Last year, I read Eddie’s Boy and marveled at how fleet it was. I learned it was the sequel to Butcher’s Boy, published thirty years earlier. So of course I had to read Butcher’s Boy. Wowee! Perry’s laconic main character is a one-man killing machine — there is nothing like him out there.
Here’s an excerpt from Michael Connelly’s Introduction to Butcher’s Boy:
- Over the years and the million of words, I have come to learn that it is all about character and velocity. A book is like a car. It pulls up to the curb and the passenger door swings open to the reader. The engine revs. Do you want a ride?
I am thinking about this Introduction right now because of my current read: How High We Go in the Dark, by Sequoia Nagamatsu. This book is certainly a ride. It’s supposedly a novel: it isn’t. It’s a collection of stories, each showing the effects of a deadly virus that was released from the ice by scientists in Siberia. It begins at the beginning: in Siberia. Then skips to the future, when the virus has spread. The stories are absolutely heartbreaking. But she is along for this ride, holy cow. She most definitely is.
Stay tuned.
Kanlaon 