Over the course of my life four new Popes have been installed by the Catholic Church. Robert Harris’ thriller, Conclave, which was recently released as a motion picture, is about the next election. Set a few years in the future, when a man closely resembling Pope Francis has either retired...
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Cate Castle can’t understand how her brother died. He couldn’t possibly have committed suicide, as both the Egyptian government and Eric’s employer insist. So, against everyone’s advice, she flies to Cairo to investigate. And as she pokes into Polestar, the arms dealer he...
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On June 29, 1995, the Sampoong Department Store in Seoul, South Korea, suddenly collapsed, the result of structural failure. Five hundred people died, and 900 more suffered injuries. It was the largest peacetime disaster in the history of the country. The details in Hannah Michell’s debut...
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Gravity opens in the Galápagos Rift nineteen thousand feet below the surface of the South Pacific. And it reaches a shattering conclusion two hundred twenty miles above the Earth. The connection between these two events, two years apart, lies at the heart of the mystery in this pulse-pounding...
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People as diverse as Bill Gates, Greta Thunberg, and Paul Hawken, among many others, have advanced scores of ideas about how to address climate change. But is there a single idea that holds the greatest promise of quick, large-scale action? In author Tom Rosenstiel’s fast-moving political...
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On May 26, 2014, Narendra Modi assumed office as Prime Minister, heading up a new right wing Indian government. The 64-year-old bachelor represented a sea change in the country’s politics, shifting India from a secular democracy to an increasingly autocratic Hindu nationalist nation. But none of...
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Readers may know Aya de León as the author of the four books published to date in her Justice Hustlers series of thrillers. Four have appeared to date among her eleven novels. But all her work so far shares an outspoken progressive perspective and highlights an activist approach to today’s...
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Check this out: Two fugitives on the run, intent on the biggest score they’ve ever pulled off. A Mexican cartel. A mammoth Chinese state-owned company. The world’s second largest airport under construction. And the rarest gems ever discovered. They all figure in Daniel Nieh’s...
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A review of The Fear Index, by Robert Harris. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). Set in Geneva, this taut thriller takes the reader into the world of a brilliant American scientist, Dr. Alexander Hoffman, who has developed mathetical formulas that make billions in profits for his hedge fund.
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Ben Collier, born Reuben Kohler, is a German-American Jew raised in the film industry by his famous director father. He leaves Germany in the days immediately following the end of the Second World War in Europe to visit his brother Danny, who lies in a coma in a Hollywood hospital. There, he finds...
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One of the greatest crimes committed by the fascist regime of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco was to steal babies from leftist parents and sell them to affluent conservative families. And the practice went on even long after Franco’s death in 1975. At least 50,000 babies were trafficked...
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Finding the truth behind a smokescreen of lies in Washington DC isn’t just a challenge for crack investigator Peter Rena. It’s downright dangerous. But when the President of the United States asks you to take on a job, you don’t say no, no matter what your misgivings. And this...
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Ken Follett traced the construction of a great medieval cathedral from the 11th to the 16th centuries in his monumental, four-book Kingsbridge series. In the Century Trilogy, he turned to the history of the two 20th-century world wars and the Depression between them. Now he explores the question...
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Secretary of State Ellen Adams loathes her boss, and the feeling is mutual. She’s convinced he had named her to the post only to find a way to destroy her reputation. And when he torpedoes a vital diplomatic mission to Korea that is intensely embarrassing to her, she knows she’s right....
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Lacy Stolz of the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct first made her appearance five years ago in The Whistler. Then, she brought down a sitting judge and the vicious criminals he was in bed with. She almost died as a result. Now, Lacy is on the verge of leaving her job after twelve mostly...
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He’s a private detective of a sort but is never called that. Some refer to him as a fixer or a problem-solver. But Peter Rena and his partner, Randi Brooks, don’t think of themselves as problem-solvers. ‘They never fixed problems—they just ended them.” Their consulting...
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The publisher and critics alike have chosen to compare this novel to the Lisbeth Salander stories of Stieg Larsson. But I see no valid comparison. The protagonist, Sophie Brinkmann, is a widowed nurse with a fifteen-year-old son. She could hardly be any different from the diminutive, ass-kicking...
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Writing in the Washington Post (May 16, 2021), Maureen Corrigan says The Plot is “the best thriller of the year (so far).” And according to the book jacket, Stephen King calls it “insanely readable.” I wonder why. True, the novel is unusually well written. The plot is...
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Most Americans today associate international terrorism with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their many radical Islamist offspring and imitators. Sadly, though, these groups are just the latest examples of a perverted indulgence in violence that has cropped up all over the world since the 1960s. The...
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Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is one of the most highly praised novels of the past year. It’s the fiction debut of Deepa Anappara, an Indian journalist transposed to London. It seems likely that in other hands, the story she tells in this novel might well have wandered off into...
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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.