Some Good Summer Reading

I do not know what books are bestsellers this week, but I can assure you that few of them will be as entertaining as these. New is not always best, and older is not always out of date.

Ross Thomas has been out of print, and that is criminal. He is a mystery writer's writer, praised by the likes of Donald Westlake, Robert Parker, and Elmore Leonard. "The Fools in Town are on Our Side" is my favorite of his books, though "Out on The Rim" is almost as good. "Fools" features two characters named Lucifer Dye and Homer Necessary, who become involved in a plot to take over and corrupt a Southern coastal city somewhere between Mobile and Galveston. Read it.

The next two books I recommend are for those of you who wish you were spending your summer in Tuscany or Umbria. After reading "Summer's Lease" and "After Hannibal" you will be glad you stayed home. In John Mortimer's novel, an English couple, the wife's father, and their children lease a villa in Tuscany that seems to have been handpicked just for them, though the wife soon suspects this was for sinister motives. This was made into a mini-series and was shown on Masterpiece Theatre a few years ago. "After Hannibal", by Barry Unsworth, is an antidote to the Frances Mayes School of Italian Pastoral. Here the natives are not gracious and welcoming,and in order not to spoil it for you I will say no more.

I admit to never having read any of James Michener's thousand page door stopper novels, but his "Tales of the South Pacific" will live forever. It is so good that I will read it again this summer, perhaps for the 10th time. Rogers and Hammerstein turned it into the musical "South Pacific".

Lastly, with the 95 cent McKay price tag still on it, is "Iberia", Michener's tribute to Spain. I am reading it now, and though it was written in the sixties it does not feel dated. Spanish history will not change. Spanish character may be immutable. Michener visited Spain for the first time when he shipped out on a freighter that would bring oranges from Valencia to make marmalade in Dundee. This is a marvellous book.