Double Down Book Club

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Chinatown, dir. Roman Polanski

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Raymond Chandler, Farewell My Lovely

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Mullholland Drive, dir. David Lynch

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Newton Thornburg, Dreamland

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Joseph Wambaugh, The Choirboys

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Ross Thomas, Chinaman’s Chance

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Henry Mancini’s Touch Of Evil score.

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"At Lutece, they seated the three of us at a lovely table upstairs, and a waiter came to take our drink order. Ross said he wanted a triple vodka martini, straight up and extra dry. The waiter asked if he’d prefer an olive or an onion with that. 'We’ll eat later,' Ross announced."

- Lawrence Block on a visit from Ross Thomas, 1973

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DOUBLE DOWN BOOKCLUB #5: CHARLES MCCARRY

"The next time you see your friend Peggy, ask her what she thinks of assassination now." - Paul Christopher

Two of my favorite novels are about the assassination of John F. Kennedy: Don DeLillo's Libra and this, Charles McCarry's 1974 work. Tears ... follows up McCarry's rookie turn, The Miernik Dossier, which entertainingly introduced the world to his protagonist, the WASP-y, Harvard-educated spy-poet, Paul Christopher. But nothing in that first novel suggested McCarry the author or Christopher the character's potential to encompass personal, societal, generational and, hell, universal tragedy the way Tears... does. What a sad, sad, heartbreaking book about the lengths we'll go, the things we will destroy and the compromises we will make to prove that we were right. This book basically makes about as much sense as The Big Sleep, and it basically has the same plot: no matter what, our strangely moral hero will give up whatever he must to save something more sacred. As to whether solving the mystery behind Kennedy's assassination is worth what Christopher sacrifices, well, that, ultimately, is the central preoccupation of McCarry's fiction.

(Also, get ready to learn a lot about astrology). (And heroin).

- CR 

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grantland dudes @ book court, brooklyn earlier this evening.

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DOUBLE DOWN BOOK STORE

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"I WANTED TO SAVE THE WORLD FROM TYRANNY."

-- C. McCarry, clandestine baller.

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DOUBLE DOWN BOOK CLUB #4: CHARLES MCCARRY

The Last Supper is a sprawling, sad, sad, epic about America, it's rise as a super power in the post-WWII years and all the dirty, secret little wars we fought to stay there. Paul Christopher, the poet/spy who is the main character of several McCarry novels, is ostensibly at the center of this book. But really it's about everyone around Christopher -- his father, lovers, brothers, cousins, friends and enemies -- and how they are corrupted or contaminated or destroyed by his idealism. If you enjoyed the sweep of Robert Littell's The Company or the air of betrayal and deception that defines Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, this will blow you away. But even if you haven't read those books, or are new to the espionage drama, you will likely be drawn in by this novel. I don't know that I've ever read something that takes such historically important actions, albeit clandestine ones, and make them seem so incredibly, heartbreakingly human. Also, this novel features Barney Wolcowicz, who might be one of my favorite fictional characters ever. - CR

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DOUBLE DOWN BOOK CLUB #3: ALAN FURST

Poland had lost the war, this is what was left" - The Polish Officer. 

This is the last sentence of the opening part of Alan Furst's third book. I think the highest compliment I can pay this section, titled "The Pilava Local," is that it earns every words of that crazy, drop-the-mic final sentence. The Polish Officer is probably the most compact, swift and entertaining of Furst's novels. It's about a Polish...officer recruited into the fledgling Polish secret service following the Nazi invasion. Close listeners of the the Double Down sections on the pod should note the jacket blurb at the top of the cover there. McCarry! Night Soldiers and Dark Star are far more sweeping, on a historical level and Blood of Victory might be the most thrilling, page for page. But this one remains my favorite. If you like John LeCarre, The Third Man, A Brief Encounter, that old Burt Lancaster movie, The Train, you really need to dive into this one. - CR

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You can write about the past, Alan, but you can't outrun it.

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Bonjour, ladies.

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Cherished possession b/w World's most inevitable title. -- AG

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DOUBLE DOWN BOOK CLUB #2: JAMES CRUMLEY

James Crumley wrote what just might be the best modern detective novel, 1978's The Last Good Kiss. Over the next thirty years he wrote a series of increasingly unhinged sequels and sidebars, all of which are insane and great in equal measure. You might try the drug-fueled lunacy of Dancing Bear, starring his other protagonist, schnapps-shooting PI Milo Milodragovitch or The Final Country, a later Milo book which does for Texas what previous adventures did for Montana. 

But in terms of pure, uncut, coke-addled craziness it's hard to beat Bordersnakes, in which Milo teams up with Last Good Kiss protagonist C.W. Sugrue (as in, "Sugar" and "rue the day") and one of them ends up digging his own grave before escaping by lopping off the hand of a narcotraficante with the shovel.

The thing with Crumley: the plot almost never matters. It's how you got there and what you had to drink along the way. -- AG