{"id":3325,"date":"2006-09-15T02:25:00","date_gmt":"2006-09-15T07:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=3325"},"modified":"2017-12-14T13:40:20","modified_gmt":"2017-12-14T19:40:20","slug":"book-report-small-felonies-by-bill-pronzini-1988","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/15\/book-report-small-felonies-by-bill-pronzini-1988\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Small Felonies by Bill Pronzini (1988)"},"content":{"rendered":"

As you might remember, gentle reader, I read Bill Pronzini’s Blowback<\/a><\/i> in May. I thought well enough of it that when I found this particular book at the Carondolet YMCA book fair this month, I picked it up for a dollar. I’d already broken through the buy\/not buy barrier and the bottom of a stroller makes it easy to forget how much you’ve already selected. Not that there was a baby in the stroller, mind you; babies take up room better left to books.<\/p>\n

This book collects fifty short short stories in the mystery genre. These stories run under 2000 words for the most part–three or four book pages. They don’t offer a great deal of character development, layered nuance, or other such hallmarks of immortal literary fiction that won’t survive the decade. They do, however, have plots, crimes, and sometimes a twist of an ending. Sure, they’re obvious sometimes and are fairly simple in structure, but they’re all good short shorts.<\/p>\n

And they’re easy and not very intimidating to start reading because they’re so short, but it’s hard to stop because the next one won’t take long, either.<\/p>\n

I enjoyed the book, and I’ll have to start watching out for short short collections. Also, this book doesn’t diminish my view of Pronzini; I think I’ll move him a little higher in my unofficial pantheon and start looking for more of his works. For when I start buying books again, which hopefully will be sometime after I’ve run through my backlog of thousands.<\/p>\n

Books mentioned in this review:<\/b><\/p>\n