Serenade

The common denominator of the books I've been reading lately is that they are small paperbacks -handy and preferably floppy like soft-shelled crab.

These are the books that I don't mind carrying the two blocks to the shuttle every morning to read on the ride to work. Those are long blocks and I can't tolerate excess baggage.

The last paperback I finished was Nikolai Gogol's Diary of a Madman and Other Stories and it was lousy. We can blame the translator. I thoroughly enjoyed Gogol's novel Dead Souls but those short stories were a tough haul to get through.

I am flying through my current paperback, a book of three short novels by James Cain. He is famous for writing The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce. I liked the first two but I've never managed to pick up Mildred Pierce because I think it's just gonna be about Joan Crawford and her crazy daughter.

The first of the three novels in the book I'm reading is called Serenade. I'm about halfway through it and I'm enjoying it as much as the other James Cain stories I've read. It's about a washed-up singer who takes up with a Mexican prostitute in Mexico where they have lurid episodes. With the help of an Irish sea captain, they must escape to Los Angeles. There the washed-up singer finds success because his voice returns to him due to his adventures with the prostitute. So far so good.