Haven't Done THAT in a While

Insomnia last night. THAT I do all the time. But . . . the sequence of events. You see, I fell asleep--I was due to call my best friend around 10:00 p.m., but . . . fell asleep around 9:00 (and now I have to call Pammie today so she does not think I am a hapless b*tch). When I woke up it was 1:00 a.m. My body, of course, now believed that I had certainly had enough sleep. So I was wide awake.

I decided to read. I do that all the time. It was WHAT I decided to read. And so, in a couple of hours, I read an entire book. And it wasn't physics. It wasn't nonfiction or history. It was a novel. In fact, it was a SPY novel (for the record, I think I have only read one or two in my entire life). And it was awesome!

For me, it was fantastic. I have no plans--now or ever--to write a spy novel. So it was very fun to scamper through a book in a couple of hours, and just enjoy a fast-paced story. Nothing to compare to my own writing. Just story.

The book was The Second Perimeter by Mike Lawson. And he has a NEW book coming out in June. Actually, I think they classify his books as thrillers (I don't know if the first book had spies). But here's what I loved about this book.

• The main character is a smart guy, but he is a fixer because he can't get a legit job in the legal field because his dad was way up the mob food chain. He happens to be the fixer for the Speaker of the House.
• His best friend is a BRILLIANT lesbian. A former spy. Whose lover is a classical musician. There are a lot of books with secondary gay characters--but usually men, not lesbians. Emma is well-drawn, we get into her POV, and she is just absolutely the smartest person in the novel--and any room she walks into. I like that. A lot.
• The author doles out little tidbits of back story in single sentences. I STILL (and maybe it's because I didn't read the first book) don't know a lot about DeMarco. I know ENOUGH. See . . . that is what I think makes this guy a fantastic writer. I know enough.
• Description. Brilliant writer again. In one scene, a widow is kind of plump and plain, but he writes (paraphrasing here) that she had enormous red-framed glasses that DeMarco says the widow's best friend probably talked her into because the glasses made her look so young and hip. The glasses didn't. I love that. In ONE detail, for this minor, one-scene character, I got a glimpse of her to totally fix her in my mind for the scene. (And MY best friend would NEVER let me get glasses like that . . . she tells it to me straight.)
• Both villains were incredibly well-drawn and I had a tremendous amount of conflicted sympathy for them.
• It focused on human rights abuses and didn't let the U.S. off the hook even though the writer used to work for the Navy, and I was horrifically frightened when I started that maybe he would be all "rah-rah" for torture of enemy spies and the CIA, and then I would have to hurl the book out the window. But then I remembered who GAVE me the book. My mom. And she shares my politics. Oh, I am 187 miles to the left of her, but we are both left of center. Yet the writer still was clear the world is a dangerous place.

If you are a regular blog reader, you know I cheer my friends on when they have new releases, but I do not read a lot of commercial fiction, largely because I like to rest the fiction side of my brain and read about physics. But I loved this book.

And here's the thing.

I read the book in three hours. Around 3:15 a.m., I felt like I COULD have gone to sleep. Could have. But damn, there was no way I was going to sleep without reading the ending. It was--quite literally--a book I could not put down. A page turner. And THAT is writing 101, gang. I can't imagine an editor NOT buying this book. I actually plan to write to Lawson to tell him how much I enjoyed it. I'd LOVE to know if the book sold quickly or at auction.

What was the last book that made YOU stay up to 4:00 a.m.?