Graham Greene's MINISTRY OF FEAR - C+. A surreal spy novel written, set and published during the Blitz period in London. Not badly written but very very dated compared to other Greene works I've read
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James M. Cain's SERENADE - F+. Prose is decent, but the plot is moronic and the main character absolutely vile; Cain uses him to spout A LOT of hatred towards Hispanics, Indians and gay people. I already wasn't a Cain fan, but I'm never reading him again after reading this.
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Lawrence Block's A DIET OF TREACLE - B. Not my favorite Block novel, but decent. It's basically a spin-off of his soft-core porn novel 69 BARROW STREET, complete with reuse of some characters (slightly renamed) and some scenes, but focusing more on the crimes, mainly drug-related, of two characters than sex scenes. The last two lines irritated me a lot, though, turning a concrete ending into a cliffhanger that will never be resolved.
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Ao Jyumonji's GRIMGAR OF FANTASY AND ASH, volume 3 - B. More focused on a single event than the first two volumes and stronger for it plot-wise, but less character development than the first two volumes, making most of the characters more set-pieces than anything else.
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Harry Whittington's DON'T SPEAK TO STRANGE GIRLS - D. Decent prose, but the plot was extremely thin and pointless. The weakest Whittington novel I've read. If Whittington wasn't already "the Paperback King" when this was published, it probably wouldn't have been published - at least not by Gold Medal.
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Gil Brewer's THE EROTICS - B-. Fairly standard Brewer plot of self-made loser trying to get out of his hole and making it worse. Oddly, it has a happy ending, which is rare in Brewer novels.
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Gil Brewer's ANGRY ARNOLD - C-. The weakest Brewer novel I've read, also a departure from his normal formula as this is a serial-killer novel rather than a heist/con-man/attempted murder for love/money novel, as virtually all the rest of his I've read are. His characterization of the killer is actually excellent--he really makes you feel the guy's sickness and desperation--but the plot overall is weak and relies on too much coincidence to be believable.