Good Book or Lunch with Gang?

I missed lunch with my gang today. I got caught up reading "The Lonely Silver Rain" by John D. McDonald. I was enjoying myself too much to break away. I had been reading "The Embezzler" by James Mallahan Cain. It had promised to be a good story, after all this is same guy who wrote "Double Indemnity", which is a famous movie, and as I recall, a pretty good story. But "The Embezzler" has been slow going. I wish I could tell what the problem was. It might be that the guy is captivated by the girl. I do not know if you could call it love, but he has fallen for her and will do anything for her, even stuff that is patently a bad idea. Or maybe the story line does not ring true. Everything else about the story is told with a certain detachment, but then he does something out of character and his actions get blamed on his infatuation with the girl. It is all being told in the past tense, by an older and perhaps wiser protagonist, and maybe that is the problem. The passion that would impel him to engage in those foolish actions is missing. Just saying that someone is passionate about something is not convincing enough to make it believable.

"The Lonely Silver Rain" was written in 1985 and touches on the cocaine trade in South Florida. There are a couple of very good passages that explain the situation a lot better than you will ever get from popular media. I have a few things to say about this myself, but it will have to wait for another post.