2008年11月27日木曜日

キングが2008年に読んだ本で最高の作品は?

Signs of Life 2008: The Best Books We Read This Year でスティーヴン・キングは、"Robert Goddard"/ ロバート・ゴダードの著作を 2008年に読んだ本の中で最高の作品として挙げています。
Stephen King
Past Caring by Robert Goddard
[St. Martin’s Press, 1987]
The best books—yes, books—I’ve read this year are the mystery/thriller/suspense novels of a British writer named Robert Goddard. I happened on him by accident; a handful of his books have now been issued in America, but I had to get most of them direct from Britain, where he’s a bestseller. Goddard has written at an amazing pace—17 or 18 novels in as many years—but his writing is sharp and sometimes poetic. The stories, which usually center on well-kept secrets from the early part of the 20th century (in Closed Circle, the secret is a group of well-heeled British manufacturers who caused World War I) are amazing tricks of conjury. Here are surprises that really surprise. The protagonists (the books are stand-alones) are decent fellows out of their league who mostly—but not always—find a way to muddle through. These are authentic stay-up-late-to-finish stories, and there doesn’t seem to be a bad one in the bunch. The place to start is with Goddard’s first: Past Caring.
ロバート・ゴダードはイギリスのベストセラー作家。2ヶ月前にはこちらもイギリスの作家であるケイト・アトキンソンの本を読んでいたし(参考)、イギリス作家にはまっているんでしょうか。

Past Caring (邦題「千尋の闇」)から読み始めることを推薦しています。

創元推理文庫『千尋の闇』に付けられた若島正氏の解説

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