I’ve spent a good chunk of January on the IR, as they say in the sports world, which has one upside: plenty of time to read.
I started with Careless in Red, by Elizabeth George, who is always one of my favorites. This one had more of Inspector Lynley and less of Barbara Havers, which is just how I like it.
Next up was The Tenth Gift, by Jane Johnson, which weaves together the tales of a modern woman in London and her ancestor carried off by pirates (yes, pirates!) from Cornwall in the 1600s. The Goodreads algorithm suggested that one for me, and the bots made a good choice.
My next pick was The Tourist, by Olen Steinhauer. About 10 pages in, I realized it seemed vaguely familiar, although I didn’t recall reading it. Had it been made into a movie I’d seen? Google suggested George Clooney was attached to the film rights at one point. Ah, I thought, perhaps it was the basis of The American? But the plot didn’t fit. My spouse helpfully supplied that there had been a movie called The Tourist, which starred Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. All well and good — except that I didn’t see that movie, so that couldn’t be why the book was familiar.
(The last Angelina Jolie movie I saw was the thing with Matt Damon about the early days of the CIA, which I saw in a totally packed theater that had the heat turned up much too high. I thought I’d contracted some horrible disease and was boiling to death right there in my seat. My sister was so hot that she took her socks off in a desperate bid to cool off, which struck me as hilarious when the lights came up and she told me. Maybe you had to be there. Or maybe I was delirious from dehydration. But I digress.)
Even though I didn’t remember every single thing that happened in The Tourist, I remembered that the big twist was that XXXXX turns out to be the XXXXX from XXXX. So, no point in reading that one again. I guess I need to put it on my “read” shelf on Goodreads so I don’t pick it up for a third time and then say, “Hey, this seems vaguely familiar.”
On to The Ghosts of Belfast, by Stuart Neville.
I mainly remember “The Good Shepherd” because it blew up your long-standing claim that you could watch Matt Damon read the phone book. Kind of a sad moment.
I still contend that taking your socks off is a reasonable place to start when a room is unbearably hot.