Throughout the twentieth century, the city of Berkeley has been a breeding ground of invention. Even before World War I, there was August Vollmer, who served as police chief from 1909 to 1931 and was widely regarded for transforming police work from thuggery to a modern profession. Over the years...
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Dystopian fiction can be unsettling to read. Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy is doubly so. You might expect any trilogy to start at Point A (in the first book), traverse Point B (in the second), and come to a climax at Point C (in the final book). Not so the concluding novel in the...
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Imagine an espionage novel starring Ian Fleming, Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Alan Turing, Josef Stalin, Lavrenti Beria, Churchill’s daughter and daughter-in-law, one of Roosevelt’s sons, and a passel of other recognizable characters thrown together at a fateful time...
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Estimated reading time: 3 minutes For extended periods over the past several decades, I’ve been reading mysteries by the carload. I thought that by now I’d be reasonably familiar with the best writers in the genre. Somehow, I missed Ross Thomas, who penned twenty-three crime novels...
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If you think you have a strong sense of how espionage was conducted during the Cold War, you’re probably wrong. Histories, and the crowded shelves of spy novels set during the era, offer a cursory and misleading view of the day-to-day reality as it was lived by the men and women who...
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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.