Cats will be cats

Carl Hiaasen : Squeeze Me

When Kiki Pew Fitzsimons disappears from her Diamond Patrons table at the fundraiser for the Gold Coast Chapter of the IBS Wellness Foundation, (a group globally committed to defeating irritable bowel syndrome) her fellow Potussies (loyal Palm Beach women who support the new POTUS) are convinced she has been murdered by an illegal immigrant.

Cluttercore

Gert is delighted to hear of the new TikTok fashion for “cluttercore”. This involves showing your house as it actually looks – discarded toys all over the floor, clothes slung over the sofa, the dog’s dish tipped over into the cat’s bed…you get the picture.

Vale Christopher Fowler : 1953 -2023

And he has left us, the witty Christopher Fowler, creator of the inimitable detective team of Arthur Bryant and John May and their world, the Peculiar Crimes Unit. He was diagnosed with something nasty in 2020 and since then has kept writing while having intensive treatment. He only stopped writing his blog in January this year and has written another three books since his diagnosis.

Bohumil Hrabal: Too Loud A Solitude

If a book has anything to say, it burns with a quiet laugh, because any book worth its salt points up and out of itself.

A Man Named Doll : Jonathan Ames

I am very fond of the writing of Jonathan Ames. I loved Very Good, Sir his riff on P G Wodehouse with a Jewish alcoholic protagonist and The Extra Man about an unlikely friendship between a ‘walker’ and a young man drawn to the drag scene. Then there was his wonderful 2009 T V series, Bored to Death.

In 2021 he began a new series of books about a detective called Happy Doll. A Man named Doll is the first in the series and The Wheel of Doll has come out this year.

Lament of the conductor

Helen Garner : The Children’s Bach

Well, which is it? In 1986 Don Anderson (Australian academic and critic) wrote, ‘There are four perfect short novels in the English language. They are Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and Garner’s The Children’s Bach.’

Mickey Spillane: The Big Kill