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Bad Child

I just completed my first real pulp thriller best-seller in years (I used to love Fontana paperbacks featuring parka'd men scrambling on ice floes with ice picks) - the penultimate Lee Child.  It is, at times, shockingly misogynistic, violent, and even borderline racist (or at least the main character is).  Edward Said would not have been amused, in the least.  Child is not the new Chandler, as some have claimed, but he might be a new sort of Spillane.  Jack Reacher has some intriguing characteristics.  A pity he seems to hold dimestore views about le monde Arabe - a far more complex and valuable cultural space than his post-911 worldview (or the one his creator cynically adopts to sell books to the airport everyreader) seems to admit.  I am breaking my promise not to blog over the Spring break - okay, will try to keep my mitts off this blog for a few days.
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