The Plains of Cement is the third and final book in Patrick Hamilton’s Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky collection, which follows three down-and-out characters through the streets of London in the fall and early winter of 1929.

Book one, The Midnight Bell, follows the waiter, Bob, as he falls in love with prostitute Jenny Maples. Book two, The Siege of Pleasure, picks up with Jennie’s story just days after book one leaves off. Most of it is a flashback to events three years earlier that led Jennie into prostitution.

The Siege of Pleasure, the second book in Patrick Hamilton’s 1930’s London trilogy Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, picks up just days after the end of book one. Jenny Maple is walking the streets around the London Pavilion looking for a trick while trying to avoid a plainclothes cop who has recently arrested one of her friends.

A seedy-looking middle-aged man has his eye on her, but can’t quite pluck up the courage to approach. Desperate to get off the street, into a warm hotel and away from the threat of arrest, Jenny approaches him. The man is physically unattractive, sneaky, furtive, nervous and evasive. She takes the lead in negotiating a price for the night, and then they’re off–first to a pub, and then to a hotel.

Bob, a waiter at a London saloon called The Midnight Bell, leads a relatively simple life. He works the lunch shift from 11 to 3 and the evening shift from 5 till 10. In between, he reads in his room, wanders the streets, goes to movies. The son of an American man and an Irish woman, he has no living family, no clear path ahead, and only the vaguest of dreams.

The time is 1929 or thereabouts. After years of working at sea, Bob, now twenty-six, has landed in this saloon that serves an odd assortment of down-and-out regulars.

Ben Fox from Shepherd.com recently asked me to write about five of my favorite books in any genre. You can check out my list of the best books from the golden age of American crime and noir and perhaps discover something new.

Paul Bradley Carr’s 1414° is a satirical thriller that reads like Carl Hiaasen’s take on Silicon Valley, “An industry built on the promise of limitless memory, by people who can’t remember what happened last week.”

The book opens with former tech titan Joe Christian counting out his final hours in a filthy flophouse in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. Someone, he is sure, has deliberately ruined his life. Someone he calls “Fate” has orchestrated his long descent from wealth and power to this sad, sordid end. But who is Fate?

[Note: This book’s preface claims it’s based on a true story. It’s not. If you read this novel as an accurate account of Aboriginal culture, you’ll be misled. It should be categorized as New Age Fantasy. The end of this review contains a link to a story in which the author retracts her claims to the book’s authenticity. As fantasy, though, it’s a pretty good read.]

Marlo Morgan, an American living in Australia, is invited by an Aboriginal group to what she thinks is an awards banquet. Her guide, Ooota, picks her up from her hotel in a beat up Jeep and drives her deep into the Outback to meet a waiting tribe whose members call themselves The Real People. The tribe burns her clothing, wallet, camera, passport and all other possessions and invites her on a walk across the continent.

A few months ago, I bought a RadCity 4 electric bike from Rad Power Bikes. I got it for commuting into town (5 hilly miles) and to the office (8 miles, with steep hills).

The bike arrived about a week after I placed the order. It comes in a box, mostly assembled, with the customer having to do the final steps of attaching the pedals and handlebars, and connecting some wiring. The assembly was pretty easy. You don’t need much mechanical ability.

Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle presents an alternate reality in which the Allies lost World War II and the Axis won. The book was written in, and takes place in, the early 1960’s. Unlike many of today’s dystopian alternate-history novels, which tend to be dark and somber, Dick’s story is darkly humorous.

Instead of focusing merely on how the victors oppress the vanquished, Dick transposes the absurdities and petty quarrels of twentieth century life onto an America colonized by Japan, a world in which two cultures, fundamentally at odds, must coexist without being able to fully understand each other.

I recently had the pleasure of reading Charles Farrell’s Low(life): A Memoir of Jazz, Fight-Fixing and the Mob. If you’re into true crime, boxing, jazz, or just good writing from a sharp-minded observer who has led an interesting life, check it out. Follow the link below to read my full review on Medium.

Book Review of “(Low)Life: A Memoir of Jazz, Fight-Fixing and the Mob"

Alexander Starritt’s We Germans tells the story of a small group of German soldiers retreating from the disastrous invasion of Russia in 1944. The German soldiers on the Eastern front know the war is lost. Pursued by the ruthless Red Army, they’ve retreated a thousand kilometers on foot and are crossing the Polish countryside they destroyed years earlier, when they looked and felt invincible.

The main character, Meissner, was drafted into the war at age nineteen as an artilleryman. He spent four years fighting in Russia before the tide turned decisively against the Germans. Retreating and in defeat, he begins to contemplate the atrocities of the war in which he’s participated.