What My Dad Is Reading Right Now

Name: David Datz
Age: 60
Where are you from? Born in Brooklyn, NY, grew up in Scarsdale, Memphis, St. Louis, and Burlingame, CA, now live in Altadena, CA.
Occupation/how you spend your time: Information technology project manager and systems analyst, local library trustee, and kids' soccer coach.

Currently reading: The Last Detective by Robert Crais

Why this book? I sort of alternate between a "literary" novel and a lighter, crime/mystery novel, and in the latter category I had run out of authors I knew about. A friend recommended Crais.

Thoughts on the book: It's a tense, taut, unrelenting crime drama. It's also sort of grim and dark. Not at all witty, like Robert B. Parker or Raymond Chandler (the master), and sometimes melodramatic. But if you want a diverting page-turner, it's great.

Other book recommendations: Before the Crais, I read Oil! by Upton Sinclair, the basis for the movie "There Will Be Blood." It was published in 1926, with a lot of observations about capitalism, socialism, and communism. From the perspective of 2008, it's interesting to see where Sinclair was right and where he was wrong. In some things he was very wrong, and I was disappointed to discover racism among his traits. But a lot of his observations ring all too true for our own time.