I said the two works contrast wonderfully, and they do. Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, on the other hand, is a fairly recent novel – second or third in a contemporary series, which I understand is planned for five installments. Mildred Pierce has been around for decades, but I only met her this past summer-thanks to the group’s introduction. Cain being the writer of classics such as: The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. Mildred Pierce is probably the more widely known of the two, of course, James M. One a grimly realist work, the other a flight of fancy that still manages to be rather grim yet holds an artistic aspect I don't recall encountering before in literature. Cain’s Mildred Pierce and Sara Gran’s Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead. Of those, the two that stand out as the most wonderfully contrasting works are James M. So, over the past few months I’ve read several noir mysteries. I don’t always manage to get to the meetings, but I usually manage to read the book for the month. In this case, a fellow named Patrick Millikin, who’s worked there for over a decade (and also edited the anthology Phoenix Noir), chairs the group and helps us decide which novels we’ll read for the month I’m sure you understand how such a thing works: everybody in the group reads a certain novel each month, then we meet at the store, after hours, to discuss it. I’m a member (if you can call being a part of such a loose-knit group a member) of the Hardboiled Discussion Group at the Poisoned Pen bookstore here in Scottsdale.
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