In My Library: Steve Hamilton
“I’ve never written a letter like this before, but I’m reaching out to you about a book I really believe in,” Don Winslow wrote The Post. The book was “The Second Life of Nick Mason,” and it wasn’t by Winslow, a best-selling crime writer, but by his friend, Steve Hamilton, who’d just left his day job at IBM and longtime publisher (St. Martin’s) to get it out there.Winslow wasn’t the only one to lend a hand: Lee Child, Stephen King and Michael Connelly were among the best-selling writers who supplied warm blurbs for Hamilton’s taut new thriller, published last month by Putnam, about a career criminal sprung from prison to do another man’s bidding. .
So it seemed only fair to ask Hamilton to pick four favorite books by those same friends. Here they are:
An epic crime novel about the Mexican drug wars, bursting out of its 600-plus pages. The kind of novel that already felt like something greater than fiction, even before El Chapo escaped from prison. Winslow tells an incredibly rich, multilayered story woven so intricately, you never see the seams.
I knew this would be my favorite Jack Reacher novel by page 3. A train stops in a nowhere town surrounded by thousands of miles of wheat fields. When it pulls away, one man, Reacher, is standing on the platform. Why? Because the name of the town, Mother’s Rest, sounded interesting to him. Period. Only Lee Child could make this low-key beginning work.
Misery byStephen King
The best example of narrative tension I’ve ever read — and, not coincidentally, the only book that made me stay awake literally all night to finish. It’s also one of the few King novels without any supernatural elements whatsoever. It’s like taking away Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s sky hook and still watching him score 50 points.
The Crossing byMichael Connelly
Connelly writes cops better than anyone else in the business, and it’s the surprising “crossing” that the retired Harry Bosch is compelled to make that brings this book to life. Even when his bosses strip him of his badge, he can never stop thinking like a homicide detective.
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