Down for the count

Sick in bed yesterday with the creeping crud, I thought (foggily), "Hey, why not add to my day with Cormac McCarthy's bleak, post-apocalyptic novel The Road plus a book about how forensic science helps nail hideous criminals exhibiting the worst brutality imaginable?"

As I dipped in and out of sleep all day, it's a wonder my uplifting reading did not generate some 4-star nightmares.

Still, McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel (which has just come out as a movie) does a masterful job of creating a miserable, dead, scorched-earth fictional world that seeps into your imagination. So does the sense of menace and cold and starvation constantly facing a father and his little boy who are trying to make it to a safer place. Talk about atmospheric. It made me want to burrow a little farther into my thick cocoon of blankets.

The other book, Every Contact Leaves a Trace: Crime Scene Experts Talk About Their Work from Discovery Through Verdict, by Connie Fletcher, turned out to be a real find for writers, I think, and I'll explain why in next week's blog. Right now, it's time to catch up on some work.

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