For most Americans, World War II was all about the war in the Pacific and what took place after the Allied invasions of Italy and northern France. But it was, of course, a global war. It lasted at least from 1937, when Japan invaded China, to 1945, when the Red Army occupied Berlin. And a great...
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James McBride won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2013 for The Good Lord Bird. It’s an often-hilarious novel about the abolitionist John Brown’s ill-conceived attack on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. That act is often cited as a triggering event for the...
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British American author Jacqueline Winspear has gained wide readership for the seventeen novels in her Maisie Dobbs series. The books follow the evolving career of a young woman raised in poverty in London through two world wars and the troubled times between. A nurse at the front in the first...
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A teaser on the cover of the edition I read promises a tale of “a priceless manuscript, a missing scholar, and a trail of riddles.” And so it is. The ciphers, codes, and wordplay in the second entry in Vaseem Khan’s Malabar House series call to mind Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci...
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Mary Pat Fennessy lives on the wrong side of the tracks. In South Boston, or “Southie” as the locals call it, a heavily Irish American neighborhood marred by crumbling real estate, miles of mean streets, and scores of bars crammed to overflowing. It’s 1974, and a Federal judge...
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On the globe, Sri Lanka is that small teardrop off the southeast coast of India, and today it’s the source of about one-tenth of the world’s tea. But ninety years ago, as the Depression ravaged the world’s economy, the island was called Ceylon—and it produced about half of all...
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Every mystery novel possesses characters, a plot, and a setting—but one of those three elements tends to be dominant in each. For example, most long-running series of detective novels, such as those of Jo Nesbø or Michael Connelly, tend to be character-driven. We read those stories primarily...
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Read the first several chapters of Sujata Massey’s engrossing fourth entry in her series about the first woman lawyer in Bombay, and you’ll get the impression that the book is all about a falling-out between two sisters and the mistreatment of a young woman servant. But don’t be...
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Brutal, face-to-face warfare rages across the English countryside in 1141, as the ninth of the Cadfael Chronicles mysteries opens. But the life-or-death struggle over the throne between King Stephen and the Empress Maud has reached a climax. At Lincoln, in the northeast, Maud’s forces have...
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Now, here’s a historical murder mystery about a murder that never happened. Leave it to John Banville to turn the old trope on its head and produce a compelling novel of suspense in which no one dies until the end. After all, the man won the Booker Award, and he is nothing if not clever....
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Reading the Cadfael Chronicles is one of the best ways I’ve found to open a window on life in medieval Europe. Set on the English-Welsh border in the middle of the twelfth century, these clever little mysteries illuminate life within a Benedictine monastery, in the surrounding town, and in...
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World War II and the Cold War have generated an inordinate share of the spy fiction that has appeared in recent years. The court of Queen Elizabeth I seems to be running third in the espionage sweepstakes. No surprise there. The island was in turmoil, rocked by forces set in motion by the...
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The French Resistance dominates accounts written in English about irregular warfare in World War II. But the most effective Resistance efforts may well have been in Poland, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union. And there was anti-Nazi activity everywhere in occupied Europe. Italy was no different....
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What we’ve got here is an effort to launch a new Australian private eye series. Fair enough. It’s set in Sydney in 1946. Billie Walker is now the proprietor of B. Walker Private Inquiries, established by her late father. Billie had reported from Europe during World War II. She married...
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Late in the 14th century, England continued to suffer from the factionalism and political instability that had bedeviled the country for centuries. The Black Death was a century in the past, and the population had begun to grow again. The earliest glimmers of the Reformation were introducing...
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Early in 1942, American soldiers and airmen began pouring into England in what Britons termed the Friendly Invasion. In a charming cozy mystery, Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders, Tessa Arlen dramatizes the impact of the Yank invasion on the tiny village of Little Buffenden. While bombs fall...
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Some historical mysteries use history as a stage set, with the events and fashions of the time as no more than exotic stage sets. In others, the action serves as a gateway to the history of the period. Vaseem Khan’s intriguing debut, Midnight at Malabar House, is among the latter. The novel...
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On Nov. 13, 1909, the collapse of the Cherry Mine in Cherry, Illinois, killed 259 boys and men. Mariah Fredericks builds her suspenseful mystery tale, A Death of No Importance, around a fictionalized version of this late-Gilded Age disaster. The novel is both social history and a murder story....
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Indian society was in an uproar in the 1920s. Seething. Tumultuous. Explosive. All the usual adjectives apply. Relations between those of competing religions were at the breaking point. And they promised to set off an uncontrollable conflagration when, under pressure from Mohandas Gandhi and the...
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In the previous entries in Ellis Peters’ Cadfael Chronicles, much of the focus lies on the contest between King Stephen (1096-1154) and his cousin Empress Maud (1102-67) over the English crown. The warring cousins crowd the background. But the seventh book, The Sanctuary Sparrow, resembles a...
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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.