Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Killing it with his First Book - Lee Child Floors Readers

Music in novels is something I've begun to look forwards to with joy. Now, there are various functions for music that goes with reading. One can read whilst listening to music and what could be better than to read to music mentioned in a book?

Lee Child has a relationship with music as you can see below: 


To give you a bit of background, Lee Child writes the adventures of Jack Reacher. Ex of the US army. Military Police, in fact. He's huge, and now walks the length and breadth of the US of A. Every novel begins with trouble he encounters on these road trips. And then he has his unique way and philosophy so that he has no credit card and owns no more than the clothes on his back and a folding toothbrush. 

Lee Child is British. Not American. And he's written some 24 Jack Reacher novels. After I'd read a few, breaking my self imposed rule of never reading more than one of any author, I decided to try and follow the chronology but then which one? The order in which they were written or the chronology of the Jack Reacher story? 

Killing Floor is Lee's first book. And an award winner. Naturally. 

Reacher is in a town looking for a Blues musician. He's arrested for murder. And somewhere during the long wait in the police station he listens to music in his head. There's fan tribute to that at The music in my head. 



Besides the internal music there's the radio:
I fiddled with the radio built into the nightstand thing. Came up with a station playing something halfway decent. Sounded like they were playing through an early Canned Heat album. Bouncy and sunny and just right for a bright empty morning.

More on the radio:

I fiddled with the radio dial and heard Albert King tell me if it wasn't for bad luck, he wouldn't have no luck at all. 
And back to inside Reacher's head:
I was leaning up in my corner running a Bobby Bland number through my head. An old favorite. It was cranked up real loud. “Further On Up the Road.” Bobby Bland sings it in G major. That key gives it a strange, sunny, cheerful cast. Takes out the spiteful sting from the lyric. Makes it a lament, a prediction, a consolation. Makes it do what the blues is supposed to do. The relaxed G major misting it almost into sweetness. Not vicious.
But then I saw the fat police chief walk by. Morrison, on his way past the cells, toward the big office in back. Just in time for the start of the third verse. I crunched the song down into E flat. A dark and menacing key. The real blues key. I deleted the amiable Bobby Bland. I needed a harder voice. Something much more vicious. Musical, but a real cigarettes-and-whiskey rasp. Maybe Wild Child Butler. Someone you wouldn’t want to mess with. I wound the level in my head up higher, for the part about reaping what you sow, further on up the road.
I started dreaming about John Lee Hooker. In the old days, before he got famous again. He had an old steel-strung guitar, played it sitting on a little stool.
To calm down, I ran music through my head. The chorus in “Smokestack Lightning.” The Howling Wolf version puts a wonderful strangled cry on the end of the first line. They say you need to ride the rails for a while to understand the traveling blues. They’re wrong. To understand the traveling blues you need to be locked down somewhere. In a cell. Or in the army. Someplace where you’re caged. Someplace where smokestack lightning looks like a faraway beacon of impossible freedom. I lay there with my coat as a pillow and listened to the music in my head. At the end of the third chorus, I fell asleep.

So, if you've not read a Jack Reacher yet, begin now. After all, you have your playlist handy!


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