Here’s a story about power and the violence that sustains it. Violence erupts on the page in Jordan Harper’s thriller, Everybody Knows, from its lede (“Los Angeles burns. Some sicko is torching homeless camps.”) to its inevitable conclusion. And the woman at the center of...
Read More
Six months after fanatical Iranian students seized the US Embassy in Tehran, holding 52 Americans hostage, another group invaded the Iranian Embassy in London. This kicked off a tense six-day standoff between London police and hostage-takers that dominated the news in Britain and the Continent....
Read More
Western readers of suspense fiction look to the work of 19th century authors Wilkie Collins and Edgar Allen Poe for the origins of the detective novel. But in fact there are antecedents in China preceding the two men’s work by hundreds of years. Ming Dynasty stories appeared based on...
Read More
A review of Victory Square, by Olen Steinhauer. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). The conclusion of Steinhauer’s five-novel cycle of thrillers set in Eastern Europe from 1948 to 1990, from the imposition of Communism to its fall.
Read More
After 17 years as an officer in the CIA’s Clandestine Service, Amanda Cole chafes under diplomatic cover in Rome as the economic attaché. She’s bored. And her boss, three decades her senior, frustrates her every attempt to take the initiative. Then a nervous Russian walk-in describes a...
Read More
Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review,
with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review,
with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.
Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.