What's New Pussycat?: March 2025

Since my last What’s New Pussycat? post, all the way back on February 19th, five orphaned books have found sanctuary in my book loving home. Every solitary title fits squarely within my usual suspects—crime and mystery. The books came from a trio of sources in my home state of Vermont: 1) a HOPE Resale store in Middlebury; 2) Monroe Street Books, an excellent used shop with a bunch of mystery hardcovers from the 1980s and 1990s, also in Middlebury; and 3) Rutland City Free Library’s Friends of the Library book sale held March 14 and 15. I’m pleased with the take because these books (all of them) will be read much sooner than later. So, for your approval, here are my latest house-cluttering treasures…
BINO, by A. W. Gray (© 1988). This first edition from E. P. Dutton came from Monroe Street Books. While I’ve never read any of Gray’s work, I do have fond memories of seeing his novels on bookstore shelves in the 1990s. This one is about a hard charging and (perhaps) unethical criminal lawyer chasing justice from shadowy streets to the halls of Congress. My favorite line from the dust jacket reads: “Bino rubs everybody the wrong way, an ever-present thorn in the side of people who don’t like answering questions.” Which works for me. I’ll let you know more after it’s been read.
DEAD POINT, by Peter Temple (© 2000). This is the third (of four) books in Temple’s marvelous Jack Irish series. Irish is a former high-flying lawyer living on his wits since his wife was killed a few years earlier. Now he does low-level legal work, odd jobs, which are usually unscrupulous, for a horse gambler. In Dead Point, Jack is hired to find part-time barman, Robbie Colburne, but his investigation puts him eyeball to eyeball with some very bad dudes. The first three Jack Irish novels, including Dead Point, were translated into excellent Australian television movies starring Guy Pearce. After those movies aired between 2012 and 2014 it transitioned into an even better television series that ran for four seasons. The copy of Dead Point I picked up from HOPE is a tie-in edition published by Australian publisher, Text, in 2014.
DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS, by Walter Mosley (© 1990). This is the 30th anniversary edition published by Washington Square Press in…wait for it—2020! It, like the last book, came from HOPE. I’m ashamed and saddened to admit I’ve never read any of Mosley’s sixteen (so far) Easy Rawlins books, which Devil in a Blue Dress is the first. But I’m planning to make amends in the next few months. If you don’t know, the series is set in post-WW2 Los Angeles. Easy is a war veteran just fired from his defense factory job when he is hired to find a missing white woman, Daphne Monet, with a habit of frequenting black jazz clubs. Devil in a Blue Dress was made into a watchable (but not great) film starring Denzel Washington as Easy released in 1995. It’s worth a viewing if you haven’t seen it, but I’m betting the book is far better.
KILLER GORGEOUS, by Jane Holleman (© 1997). Holleman is a new writer for me and I let this 2004 mass market reprint from Pocket Books sit on the Friends of the Library bookshelves for a few months. But I should tell you, I looked at it, read the blurbs, and even read the first few paragraphs during every sale from the first time I saw it to this last time when I stole away with it. It's about an abused socialite wife, Allison Robbins, looking for a way out of her nightmarish marriage. But—as one would surmise, things go sideways and…well, that’s all I know. A quick search for Jane Holleman netted only three books—Killer Gorgeous, Hell’s Belle and Holy Terror—published between 1997 and 1999.
THAT LEFT TURN AT ALBUQUERQUE, by Scott Phillips (© 2020). This is one of those early days of COVID releases that flew below my radar. When I saw the first edition from Soho Crime in the HOPE store it was a no brainer to rescue its beautiful self and take it home. Phillips is an old hand at writing stylish crime—his most famous is, perhaps, Ice Harvest (2000)—and from what I gather, That Left Turn at Albuquerque is pretty damn good. What I know, a bankrupt lawyer named Douglas Rigby hatches an art forgery scheme that depends on precision and a large cast of players with their own agendas. What could go wrong, right? What I don’t know—if any of the narrative actually takes place in Albuquerque. I’ll let you know.