Mysteries & Thrillers Archives | Mal Warwick Blog on Books

MORE THAN 1,500 BOOK REVIEWS

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a few days ago

A standalone mystery from Tana French set in Ireland’s rural West

American-Irish actor and author Tana French gained prominence in literary circles with the six bestselling Dublin Murder Squad novels. Justly so. The books display the magical charm of her writing and the scope of her understanding of human psychology. But formulas sometimes lose their charm for both writers and readers, and it seems that’s the […]

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last week

John Grisham revisits Clanton, Mississippi in a gripping courtroom thriller

Since A Time to Kill was published in 1989, John Grisham has sold more than 300 million books and become one of the world’s wealthiest authors. Nine of his books—all bestsellers—have been adapted into films. A Time for Mercy, his 42nd novel, brings back to life Mississippi attorney Jake Brigance and the other leading characters […]

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a couple of weeks ago

The collapse of the USSR is underway in this detective novel

Why did the Soviet Union implode and the Berlin Wall crumble overnight? For many conservative Americans, the answer is Ronald Reagan. But level-headed analysts have debunked that thesis. In fact, the roots of the crisis that came to a head in the fall of the USSR lay deep in Soviet society. And Edgar Award-winning mystery […]

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3 weeks ago

A superb Cold War thriller from Paul Vidich

Even if you’re a fan of espionage fiction, you may not yet be familiar with the name Paul Vidich. You should be. Vidich writes spy novels in the grand tradition of Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, and John le Carré. His historical espionage tales rank with those of his better-known contemporaries, Alan Furst and Joseph Kanon. […]

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last month

It looks like science fiction but it’s not

You’d think that a novel centered on cutting-edge research on the frontiers of particle physics would fit easily into the genre of science fiction, and hard science fiction at that. After all, it’s about the work in a lab at Dartmouth College by a man who appears to be on the path to a Nobel […]

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last month

Expatriates observe Haiti’s reign of terror in a classic Graham Greene novel

The term reign of terror has rarely been more apt than when it was applied to the regime of Haiti’s François “Papa Doc” Duvalier (1907-71). The former country doctor was elected President of Haiti in 1957 on a black nationalist platform but turned tyrannical the following year after thwarting a military coup. He ruled until […]

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last month

A diplomatic thriller set in a country where more died than in the Holocaust

At times it seems that Africa is at war with itself. The list of border conflicts, civil wars, insurrections, and terrorist attacks in recent decades seems endless. They’re too numerous to mention, but three stand out for their scope and ferocity: the Rwanda genocide, Darfur, and the unending wars in the Democratic Republic of the […]

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last month

A former British intelligence officer imagines a female Russian superspy

Reading the sequel to a successful novel is always a chancy proposition. Writers and publishers know it as “the curse of the second novel.” It’s one of those rules of thumb that may hold true much less often than believed. But it does seem valid in the case of Moscow Sting, the second of four […]

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last month

About that billionaire who committed suicide in prison

Any veteran reader of mysteries has long since learned that something or someone randomly mentioned out of place early in a story will invariably turn out to be very, very important. Alfred Hitchcock called it a MacGuffin. So, your antennae are likely to wiggle frantically when you stumble upon a casual reference to that American […]

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a couple of months ago

Jimmy Breslin’s hilarious classic novel about the Mafia

So, these wise guys, see, you’ve got a difference of opinion. On one side you’ve got Anthony Pastrumo, Sr., “one of the five big bosses of the Mafia gangsters in New York.” He’s known as “‘Baccala’ by his friends and associates, all of whom share a common feeling toward Baccala. They are scared to death […]

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