I've been a big fan of American "detective" or "crime" stories since I discovered Raymond Chandler when I was in high school. Lines like "I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun." Appealed to me then and now. I read Dashiell Hammett's Thin Man , Maltese Falcon et al. Really was entranced by James Cain.

So when I found a book titled The Best American Noir of the Century edited by James Ellroy (author of The Black Dahlia)the other day I snapped it up. What a great bunch of stories!

Also I've started re-reading Alan Furst's stories. He writes of the period in Europe as Nazi Germany is experiencing early success in it's program to dominate Europe. These are stories of people resisting the Nazi expansion and are quite good. Eleven books in the series so far. As near as I can tell they are all "stand alone" stories that can be read in any order. They are unified by a single place, the Brasserie Heiniger, a Paris restaurant. Several characters are in different novels but there is no central protagonist.