Welcome to Litsy!

The characters are not interesting and the pacing of the plot is dismal. I really wanted to read something set in Mexico City but not this one.

I'm really enjoying this series. Alex is likeable and his friends are as well, not to mention odd and intriguing. The incidents are imaginative and complex. This one in particular, really opens up wide new horizons. I'm eager to see where they lead.

Dropped this about 14 pages in when the main character and a few others started having a really racist conversation. I did not wish to spend any more time with these characters.

At first I really didn‘t care much for the characters in Velvet was the Night but as the story progressed I found myself engrossed in this tale! A good historic fiction-ish mystery read.

Standing apart from the other novels in the American Noir Collection, I Married a Dead Man begins as a melodrama, waiting until late in the third act to show its dark side. Woolrich is least successful when he attempts to play with language. But his experiments with form keep things interesting while the story, though a bit implausible, and the tension are where he proves to be at his best, and justifies its place in this collection.

I was curious to read this author and excited that he‘s finally been translated into English, however it wasn‘t for me.
I like the detective, Eugene Tarpon—an interesting character I wouldn‘t mind getting to know better. However the style didn‘t work for me. Too much slapstick type action for me.

#52bookclub24 a revenge story

A man on a business trip, bored with his life, stumbles into a violent underworld that he's not entirely opposed to. Another great collaboration between Brubaker and Phillips, with some excellent art and coloring. This was a fun, trippy read.

At almost 300 pages, Nightmare Alley is the longest book in the American Noir Collection‘s first half. And it feels like it too. It seems as if Gresham is trying to create something epic but in the confines of Noir it becomes too laborious. By the end of the book the pacing is so haphazard that you can tell Gresham just wanted to be done. And by that time I did too.

Image from the 1947 film adaptation. Directed by Edmund Goulding

I really couldn't stand Maite. She was whiny, immature, and ignorant. I get that it was a way to explain the political climate of 1970's Mexico, but it was distracting and often boring. Elvis's POVs were better, his naivete was more forgivable. It picked up in the end. This was a cover buy, which was definitely misleading.

From the Little Free Library today. I plan to use it for #Spain for #foodandlit. Apparently the detective in the book is a “gourmet.” @Catsandbooks