Carl Hallman shows up on Lew Archer’s doorstep in the middle of the night. The frantic young man has just escaped from the state mental hospital nearby. He says he left because his brother was trying to keep him locked up even though he was close to being discharged. Carl wants Archer to...
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Carl Opgard is the King of Os, a village of a thousand souls in the Norwegian mountains. He owns the Michelin-starred hotel and spa that dominates the community. And his older brother, Roy, isn’t doing so badly, either. He owns the gas station and convenience store, an auto-repair garage,...
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Version 1.0.0 Start with a devout Buddhist detective in Bangkok named Sonchai Jitpleecheep. He’s half-American, half-Thai, the son of a prostitute now retired to running a red light district bordello. Add a rich and famous Hollywood director murdered in a perverted and mysterious manner....
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The title of this African whodunit implies it. The cover illustration for my Kindle edition of Death by His Grace underlines the hint. And there’s a lot of evidence to suggest it. But is it true? Is multimillionaire Bishop Clem Howard-Mills of the Power of God Ministry Church the heartless...
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Jonathan Kellerman’s series of Alex Delaware mysteries debuted in 1985. Book number 40 appeared in 2025, making the series one of the longest-running in the genre—and no wonder. His protagonist, Dr. Alex Delaware, is a child psychologist like the author himself, privy to a lifetime of case...
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What’s your experience when you re-read a novel you loved when you were much younger? Mine is mixed. As often as not, I discover either that the book reflects concerns of mine in a long-past life or that the style comes across as archaic. Very few stories hold up well a century later—even...
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Kwei Quartey has shined a bright light on life in contemporary Ghana in the ten mysteries and thrillers he has published to date. In his tenth novel, The Whitewashed Tombs, he writes about the persecution of people who identify as LGBTQ, pointing the finger at a massive nationwide campaign for...
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Nearly 70 years ago, the celebrated author of the bestselling novel The Blackboard Jungle launched America’s first series of realistic police procedurals. Evan Hunter, writing in 1956 under the pseudonym Ed McBain, published the first of what became a series of 52 short crime novels. He...
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Ever since Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist BJP party took the reins of India’s central government in 2014, the country has grabbed headlines everywhere. For emerging as the world’s most populous nation. For claiming the fifth spot among the world’s largest economies. And...
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Some misinformed copywriter produced promotional copy for this novel comparing it to the gentle tales of the #1 Ladies Detective Agency. But it’s nothing of the sort. Shamini Flint’s clever cop, Inspector Singh of the Singapore Police Force, comes across as a comical figure, to be...
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Ed McBain’s long-running series of police procedurals, published from 1956 to 2005, influenced two generations of mystery writers. The cops of the 87th Precinct in the fictional city of Isola pursued their investigations using the most sophisticated forensic technology available at the time....
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Right from the beginning, the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency had been about helping people with the problems in their lives.” And there’s no more succinct statement of the agency’s mission statement. Mma Precious Ramotswe, the founder, and Mma Grace Makutsi, her would-be partner,...
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The 20 detective novels listed below may not be the 20 “best” detective novels, even by my uniquely idiosyncratic criteria. I’d read a lot of work in the genre even before I began writing these reviews in January 2010—and there are tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of detective novels...
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Most Americans have read about “the Russian Mafia.” But organized crime in Russia bears no resemblance to the Mafia as we have come to know it through the Godfather and The Sopranos. Instead, there are mafias. And there are the former Communist apparatchiks dominating the Kremlin, many...
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Novelists have been turning out stories about crime since the early 1800s, and private detectives entered into the picture not long after. But police investigators didn’t gain a firm hold in the mystery and suspense genre until well into the twentieth century. And it wasn’t until the...
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Sasha Johnson is a trainee doctor walking home from the hospital when someone brushes past her. She stumbles, and falls dead to the ground, the victim of a knife wound. And tony Russell Square, the site of the murder, is on Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid’s patch. He rushes to the...
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Shortly before the turn of the twenty-first century, Chinese interests began investing in the mining industry in Zambia, Tanzania, and Mozambique. Soon, Chinese money and people started showing up wherever in the continent minerals were abundant. And in Ghana the mineral in question was gold....
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For the fourth year in a row, Chicago is America’s most corrupt city, and Illinois is the third-most corrupt state, according to a new report from the University of Illinois at Chicago.” This, from a 2023 article online from Chicago’s PBS station, WTTW. “’Political and...
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Corruption plagues all authoritarian systems no matter how idealistic their origins may be. The absence of checks on the supreme ruler radiates downward throughout the system. Opportunities open for officials high and low to abuse their authority for personal gain. And by the 1990s that pattern...
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As a history buff, I turn to historical fiction with relish. And even though I’m familiar with Soviet and later Russian history, I find that the Stuart Kaminsky mystery novels invariably bring me new information and new insight. His series of Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov police procedurals...
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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.