No sleep, and The Fugitive Pigeon
Jul. 29th, 2003 07:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jcfialaHad the hardest time sleeping last night. Eventually got up and had half a dose of sleeping pills to push me over the edge into slumberland, and about twenty minutes after that I finally fell asleep. This morning I played 'hit the snooze' for a while, and then Tammy and I agreed to go excersize tomorrow morning.
However, all of that tossing and turning did succeed in something: I've got a rough idea on how to get my CoC campaign back on track after the Night of Blood a few weeks ago. Last week my players showed up with a hodge-podge of PCs, from a burglar to a female Japanese Martial Artist. We played with them, but there was a fair bit of aimlessness to it.
Am reading 'The Fugitive Pideon', an old classic Donald Westlake caper novel that I found in Black & Read for $2. As with all good Westlake, the idea is simple: siftless slacker (although they called them bums back in 1965 when this was written) Charlie Poole has a simple job for the 'organization' - he runs a bar that doesn't get much business but which launders a little money on the side. Additionally, sometimes people drop packages off and pick them up. One day, two people from the 'organization' stop by at closing time to kill him. He has no idea - he figures it's a mistake... but until he figures out what's going on, he's on the run to the best of his ability.
The character kinda reminds me of the main character from 'The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything' - clueless in the world, but learning in a sink-or-swim situation. Charlie's not as completely a nerd as 'Gold Watch', but he's pretty clueless about the realities of his job, and to a degree that works for him - he goes and tries to talk to the local mob boss in person because he doesn't *know* that you just *don't do that*... and he's right. After all, they're going to kill him anyway, aren't they?
It's not laugh-out-loud funny like some Westlake books can be, but it's a comedy of underground manners, and it's got humor in it... and you can always chuckle at the 1965 slang.
Well, time for work. Lemmie know if you want to borrow the book when I'm done with it.
However, all of that tossing and turning did succeed in something: I've got a rough idea on how to get my CoC campaign back on track after the Night of Blood a few weeks ago. Last week my players showed up with a hodge-podge of PCs, from a burglar to a female Japanese Martial Artist. We played with them, but there was a fair bit of aimlessness to it.
Am reading 'The Fugitive Pideon', an old classic Donald Westlake caper novel that I found in Black & Read for $2. As with all good Westlake, the idea is simple: siftless slacker (although they called them bums back in 1965 when this was written) Charlie Poole has a simple job for the 'organization' - he runs a bar that doesn't get much business but which launders a little money on the side. Additionally, sometimes people drop packages off and pick them up. One day, two people from the 'organization' stop by at closing time to kill him. He has no idea - he figures it's a mistake... but until he figures out what's going on, he's on the run to the best of his ability.
The character kinda reminds me of the main character from 'The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything' - clueless in the world, but learning in a sink-or-swim situation. Charlie's not as completely a nerd as 'Gold Watch', but he's pretty clueless about the realities of his job, and to a degree that works for him - he goes and tries to talk to the local mob boss in person because he doesn't *know* that you just *don't do that*... and he's right. After all, they're going to kill him anyway, aren't they?
It's not laugh-out-loud funny like some Westlake books can be, but it's a comedy of underground manners, and it's got humor in it... and you can always chuckle at the 1965 slang.
Well, time for work. Lemmie know if you want to borrow the book when I'm done with it.
