This is my week to read books. Or rather, this is my week to avoid doing laundry and going to the gym. Monday I read 'Geography Club' by Brent Hartinger. Last night it was 'Everybody Dies' by Lawrence Block (one of my heroes).

'Geography Club' was a light read. Very obviously written for teenagers using lots of cultural references (it seems that many of the guys at this particular high school looked like Abercrombie and Fitch models or like they just stepped out of an Old Navy ad). Luckily, this book will likely be forgotten before it's too dated. I mean, it was a good little read, but it didn't cover any new territory at all. Boy meets boy (one of them a school nobody and the other the jock hero). They fall in love, nearly get outed and jock boy decides he can't deal with the pressure.

Kind of a 'What's Wrong With Angry'/'Get Real' thing. Like I said, no new territory covered.

But then, it's written for high school kids. How many of them have read 'What's Wrong With Angry' or seen 'Get Real'?

And if it helps any kid deal with being gay, then I'm all for it.

'Everybody Dies' was good. Comfortable, I suppose, is a better word. I've read all the other books in the Matthew Scudder series. I like the characters. I feel like I know them and enjoy reading about their lives. And this was a great book for that. It really dealt with some characters in the series that don't have much in the way of back story and it fleshed them out a lot. And it killed off a couple that had been in there for a while (kind of an Ed McBain sort of thing).

The problem was the story. Someone is trying to set up one of Matt's friends. The rest of the story involves Matt trying to figure out who's doing it and why. The 'who's doing it and why' is revealed late in the book, and while it doesn't get explained enough to make it very believable, the motive is revenge and it at least holds together. The problem for me was that the book sets out fairly early that one of the people in Matt's friend's inner circle is betraying him and setting him up to be killed. And although it isn't revealed until right before the end, it is painfully obvious who it is. And while I suppose it's okay to read a book in order to see when the characters will finally put everything together, it wasn't what I wanted from this book. Matt Scudder is a detective. He'd been a police officer. In short, he was too smart not to have seen this coming.

And that bothered me.

Now like I said, I'm glad I read the book if for no other reason than some of the character development. That and the fact that Lawrence Block is an amazing writer no matter how you slice it. When you read one of his books, you are transported into it. It's also pretty cool that the series is set in New York and that he uses real places (one scene in the book took place in the church next door to where I used to live).

But I still felt a little cheated.

So tonight I guess I'll finish 'Dorian' by Will Self or that Timberlake Wertenbaker play I've been picking up and putting down.