Writing While Sick, Reading Sean Doolittle While Recovering

Well, the flu is abating. I dropped Tylenol yesterday and took Walter Mosley’s advice and worked on the novel. Actually did about 1,500 words. Not a lot, but okay for a sick guy.

In the meantime, I want to mention a writer named Sean Doolittle. I don’t know him. We’ve never met, but one of his novels was recommended to me. So I bought a copy from Amazon.com and finished it two days ago while I was laid up in bed between cold sweats and fever.

This guy is truly talented! I’ve never read a thriller quite like this one. Doolittle’s quite a skillful writer and you are quickly drawn into the situation presented in THE CLEANUP. But it wasn’t just that skill that got me enjoying this book so much. It was the fact that this was just a great working-class tale. The characters here are beat cops, and grocery store clerks, and carpenters, and salvage yard yokels, and laborers. Even the single “rich” guy in the book is a self-made character who owns a furniture store.

I liked that. It’s something fresh. No people moving about in circles I neither recognize nor find attainable. These are real folk. The cop who patrols your neighborhood at night. The lady who scans your groceries. The kid who stocks the retail shelves. The dude who put in the slat walls in the bank office. The story was reasonable and the characters were universally accessible.

Doolittle’s the real deal. Working class thriller for working class guys. (And everyone else.)