A review of To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918, by Adam Hochschild. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). In this brilliant study of World War I, Adam Hochschild explores the historical forces at work when the 19th Century so tragically encountered the 20th. In that first truly global conflict, the military traditions of the past collided with the realities of life in an industrial age, with top British commanders stubbornly defending the lance, the sword, and the horse in favor of the machine gun and ordering millions of men to certain death against impenetrable barriers of barbed wire.

Military historians point to Britain's Special Air Service (SAS) as the first modern Special Forces. Formed in Egypt in 1941 by David Stirling as a paratroop unit, the SAS later spawned the Special Boat Service (SBS) for maritime operations. Both organizations sometimes traded personnel with the...

The key to writing a great psychological thriller is to build slowly toward a big surprise, leaving clues along the way but without revealing what's really going on. Gillian Flynn famously achieved this with Gone Girl, just as Alfred Hitchcock had done so many times on film decades before her....

Denise Mina's new thriller, The Long Drop, was a Washington Post Book of the Year for 2017. The book is based on contemporaneous accounts and two later books about the trial of Peter Manuel, who came to be known as "Scotland's first serial killer." Manuel was a career criminal who had come to the...

On the first page of the latest Virgil Flowers novel we learn that David Birkmann is a killer. "He'd gotten away with it, he thought." Naturally, since we also know that Virgil will be called on to investigate the murder, we're perfectly well aware that David most certainly will not get away with...

Scotland Yard has received several reports that documents containing secret government telegrams have turned up at several locations around London, balled up as though casually tossed away. Special Constable Paul Deemer, assigned to the case, sets out to learn who is responsible. This is a serious...

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Stuart Kaminsky won the Edgar for Best Novel for A Cold Red Sunrise, and it's easy to see why. The four books that precede it in his long-running series featuring Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov are all excellent. But he outdoes himself with this fascinating...

A review of Believing the Lie, by Elizabeth George. @@@@ (4 out of 5). When Inspector Lynley is despatched to Cumbria to look into the murder of the nephew of a rich and powerful man, you might expect a straightforward tale of crime and punishment. What you’ll get instead is a complex tale of intrigue, adultery, family secrets, and betrayal.

A review of Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin III. @@@@ (4 out of 5). An in-depth study of the revolutionary African-American organization that flourished from 1967 to 1971.

On May 10, 1940, two historic events grabbed the world's attention. Hitler's Panzer armies broke through the Belgian and Dutch frontiers. And King George VI asked Winston Churchill to form a new government. To tell the story of the eighty days that followed, historian John Lukacs frames the...