Read the superb “Chinaman’s chance” and now Briarpatch.
It was a sheepish smile, patently false, that somehow went with Snow's long narrow face, which the detective also found to be rather sheeplike, except for those clever coyote eyes.Still wearing his smile, Harold Snow then said what he always said to the homicide detective, "Well, I guess you gotta go round up the usual suspects.
""I'll wait out here," the detective said again, and smiled a small, meaningless smile.Harold Snow shrugged and closed the door to keep the heat out. At first blush, Dill appears to be corrupt. "Copyright © 1984 by Ross E. Thomas, Inc. Introduction copyright © 2003 by Lawrence Block.Amazon calculates a product’s star ratings based on a machine learned model instead of a raw data average. Ben Gill experiences all of those things in this book.Audiobook: A Briar Patch can be many things: a hiding place, a place to avoid (as in Star Trek), a thicket of prickly bushes, and a place where you can get all tangled up. By noon the temperature would hit 100, and by two or three o'clock it would be hovering around 105. He flies to the Texas city, his hometown, reacquainting himself with his long time friend Jake Spivey. But Thomas’ books are almost out of print, however thanks to these expensive editions they are still reachable.I learned who Ross Thomas was through reading that Jean Patrick Mansette translated him and was seriously influenced by him. Spivey is now verA fast paced, well written, cleverly plotted, crime thriller with interesting characters and plenty of unexpected incidents. The pace was slow and there was no action to speak of. His characters are great as are his descriptions of Americana and could turn a phrase as well as any one. A long-distance call from a Texas city on his birthday gives Benjamin Dill the news that his sister-- it' s her birthday, too, they were born exactly ten years apart-- has died in a car bomb explosion.
That's not because the book is bad; far from it! Announcement of a TV show based on book got me to read it over. The pace was slow and there was no action to speak of. I went whining into my bookshop "I need a new author," I whaled. One of the things I'm trying to do is go back and find classic crime fiction writers whom I may have missed out on. Snow had his pants on now, but no shoes. The bestRoss Thomas I have read so far, and that is saying something because he is up there with Damon Runyon and Raymond Chandler. Well, that's subjective because what's great to some, sucks for others. (4.5) About a third of the way through this book, I began to worry. Title: Briarpatch Author: Tim Pratt Publisher: ChiZine Publications Rating: 3 out of 5 Format: Print. Came across Ross Thomas when I found a library book the seersucker whipsaw, couldn't resist a book called that, was blown away by this author , spent the last year finding his books, and enjoyed everyone, if you like odd characters and convoluted plots, these are well worth trying. It was such a good read and yet I was concerned it wouldn’t have the velocity to keep up til the end. Something went wrong. Charles Willeford is another.The plot is almost too similar to the old 30's novels of Hammett and Chandler, but Ross Thomas puts his own spin on things. The added bonus is that I knew going in that this was not a series so I didn't know until the last word whether my now good friend, Ben Dill, was going to make it out alive. Better than any book of its kind that I've read in the past ten years. So, I've decided this reread of Ross Thomas was an American writer of crime fiction. Thomas gets some self-control after this, and only occasionally overdoes it. "I guess," he said slowly, "I guess somebody just blew away the landlady.