My new Travelers crime thriller, Grifters’ Hopscotch, came back from the editor yesterday, so I’ve got some tidying up to do.

In the meantime, two crime books I read last month.

As many of you know, I’m a big fan of the Parker crime thrillers, written by Donald Westlake using the name Richard Stark. And there’re still a few I haven’t read, so I picked up Nobody Runs Forever (Parker Novel 22). This time out, Parker gets involved in an armored car robbery where too many of the players want to trust the wrong people, which leads to the police being way too close when the robbery takes place.

Complex plotting that relies on the motivations and fears of the various characters creates a relentless steamroller of action. There’re only two more of these books (numbers 23 and 24), and I’ll be sorry when I’ve read the last of them.

I also read Anarchy of the Mice by Jeff Bond. This is a pulpy thriller that weds larger-than-life characters to our contemporary paranoias about technology, corporations, and government.

In it, anarchists are destroying society by undermining the computer technology that runs our lives. Our heroes—an ex-politician, an ex-Marine, and a divorced mom private eye—start investigating the anarchist group. Eventually they uncover a complex conspiracy involving immoral, power-hungry corporations. This kind of book could just be silly. Instead, clever plotting and careful character development make for a fun, fun read.