Two Mysteries

I've finally managed to finish not one but two books! I'd switched to large print books because I'm having such trouble focusing on regular print. It's really driving me crazy because I have hundreds of books I want to read but am not able to do so. I have an appointment to see my eye doctor tomorrow and if there's nothing wrong with my eyes, the next step is to isolate the medicinal culprit--and I'm pretty sure I know which one(s) it is!

First I read Black Ice by Michael Connelly. Another blogger recommended him to me and I'm glad he did. The only drawback is that my blogger friend said it didn't matter in which order I read the books but I believe it does. There were references in this book made to an earlier story. It didn't detract except that I was then curious to know what the earlier book was about. Luckily, I missed only the first in the series and I now have a list of the books in chronological order.

Harry Bosch is a troubled maverick detective who becomes involved in what originally appeared to be the suicide of a cop gone bad. Although his superiors would like to cover the whole thing up, Harry just can't stay out of it especially when the autopsy results come back "inconclusive". His investigation takes him down into Mexico and involves him in the seedy dealings of drug dealers introducing a new form of dope to this country--"black ice": a mix of heroin, cocaine, and PCP.

I won't go into all the particulars and will just say that it was an enjoyable book. It's not great literature but I did get hooked and was unable to put the book down for a while. The only down side was that it seemed to drag a little in some places but that's okay.

I was very disappointed with The Colorado Kid by Stephen King. He wrote the book especially for "Hard Case Crime", a series of books by classic mystery writers and new ones that were supposed to have a 1940s/1950s old time mystery feel to them. I was expecting a hard boiled crime story and what I got was two old geezers in Maine telling their wide-eyed intern about some guy from Colorado who may or may not have choked to death on a steak sandwich. I kept waiting for the book to get better and it was charming but that is about all. Waste of time.