Barry Eisler’s Killing Rain
While the Earl takes a break for a visit to Fisherman’s Wharf, and Lars, the publicist of gloom, works on the Volvo, this blog turns to the business at hand, books. The Dutchess, the Dowager Princess, Depew, and, of course, The Earl are each compliling a year end list of favorite books. DCI Borchardt, facing permanent assignment to Wellington Leg, needs a Christmas gift for his boss, Prosecutrix Mrs. Anderson-Cooper. If no further literary output is forthcoming from inside the Beltway, he’s inclined toward presenting Mrs. AC with a ceremonial dagger. With the Snooker Awards delayed for two weeks, AJC Howard is recommending Tess Gerritsen’s Vanish. “I am in awe,” he said recently. He is penning an invitation to Ms. Gerritsen, an opus now thirty pages in length, to be interviewed in the Wellington Leg Intelligencer. “My questions are pertinent, probing, possibly perky, poignant, penetrating, even probative,” he says. Nigel Newton, literary editor, remains skeptical: “He wrote the interview questions in Latin. This decision, whatever its artistic merit, reveals a lack of marketing savvy shared by many in these parts.”
Barry Eisler’s Killing Rain is moving up the charts according to Waltraut Frothingmunster. “It’s very good, surprisingly fresh.” Frothingmunster, postmistress of Wellington Leg, is working on an alternative reality list with Prudentia Chalfont-Smythe. The work imagines that dogsbody Urquhart Depew is granted the earl’s title and property while the Earl assumes the chairmanship of Ballard Auto Body and Publicity. Frothingmunster is reluctant to reveal details; “this is neither the time nor the place,” she said.