John Baker’s Blog

Mario Balzic is the Police Chief of Rocksburg, a town in Pennsylvania where the mills have closed and the mines shut down. In this 1974 novel, as in other novels in the series, the Chief lives with his wife Ruth, their two daughters, and Balzic’s elderly mother.
It had taken years for the hedges to [...]

The Taster:
Billy was on the point of drifting off to sleep when a single sentence drew him right in close.
‘But that day for some reason, I was all alone . . .’
Billy roused himself. ‘Sorry. Where was this?’
‘In Manchester. A place called Fallowfield.’
A white car pulled alongside him, Trevor said, as he was walking. The [...]

Guardian Unlimited reports on Vladimir Nabokov’s last work, the one he asked his son to destroy:
From his winter home in Palm Beach, Dmitri (Nabokov) justified his decision (to ignore his father’s will) by saying, “I’m a loyal son and thought long and seriously about it, then my father appeared before me and said, with [...]

A taster:
As plant cover diminishes and forests peter out the further north you go, buildings become lower and settlements more scattered. Is this a general rule? Perhaps. Perhaps not. What business is it of mine?
I must wait until tomorrow to continue my journey, and have nothing better to do than swell on such truths.
Here in [...]