At the suggestion of a lawyer turned novelist (and I think she’s actually an international spy), I started reading Charlie Huston. Blew through Caught Stealing and Six Bad Things. These are some awfully fracked up narratives – and I mean that in the best possible way. The protagonist moves through these books compelled by odd and incomprehensible forces. It’s like he’s the plaything of some hard-boiled thriller God. I could dismiss his trouble if the story itself wasn’t so incredibly tight and terrible. I’m watching him become a very bad man, and yet I love him because he has the courage to become a very bad man.