsteen played the Childe Harold, bikers sold coke out in the suburbs of Maryland, and people still went to drive-in movies.

Undone by Michael Kimbell -- I bought this from an old lady pushing a book cart along the road in Indonesia. Great thriller set in Maine about a guy who plots with his wife and an undertaker to have himself buried alive as part of an insurance scam, and what happens to the people around him when everything goes wrong.

Crash (movie) -- very intense film about crime and race relations in Los Angeles, and what happens when disparate lives including a DA, a locksmith, a seemingly racist cop, an Iranian shop-owner, an African-American TV producer, and others interact.

I just started Wolves Eat Dogs by Martin Cruz Smith. Too early to report on it yet.