Back in Bed (in Tokyo)

What’s a “management guru” doing offering beach fiction suggestions? Whatever. It’s why I love blogging … nothing is off limits. Okay, I’ll hook it in to management. I’ve long contended that great fiction beats professional tomes when it comes to management instruction. Why? Enterprises are nothing other than canvases upon which human dramas are enacted. Right?

But forget my rationalizing, and, damn it, take Justin Cronin’s The Summer Guest to the shore this month. I’m a thriller fan, but I admit that most thriller writers don’t exactly set records when it comes to developing characters—the exceptions such as Ian Rankin or Alan Furst notwithstanding. The Summer Guest will get to you and in you, I can almost promise. The setting is a remote fishing camp in Maine, and the story is simply the interplay of a small handful of characters over a couple of days’ period. The plot nonetheless races forward. May not be your cup of tea, wasn’t sure it was mine—but it was—in spades!