Skin Game
There’s a silly, expectant glee I experience when I stumble across a new book on sale. Favorite author, or a favorite series, or, in other words, an author I like and enjoy.
For several years, he’s been in collaboration (see footnote) and this is no different, same authors, based on a previous framework, and I don’t recall reading the The Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew Mysteries in any particular order. I think I had a few of the books, and they were good, what, second grade level? I’ve no idea.
But along those lines, though, well-executed prose, story and plot-line that all makes sense, rips right along, and has what I like?
Sure.
From streetwise cop to a bon vivant, sure, “lifestyles of the rich and famous,” now. However, never one to ignore his roots?
This is a sub-series, some of the same characters, but the player is an almost sociopathic superman. Fun to read as it soars right along, and the prose itself, I always marvel at a total lack of style which makes the words all seem more efficient. Taut, tight, firm prose, bereft of excess.
Doubt this is for everyone, but guessing from book sales, and the popularity at the library? I’m guessing I’m not alone in this kind of secret, guilty pleasure. Besides, I do admire the way the prose itself disappears when the story gets up and rolls forward.
Skin Game
While I prefer to buy this at the big warehouse store — Costco — my local one didn’t have this title available, but the bookstore did. Funny, I read the library version.
For all its foibles, with the fictional world of private jets and estates scattered around, gratuitous sex, violence, and death? There’s a hook in the writing itself — for me that means leaving an afternoon and evening available to because once I get to a certain part in the book, there’s almost no putting it down until I’m done.
The digital copy I was reading? It had the first two chapters of the next release as well. Already looking forward to that. Of note? That next one will be the 50th book.
Skin Game
Skin Game by Stuart Woods
- Footnote: someplace online, I found an author’s statement that suggested Stuart Wood’s publisher wanted four books a year and as a writer, he was only really comfortable with a pace that spelled out three books in year. As serial material, though this one works, and it falls in the same wonderfully pedestrian prose as the rest of the works.
