Word: novelized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...some three decades Donald E. Westlake has operated a kind of literary halfway house for the morally rotten, propping up an entire repertory company of safecrackers, bank robbers, funny-money artists and miscellaneous boodlers after their inevitable job-related mishaps and sending them forth to steal again in novel after novel. His best-known wrongdoer is an amusing burglar named Dortmunder, whose fumble-thumbed approach to grand larceny is that of a tax accountant trying to bolt together a backyard barbecue. The unstated, slyly effective joke of the Dortmunder series (The Hot Rock; What's the Worst That Could Happen...
...conversation stirs because in his latest crime novel, Comeback (Mysterious Press; 292 pages; $18), Westlake has reached high on his shelf to blow the dust off a memorable badman. About 35 years ago, at the beginning of his career, he turned in a manuscript starring an armed robber named Parker. That was it; if Parker had a first name, you didn't want to get close enough to know it. He was tough, mean and distinctly unfunny; a sullen bad guy who drank whiskey, smoked cigarettes and cuffed both men and women around. Parker got caught...
...vacant house" or "I felt as if I had turned into a bowl of cold porridge." Murakami's storytelling ease and the pellucid, uncluttered backdrop he lays down allow moments to flare up memorably. Yet the overall effect of his grand but somewhat abstract novel is to give us X ray after X ray into the benumbed soul of a wannabe Prozac Nation...
...VAMPIRE LOVER STRIKES! Anne Rice's novel Violin makes its debut in the Top 10. Maybe the truly spooky just want to read...
Jennifer Jason Leigh is perfectly cast in Agnieszka Holland's adaptation of Henry James's novel. An awkward young woman starved for affection is caught between a cynical, distant father and a spirited but selfish young suitor. Holland's camera work and sense of period is engaging throughout, and her trademark comic acuity leavens the somber arc of the story. Eventually, though, Leigh asserts herself just long enough to break your heart. Like its heroine, the film misses true magnificence, but its intelligent cast and sensitive story-telling are more than enough to recommend it. --Nicholas K. Davis...