47. The Lovely Wicked Rain by Scott William Carter

#3 Garrison Gage
listened to on Audible
2014 Flying Raven Press
285 pgs.
Adult murder mystery
Finished My 31, 2018
Goodreads rating:  4.16 - 610 ratings
My rating: 4.5 This was a particularly good one, or maybe it was just the mood I was in, but I really liked it a lot.
Setting:

First line/s:  "It was raining.  It was a hard rain.  It was not a drizzle or a mist, so often the case on the Oregon coast, but a loud, powerful, torrential downpour -- rattling the windows that circled the little room, crackling on the aluminum roof a few feet above their heads, rising and falling with the moaning of the wind but never subsiding for long."

My comments:  Excellently plotted mystery with great description and some really funny banter from the protagonist.  Characters were really well drawn and the setting was a huge part of the story.  All the components worked together so well, including an outstanding reader, making a truly mesmerizing story for a lot of hours on the road.  This was thrived in the series and in a way I feel like they're getting even better, though it's been a bit since I read the other two, so this might be just as good - I remember liking them quite well - Garrison Gage, the protagonist, being the hardest person to get to know.  Second only to Virgil Flowers, I think!

Goodreads synopsis:  They find him on the beach, shooting bullets into the sand.
          His name? Jeremiah Cooper, the son of the bullheaded high school football coach. Slight of build, soft of voice, he's got all kinds of torment lurking behind his eyes. But despite Garrison Gage's best efforts, he can't pull the kid out of his shell. Then someone turns up dead at the local community college, and Jeremiah's fragile world shatters.
          Add a crisis in Gage's good friend's life, an ongoing feud with his adopted daughter about her life choices, and a hauntingly beautiful FBI agent with secrets of her own, and it's a lot more drama than a half-retired private investigator with a bum knee wanted. Whatever happened to quiet rainy nights sipping bourbon, watching the sun sink beneath the waves on the Oregon coast, and trying to think of a ten-letter word that means grumpy and glad about it?
          But before Gage can even write the word curmudgeon, he's pulled deeper into Jeremiah's world--a world of sex, secrets, and a sadistic evil that preys on human weakness.

MOVIE - Don Jon

R (1:30)

Wide release 9/27/2013

Viewed at El Con, alone

RT Critic: 83  Audience: 70

Cag: 5/Loved it - I've changed it from 4.5/Liked it a lot (or even more than a lot)

Written and directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Relativity Media

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johanssen, Julianne Moore

My comments:  Yup, I liked this one a lot.  I'm writing this a few weeks after seeing the movie, and I still remember details...details of the relationship between the two protagonists, the weekly Sunday dinners around the dinner table when Jon visits his parents and younger sister, and the relationship that you watch grow between Gordon-Levitt's character and Julianne Moore's character.  Even the fact that Jon only attends night classes because his girlfriend "requires" him to and he is somewhat successful adds to the dimension of his personality.  I love the way the story...and the character's individual stories....unfolded.  This was a really good one. And although pornography is the startling centerpiece of the movie, when I think back on what really made me think had nothing to do with that.....

Rotten Tomatoes:  Jon Martello (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a strong, handsome, good old fashioned guy. His buddies call him Don Jon due to his ability to "pull" a different woman every weekend, but even the finest fling doesn't compare to the bliss he finds alone in front of the computer watching pornography. Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johansson) is a bright, beautiful, good old fashioned girl. Raised on romantic Hollywood movies, she's determined to find her Prince Charming and ride off into the sunset. Wrestling with good old fashioned expectations of the opposite sex, Jon and Barbara struggle against a media culture full of false fantasies to try and find true intimacy in this unexpected comedy written and directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.