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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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Erez Brown mostly deals with divorces. He’s what you might call a low-rent PI, running a firm that consists only of himself, a secretary, and an apprentice. And, unsurprisingly, there’s a sameness to the cases that come to him. He knows exactly what...
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Estimated reading time: 4 minutes When Martin Cruz Smith published the first of the Arkady Renko detective novels in 1981, no one could foresee that the series would still be going strong more than forty years later. But so it is. The resilient Russian detective has survived a decade of tussles...
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Estimated reading time: 4 minutes Sara Paretsky was a pioneer in portraying women in detective fiction as strong and capable. In 1982, when she published Indemnity Only, the first of the V. I. Warshawski novels, her feisty protagonist was a revelation to many readers. Her battles against crime and...
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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Early in 1964 two aging men lie dead of gunshots in the back. They’re sprawled on the pavement in an alley in a seedy uptown neighborhood. One is J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary Director of the FBI. The other is Assistant Director Clyde A. Tolson,...
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Kwei Quartey is a retired physician with the mind and eye of an anthropologist. In two series of detective novels set in his native Ghana, he portrays crime investigations against the backdrop of Ghana’s rich ancient culture and its often dysfunctional society. Revealing entrenched...
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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Just imagine: three enormous bombs explode almost simultaneously, destroying the three largest American-owned hotels on Singapore’s busiest thoroughfare. The heart of the city now lies in ruins. And Inspector Samuel Tay of the Singapore police lies in the...
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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes So, here’s Jackson, handing over a stack of money. “Hank was going to turn Jackson’s hundred and fifty ten-dollar bills into a hundred and fifty hundred-dollar bills.” He was “the only man in the world who possessed the chemically treated...
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Estimated reading time: 6 minutes Inspector Samuel Tay has been with the Singapore police for nearly twenty years, much of that time as a homicide detective in the elite Special Investigations Section of CID. But he is squeamish and can’t stand the sight of mangled flesh and blood. So, when...
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Blood and tears. Violence and mayhem. Love and hate. These were the rocks upon which the South was built. They were the foundation upon which Charon County stood.” So writes S. A. Cosby at the outset of his disquieting new crime novel, All the Sinners Bleed. This is Southern noir at its...
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On radio, then on television, we had Dragnet and a scattering of semi-documentary films such as The Naked City as well as a handful of novels that celebrated police operations. But on the printed page police procedurals didn’t come of age until the publication in 1956 of Cop Hater, the first...
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Have you ever wondered why the heroes in detective stories never seem to get any older? You might know perfectly well that the author is, say, 87 and going strong, but his alter ego hasn’t aged a day since he first saw the light of day in print half a century ago. Aging detectives? With the...
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On a single night, two young men of color die at the hands of white cops in Denver and the adjoining town of Blackwater Falls. One, Mateo Ruiz, a Latino, was studying toward a degree as a metallurgic and materials engineer at the Colorado School of Mines. The other, Duante Young, African American,...
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From 1981 to 2009, the late Stuart Kaminsky wrote a series of sixteen Russian mystery novels centered on Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov and his team in the Soviet, and later Russian, Ministry of Internal Affairs. The novels trace the evolution of the country’s history from the final...
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Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Science Fiction Monday includes my latest SF 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.
Science Fiction Monday includes my latest SF 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.