A decade ago Anglo-Indian author Abir Mukherjee broke into a second career as a crime novelist after 20 years working as an accountant. His first effort, A Rising Man, appeared in 2016. An historical detective novel featuring a pair of Calcutta cops shortly after World War I, it won a coveted...
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For years, Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Bureau had been widely celebrated as a “rising cadre” in the Communist Party. He was a man on his way up, rumored to soon be tapped as the Bureau’s Party Secretary. But his success has undone him. Chen has exposed too...
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Ariel Pryce awakens to a sunny day in Lisbon only to find her new husband, John Wright, missing. After hours waiting for him to turn up, it’s clear something’s amiss. There’s no message, and no sign of him whatsoever. Fearing he’s fallen victim to an accident or been...
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From 1964 to 1985 a World War II veteran officer and Harvard MBA named John D. MacDonald published a series of 21 remarkable short crime novels centered on a “Florida beach bum” named Travis McGee. Travis, of course, was MacDonald’s alter ego, with an incisive mind, a head for...
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Here’s a story that will awaken every cynical bone in your body that resonates to the waves of political corruption we see every day in the news. In Girls, Crimes, and the Ruling Body, veteran political operative Barry R. Ziman has written a novel for our time. You have only to glance at the...
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As a rule, I’m no fan of serial killer stories. The phenomenon is rare and heavily overused by authors of mystery novels. But author Patrice McDonough brings a new perspective to the genre with her riveting Victorian police procedural, Murder by Lamplight. It’s the first of a series of...
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Three big things happened in America in March 1933. On the fourth day of the month, Franklin Delano Roosevelt took the oath of office as President. He immediately declared a national banking holiday, temporarily closing every bank in the US and freezing financial transactions. And on March 10, a...
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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 tumultuous decades that...
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When Tony Hillerman died at the age of 83 in 2008, he left behind an extensive literary legacy that included the 18 books in his award-series of Navajo detective novels. The Leaphorn and Chee books won him plaudits throughout the world and made him a wealthy man. Five years later, his daughter,...
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Leonard Summers; his wife, Martha; and son, Bernard, are moving into a remote cabin in Minnesota. But his name isn’t Leonard Summers. It’s Leonid Sokolov. And “he was in some kind of enforcement branch of the Russian spy agency,” Lucas Davenport explains to fellow US...
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Here’s a story that only a gifted writer could successfully pull off. The key figures could hardly figure as principals in anyone else’s novels. The rootless young men in a depressed small town who’ve formed a would-be right-wing militia. Four Russian biological warfare...
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High up on an isolated lane near the border of Beverly Hills a maintenance man encounters four dead bodies in a limousine. It’s parked outside a crumbling old mansion often used for exclusive parties. His call to the police brings homicide Detective Lieutenant Milo Sturgis to the scene. He...
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The American motion picture industry, which we know as “Hollywood,” began in the early 1910s when filmmakers migrated to California. By 1915, they had established a global cinema hub. But filmmaking grew early in India, too. The first Hndi-language feature film produced there,...
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A review of The Bridge of Sighs, by Olen Steinhauer. It’s a deeply satisfying novel that matches complex characters with a credible story in a well-researched setting.
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He calls himself a beach bum. Travis McGee lives on a houseboat in Fort Lauderdale and only works when he’s running out of money. Then he becomes a “salvage consultant,” helping someone who’s been robbed blind. He’ll steal back the money or valuables—for half the...
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The independence of Chief Inspector Rostnikov’s cozy little squad is on the line. “The Office of Special Investigations was at the very bottom of the Moscow police force. The Office had been created solely as a receptacle in which to dump unsolvable and politically sensitive cases...
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Through the rapidly industrializing nations of eastern and southern Asia, air pollution has become a major issue. For example, air pollution in India is estimated to kill some two million people a year. It’s most intense in Delhi, the capital. And when Xi Jinping took the reins of the...
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If you’re fond of reading medical thrillers, you’ve probably come across the names of the leading practitioners of the craft. Tess Gerritsen, for example, author of The Surgeon. Michael Crichton (The Andromeda Strain). Patricia Cornwell, author of the Kay Scarpetta series....
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Veterans of intelligence agencies and the special forces crowd the ranks of spy novelists. Some have rightfully been hailed as masters of the craft—John le Carré, for example. Or, more recently, David McCloskey. Others have written worthy and suspenseful novels that illuminate the world of...
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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...
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...includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.
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.