Itching to purchase a mass market paperback thriller for your next plane ride? Do it at Target, where they are 2 - 3 dollars less than the cover. One crime writer that will not be found at the red dots (unless he writes a big one) is Andrew Coburn. Overlooked but still living in the fruitful world of little books, Coburn is an addictive stylist (see his two part short story in the collection, Men From Boys) that puts most thriller meat grinders to shame. I’m in a, uh, recent reprint of Goldilocks right now. My reading practices are as follows:
I keep my finger in one mass market paperback at all times. Before bed, I read some type of (usually movie/music/literary/crime-based) non-fiction. The third concern will be a title that falls under “literary fiction.” Both great and terrible magazines fill up the spaces in between. I own a troubling number of books that’ve never been cracked.