"Don't Mess With Travis", a first novel by Bob Smiley

Those of you with right leaning political views, like the great majority of my Danville Facebook friends, should be attracted to this just published novel.  Hey, it even has endorsements by someone from the Cato Institute and from Steve Forbes on the cover.

The writer began his writing career doing research for William Buckley and has had other writing projects including a book about following Tiger Wood's tournament rounds, in their entirety, for the 2008 season.

There is plenty of political opinion intertwined with political history,  much of it based in Texas.  Much more than expected, there is a solid dose of humor on many pages, caricatures of political types of all persuasions.

While I certainly don't pray at the altar of Cato, the book was much more entertaining than was expected.  It was one of those pick-ups at the library that was viewed as something that might be put down next to my reading chair after a few chapters.  While some on the right might get overly aroused by the book, to this reader it was just entertaining and at times informative.

Of course, like many novels it was not especially plausible.


Two other recently published books worth mentioning are a new book of old and new short stories by Don DeLillo, literate to a fault and thoughtful as well.  I passed on some of the earlier stories but those written in recent years were easily worth the time.  The other that I liked was "The Cut" by George Pelecanos.  This is in the beat-em up, shoot-em up, tough guy crime category, but if you want to go there it's one to choose.  Pelecanos was an Emmy nominated writer for the HBO series "The Wire" and now is a writer for "Treme".