I am reading:
Exit Music by Ian Rankin — So...about 50-75 pages of muddle as Inspector Rebus and Co. investigate the suspected murder of a Russian dissident poet and then: a recording studio explodes, killing one of the last people to see Todorov alive and all manner of gangsters, MPs, and oligarchs come crawling out...Inspector John Rebus’s career is going out with a bang, that’s for sure.
...The elaborate clock at the corner of Fraser’s department store was being photographed, presumably by another tourist. There never seemed to be enough rooms in Edinburgh for these visitors; new hotels were always being proposed, considered, and constructed. He could think of five or six off the top of his head, all opening within the past ten years, and with more to come. It gave the impression of Edinburgh as a boomtown. More people than ever seemed to want to work there, or visit, or do business. The Parliament had brought plenty of opportunities. Some argued that independence would spoil things, others that it would build on the success while dealing with devolution’s failings. It interested him that a hard-nosed executive like Stuart Janney would cozy up to a nationalist like Megan Macfarlane. But not as much as those Russian visitors interested him. Big place, Russia, and rich in all manner of resources. You could drop Scotland into it dozens of times over. So why were these men here? Rebus was more than curious.
Dawn by Octavia Butler Didn’t read this book this week but I did purchase the other two books of the Xenogenesis trilogy. So that’s a project.
Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks 1941-1955 by Patricia Highsmith and Anna von Planta
Y’all told me this was coming. I’m all in.