When a brilliant author turns his hand to genre fiction, the result is often disappointing at best. The writer’s motivation may have been simply to make a quick buck, and that inevitably shows. But when every ounce of the writer’s talent is poured into the work, treating a mystery or a...
Read MoreWhen a book comes along with rave reviews and a prestigious award attached, I tend to feel I’m almost obligated to love it. But that didn’t work in this case. (In reality, it’s never a sure thing.) The French thriller, Alex, by Pierre Lemaitre, tells the tale in alternating...
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It’s difficult to imagine any city in North America that has experienced such a short and intense period of tumult and terror as did San Francisco from the mid-60s to the early 1980s. The Summer of Love. The racist Zebra killings. The People’s Temple mass suicide. The assassination of...
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I sometimes find books with one-word titles frustrating. In the course of reading them, I may find myself wondering how on earth the title connects to the story. Sometimes I can’t figure it out at all. Unseen is one of those titles that continues to puzzle me. Despite this minor flaw (if in...
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In 1965, just twenty years after the collapse of the Nazi regime, I visited Auschwitz. Even though that was nearly half a century ago, my memory of that shattering experience remains vivid: the mountains of human hair, eyeglasses, and gold dental fillings; the photographs of skeletal prisoners...
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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.