John Baker’s Blog

The Cafe Andros is not Greek. It has white, smoothly plastered Romanesque, mirrored arches along one wall. Piped music further confuses the senses. They are mainly old folk at the tables, enmeshed in a low buzz of conversation. At one table is a young woman with a baby. When she moves towards the toilet everyone [...]

Over at the Los Angeles Times, Richard Rayner reviews The Long Embrace - Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved by Judith Freeman. The book focusses on Raymond Chandler and his obsession with another man’s wife.
Freeman traces the ups and downs of the marriage and career with utmost delicacy. We spend time with Billy Wilder [...]

First impression; taking it out of the envelope. It’s a real book. Bright cover, solid feel, nice spine and you can splay the pages and get a feel for the density of the print, length of paragraphs, etc.
All that is good. What is not so good is when you start reading you soon realise that [...]

This is a sample:
Times had changed at the church, too. He could see that as soon as they entered. Oh, physically it was the same - dim and glimmery, smelling of wax candles - but only the very oldest mourners were in black. The others had on every colour of the rainbow, clothes they’d [...]