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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

Porfiry Rostnikov’s last case

Porfiry Rostnikov’s last case

Before his death in 2009, the prolific detective novelist Stuart Kaminsky wrote 16 police procedurals featuring a Moscow investigator named Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov. The books span the years 1981 to 2008. They encompass the final years of Communist rule and the first two...

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NONFICTION

20 top nonfiction books about World War II

20 top nonfiction books about World War II

If you've been reading my reviews for very long, you're aware that the World War II era holds special fascination for me. This might have something to do with the fact that I was born then—in fact, about six months before the USA entered the war. Or maybe it's just because it...

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Popular Fiction

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!

 

Cover image of "Spies of the Balkans,"

Alan Furst explores espionage and the Holocaust in the Balkans

In the long, tense years of the Cold War, spy stories and films about the rivalry between East and West appeared in such profusion that the genre degenerated into self-parody, eventually giving birth to bawdy satires. There were exceptions, of course, notably in the work of John le Carré, Graham...
Cover image of "A Plague of Secrets" by John Lescroart, a novel about laws selectively enforced

Laws selectively enforced in John Lescroart’s courtroom drama

Over the past three decades, bestselling San Francisco author John Lescroart has been writing novels about the dark side of human character. He's produced more than two dozen. His most popular series features former cop, bartender, and trial attorney Dismas Hardy; Dismas's best friend, Abe...
Cover image of "The Soul of Viktor Tronko," a novel about the mole in the CIA

Digging down deep to find the mole in the CIA

At the time, few if any inside the Agency would have called him a "mole." That term didn't enter wide use until the publication in 1974 of John le Carré's novel, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. But for a decade in the 1960s and 70s, the CIA's counterintelligence chief, James Jesus Angleton, turned the...
Reviewing Ross Thomas, including The Fools in Town Are on Our Side

Reviewing Ross Thomas – thrillers that stand the test of time

Ross Thomas (1926-95) wrote twenty-five novels between 1966 and 1994, five of them under the pseudonym Oliver Bleeck. Thus, he turned to writing fiction only at the age of forty after a career in journalism, public relations, and politics both in the United States and overseas....
In Darwin's Cipher, genetic research goes awry.

Genetic research goes awry in this chilling science fiction novel

Ever since the mid-twentieth century geneticists and molecular biologists have been mucking around in the human genetic code. Medical researchers have been seeking ways to cure diseases or prevent them entirely. Others have been toying with techniques to heighten critical elements in our...
Uncanny Valley is a Silicon Valley memoir.

An insightful Silicon Valley memoir

Memoirs and autobiographies are often about score-settling. But that's not the case with Uncanny Valley, Anna Wiener's insightful and revealing account of her years working for three tech startups in Silicon Valley. You might expect to know at least the names of the companies where she worked,...
Cover image of "The Preacher" by Camilla Lackberg, an example of Swedish noir

A great example of Swedish noir

It's a sweltering summer on the coast of Sweden, and Erica Falck is suffering mightily under the weight and anxiety of eight months of pregnancy. Her partner, Detective Patrik Hedström, has taken a vacation in hopes of supporting her as best he can at home. Then Patrik is called in to head up a...
Cover image of "The List," a novella in Mick Herron's Slough House series

Bumbling spies again in Mick Herron’s Slough House series

MI5 officer John Bachelor has already been put out to pasture, in a manner of speaking. For some time now, it's been his job to track several former foreign assets who have retired to England. Then one of them, Dieter Hess, suddenly dies—and John has a problem. A big problem. Diana Taverner, a...

Another excellent crime novel from the lead writer on “The Wire”

Few if any other American writers can capture the rhythms and speech patterns of inner-city streets as well as George Pelecanos. Best known as the lead writer and sometime producer on the celebrated HBO series "The Wire" and later on its successor, "Treme," Pelecanos has also written 21 novels....
Cover image of "Blindsighted" by Karin Slaughter, one of the Grant County thrillers

Karin Slaughter’s well-crafted series of Grant County thrillers

Karin Slaughter's first novel in the Grant County series, Blindsighted, was published in almost 30 languages and made the Crime Writers' Association's Dagger Award shortlist for "Best Thriller Debut" of 2001. In addition to the six-book Grant County series of...

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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