I read Blood by Choice – the third in Rob Pierce’s “Dust” Trilogy – the same way I read the first installment: within about 20 hours and almost entirely in one sitting.Man, I just love Rob’s books. I love his writing.What is it? Why such love? Why do I find the books so special?I’m tempted to be clever and poetic about, but I’d never match Rob’s cleverness and poetry, so maybe I’ll just ramble aimlessly about it and say whatever comes to mind.Okay.I love the world he creates. The crime world. The criminals. The streets, the bars (so many bars), the pizza slice places, the parking garages, the town homes, condos, and houses.It’s a tough, brutal criminal world, you know? Everyone has their place in the hierarchy of the various criminals in this Dust world of mostly Oakland and Berkeley and the gangs of Keene and Lee and their various associates and soldiers and the other gang leader “down south.”You know who is who and who has power and who is tough and who isn’t so tough by how they talk to each other, how they treat each other. And this talking and this treatment seems so real and it is certainly completely real in this world of Dust – though I have no idea if there are actually any people in the East Bay at all like these criminals in Rob’s books, but that doesn’t matter because if all makes perfect sense in the world he creates.So, anyway, in this world that Rob creates with sex and drugs and bank robberies and people who sell information and people who kill for fun and/or profit and people who hand the envelope from the boss with the info on who to kill and the women who stalk the bars at night looking to get laid by a dangerous man or to just get drunk and maybe get laid by someone/anyone and on and on and on – in this world there is a constant running poetic commentary that is Rob’s voice. And this voice sometimes is a character’s thought, sometimes it’s a character’s actual dialogue, and sometimes, it’s just the narrator stating some simple fact in a simple perfect way. And this voice, this constant running poetic commentary isn’t just about crime or criminals or the East Bay or Dust or any of the characters – though it is about all that of course – the voice is really all of us, how all us think and talk and look at the world that constantly comes at us every day and that we constantly come at. The only difference is that it’s criminals talking about crime – but it’s the same thing, I think.And don’t get me wrong, sometimes the style, the wonder of what Rob is doing isn’t all that poetic or the universal – it’s just very cool. Like when a killer asks a boss for ‘work’ he says “Give me jobs no one else wants” and the boss answers “I got guys who do those.” Ha! Right? The book is full of that kind of thing.And then there is just the vicarious thrill that all lovers of crime fiction love – the thrill of entering the criminal world for a while. A world with less rules, a world of excitement, a world where people often do get revenge against those who wronged them, a world where people hook-up in a bar with direct language and appeal and end up hooking up minutes later, a world where some people get away with acting on their worst impulses over and over and over – until they don’t. Rob Pierce creates this vicarious thrill for me better than any other person writing crime novels.Okay, so, I guess I didn’t talk about the actual book so much. But, after that, do I really have to? It’s the third book about a bank robber/collection specialist/heavy drinker/compulsive womanizer named Dustin or Dust. It’s great. It’s a great story well written. Buy it read it.