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MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

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For a century, the spy next door has been a reality

For a century, the spy next door has been a reality

Every self-respecting spy service equips agents with false credentials and dispatches them to conduct espionage illegally in other nations. But one country has been doing so for far longer and on a dramatically bigger scale than all the others. And the practice started more...

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Popular Fiction

Laughs in sci-fi? P. G. Wodehouse did humor better.

Laughs in sci-fi? P. G. Wodehouse did humor better.

The legendary English humorist Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975), known to readers as P. G., wrote about 100 books in a career that spanned much of the 20th century. His output included 71 novels, 24 collections of short stories, 42 plays, three memoirs, and a lot...

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Explore My “BEST OF the category” selections

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE BOOK?

When people ask me that question, I never know what to say. In a lifetime of reading, I’ve read many thousands of books. And I’ve reviewed well over 2,000 of them on this site. Picking just one as a “favorite,” or even a handful of them, makes no sense to me.

The problem is, I read for many different reasons. Perhaps you do, too. And I read many different sorts of books. Mysteries and thrillers. Popular fiction, especially historical fiction. Science fiction.

And nonfiction, history in particular. You’ll find hundreds of reviews in every one of those categories on this site.

Look to the right for a rotating random selection culled from throughout this site.

Happy reading!

 

Disappearing Earth is set in remote Kamchatka.

A mystery set in a remote corner of Siberia

I'll say this about Disappearing Earth: I have never before read a novel set in Kamchatka. I doubt you have either. And I suspect you might be having trouble even locating Kamchatka on the globe. It's not exactly a popular destination for Europeans or Americans (or anyone else, for that matter)....
Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions

The lady cop who fascinated America a century ago

This is not a detective story, despite the fact that it's one in a series of historical novels about New Jersey's first female deputy sheriff (and apparently the first anywhere to carry a gun). Nor is it a thriller or even especially suspenseful. Instead, Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions is a tale...
Cover image of "Gold of Our Fathers," a novel about gold mining in Ghana

Chinese illegally mine gold in Ghana

Shortly before the turn of the twenty-first century, Chinese interests began investing in the mining industry in Zambia, Tanzania, and Mozambique. Soon, Chinese money and people started showing up wherever in the continent minerals were abundant. And in Ghana the mineral in question was gold....
Cover image of "Bomber," a novel about a single RAF Bomber Command mission

An intensive look a single RAF Bomber Command mission in World War II

Malcolm Gladwell is right. In his introduction to the 2023 reissue of Bomber, Len Deighton's portrayal of a single RAF Bomber Command mission in World War II, he refers to the book as "one of the greatest British anti-war novels ever written." I might go further. Surely, Bomber ranks with classics...
A great sci-fi novel: The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi

Another great sci-fi novel from Paolo Bacigalupi

Marketed as a book for young readers, but science fiction at its best for readers of any age. A thrilling, post-apocalyptic story.

Sex, drugs, and revolution: Berkeley in the 70s

What has Erik Tarloff got that I haven't got? After all, we're both, let's say, not getting any younger; both long-time Berkeley residents; both Jewish; and both writers. OK, scratch that last one: we're not in the same league. Tarloff has written numerous TV scripts for M*A*S*H, All in the...
The Salzburg Connection was written by the queen of spy writers.

Nazis, Communists, and Western spies clash in this classic spy novel

If the essence of drama is human conflict, then the business of espionage is tailor-made for fiction. Forgetting, of course, that most spies insist their work, like that of soldiers and police, consists of long stretches of boredom interspersed with brief and very rarely violent action. And, in...
Cover image of "Even Dogs in the Wild," a novel from Ian Rankin

From Ian Rankin: John Rebus, Malcolm Fox, and the city of Edinburgh

What can a writer do when the star of his long-running series ages into retirement? Henning Mankell took a cue from nature to solve that problem: Kurt Wallender fell prey to Alzheimer's disease and proceeded to die a quiet death after twelve books, as did the series of detective novels featuring...
Cover image of "An Echo of Murder" by Anne Perry, a novel about ritual murder among immigrants

Ritual murder and Hungarian émigrés in 1870 London

English novelist Anne Perry writes historical crime fiction. In abundance. Thirty-two books to date in the Thomas Pitt series, set in England in the period beginning in 1881. Five in a World War I series. And twenty-three in a series of novels featuring William Monk, who serves as Commander of the...
Cover image of "In the Time of Five Pumpkins," a hopeful picture of Africa's future

A charming portrait of an African country that breaks the mold

The South African nation of Botswana attracts wildlife tourists and diamond-buyers but little other attention from the outside world. It's a big place, nearly as large as the state of Texas, but sparsely populated with only about 2.5 million inhabitants. That makes it the size of Greater Portland,...

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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