Cheesy pleasures and odd lots!

SomeGuyInVirginia: A classic, and to some a religious text (and you know who you are.)

bluepiano: Sorry, none of my entries meets the 250-page spec, but this one's full-fat cheese: lurid, many dead, death by swine, violent titled people in the mysterious Baltic, general preposterousness. But fun to read. Once.

Stepn: Harris often gets unfairly damned simply for being reliably entertaining. I wish they`d give him a 007 novel to write.

SomeGuyInVirginia: As good as the hype.

SomeGuyInVirginia: Children shouldn't play with matches...especially this little girl.

SomeGuyInVirginia: Welcome, fiend. Enter freely and of your own free will!

SomeGuyInVirginia: Was everybody in this town crazy?

Stepn: High jinks in the Highlands.

bluepiano: Fairly interesting but silly & shallow. Another protagonist who's much too fond of mummy.

bluepiano: What could be more novel than death by VHS tape?

SomeGuyInVirginia: When Amanda was a little girl she had an imaginary friend. Now her friend is back...and there's hell to pay!

SomeGuyInVirginia: You'll wish you hadn't!

SomeGuyInVirginia: Simply wonderful!

SomeGuyInVirginia: If you read only one Vatican vampire assassin book this year, make it this one.

Stepn: The first appearance of series villain Obadiah Hakeswill. Yes operator...Obadiah...H-A-K-E-S-W-I-L-L...

ManWithAnAgenda: Absolute delight. If "satisfying" is the missing ingredient to anyone's cheese, this should do the trick.

craso: A smart little girl trying to live her way in a world full of meddling adults.

SomeGuyInVirginia: Houdini and Doyle can't stop the killing...once upon a midnight dreary!

SomeGuyInVirginia: I'm a fan of the Carson Ryder series.

craso: An ancient Indian shaman grows and is born from a woman's arm.

bluepiano: Would-be conman not half so clever as he thinks. It doesn't really hang together but it holds one's interest and protagonist's feelings about his mother would in most cultures be frowned upon.

Stepn: It goes like a train. As indeed does the Assistant Chief Constable`s wife...

ManWithAnAgenda: There needs to be a Stine on this list, and this one's a peach.

bluepiano: Rather fun but plot & settings wholly OTT. Bonus: mad scientist.

bluepiano: Death by blood-sucking (bonus: vampires), distressed damsel imprisoned in mysterious eastern Europe, and preposterous ending. Perfect flu-reading.

Stepn: Jacki and Jill!!! Kill me next!!!

craso: Inside the mind of the last man on earth...maybe.

SomeGuyInVirginia: Who's killing her little darling's rivals?

Stepn: A long sexy thriller with everything but the wicker man.

SomeGuyInVirginia: Johannes is one doctor you don't want to call.

Stepn: Volume one...`nuff said.

SomeGuyInVirginia: I think I just read a YA novel.

bluepiano: Wildly over-long for this list & Stevens isn't by any means a mediocre writer--but what seems to be attempt at a character study is over-colourful & over-inclusive. To be fair, a spate of killings near the end that seems thoroughly OTT is much like one of Ted Bundy's final crimes though the book would have been written first.

SomeGuyInVirginia: Well, really, it's perfect.

Stepn: The real climax to a great saga.

bluepiano: To me, rather a bore & not agreeable/satisfying but I'm swimming against the tide. Pulp, in excelsis. Melodrama, ditto. Bonus: incest.

SomeGuyInVirginia: Theirs was a strange friendship, but will it be enough to help them fight evil?

Stepn: Guess what`s in the New York sewers? Stephen King liked it too.

SomeGuyInVirginia: Someone's going to die at this prep school...and someone's going to kill!

Stepn: Cat bit shrazy.

Stepn: A Disneyland of danger!

SomeGuyInVirginia: He didn't always use his powers for good. He couldn't!

SomeGuyInVirginia: A dismembered corpse in a butcher's shop window. It's like Christmas came early.

Stepn: Droll and tough and weird.

Stepn: His only great book?

SomeGuyInVirginia: Starts as a screwball comedy, ends...badly.

Stepn: N3`s wildest ever mission .

SomeGuyInVirginia: Proof positive that when the grid fails, human sacrifice isn't far behind.

Stepn: My favourite novel from my favourite series.

SomeGuyInVirginia: The title alone gets this on a lot of my lists.

SomeGuyInVirginia: Geriatric revenge killings.

Stepn: Tough and funny and fast.

SomeGuyInVirginia: A cri de coeur from the gritty 70s.

Stepn: The fall of an Empire... as it might have been described by Robert Bloch.

Stepn: As smooth as dark chocolate, salted with human blood.

SomeGuyInVirginia: Death in Venice was murder most foul!

Stepn: I`m trying to slot this just below the Thomas Sterling...

Stepn: No list is complete without Modesty Blaise.

SomeGuyInVirginia: Nicely paired with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Stepn: Impressively vulgar.

SomeGuyInVirginia: Too well written to be anything other than extremely disturbing.

Stepn: The very definition of cheese.

Stepn: His most purely entertaining work.

SomeGuyInVirginia: Wow, I love love love this series.

Stepn: Properly mendacious.

SomeGuyInVirginia: They were just innocent children. Weren't they?

Stepn: Just randytastic!

Stepn: `ammer `orrer innit?

SomeGuyInVirginia: Dan Kavanaugh=Julian Barnes.

SomeGuyInVirginia: This world is hard on small things.

Stepn: More `ammer `orrer. Innit guv`nor.

SomeGuyInVirginia: Demonic possession in a small college town. Need I say more?

SomeGuyInVirginia: 30s noir masterpiece!

SomeGuyInVirginia: A Brit nasty.

Stepn: Could be tighter, but a good entry in my favourite series of the new century.

SomeGuyInVirginia: Read anything by Westlake.

Stepn: See Ottoman (above) for details

SomeGuyInVirginia: She was hunted by a psycho!

SomeGuyInVirginia: Some people just suck!

SomeGuyInVirginia: The psychic wasn't able to foresee...disaster!

SomeGuyInVirginia: Even the New York Review of Books reissued it. Feel good about slumming through this psycho carnival.

SomeGuyInVirginia: THE perfect beach book.

SomeGuyInVirginia: Stalked by demons with days to live.

SomeGuyInVirginia: A psychiatrist locked inside a cell with a psycho killer. Can he get out...in time?

SomeGuyInVirginia: Bewitched in the real world.

SomeGuyInVirginia: A cheese classic!

SomeGuyInVirginia: Even nice old ladies can be killers!

SomeGuyInVirginia: One long dick joke.

SomeGuyInVirginia: What's creepier than murder in an asylum for the criminally insane? Set it in Germany!

SomeGuyInVirginia: He was a SS whore but he was supposed to be dead. Wasn't he?

SomeGuyInVirginia: Like herding all-powerful kittens.

SomeGuyInVirginia: The anti-cosy.

SomeGuyInVirginia: Bonnie cleans up after violent crimes, but things are about to get messy!

SomeGuyInVirginia: Just because she's dead doesn't mean she isn't hot.

SomeGuyInVirginia: No joke!

SomeGuyInVirginia: Jack and Jill ran up the hill. Pray they don't find you!

SomeGuyInVirginia: Snowbound with a psychotic serial killer, but that's not even the worst of it!