About fiction
Lee would have to be mad to send his divisions across that field. And Hunt was sure he would do it. When I finished reading Ralph Peters’ Civil War novel Cain at Gettysburg, I almost checked my clothing for blood spatter. Up until now Michael Shaara’s epic novel The Killer Angels has been considered not only the best Gettysburg novel ever written, but the best possible Gettysburg novel. It’s been a long time since I read Shaara’s book, but I’m fairly certain that, for all…
“I just don’t know why you can’t have it both ways. You know, give unbridled effort in your defense but be conscientious about your work. Try for the best outcome.” “The best outcome for who? Your client? Society? Or for yourself? Your responsibility is to your client and the law, Bullocks. That’s it.” I gave her a long stare before continuing. “Don’t go growing a conscience on me,” I said. “I’ve been down that road. It doesn’t lead you to anything good.” I’ve said before…
Lars Walker, a regular contributor to this publication, just happens to be a highly talented and widely admired historical novelist. If you haven't read any of his books, you can remedy that quite easily tomorrow (April 16), for amazon.com is making his Hailstone Mountain Kindle edition free for one day. . . .
“I’m jealous,” she said, pretending not to be. “You could have had room service with me.” She said that flatly, without stressing the innuendo – but the “nuendo” was in there, all right. “Kill your darlings” is writers’ jargon for one of the hardest lessons of the craft – that the particular passage you worked hardest on and are proudest of is very likely the one you need most to cut. Max Allan Collins’ early novel Kill Your Darlings is another of his Mallory books,…
I wonder if the recent popularity surge of Scandinavian detective novels influenced Michael Connelly to add a Scandinavian element to his latest Harry Bosch novel, The Black Box. It doesn’t really matter. The Bosch series continues very strong, and I think even Scandinavians will like it for its own sake. When Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch, Connelly’s most famous detective, first appeared in a novel, he was dealing with the chaos of the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. This story takes us back to that surreal…
The comic book industry is in a tough place. Congress is getting set to examine the problem of comic books and how they defile the moral fabric of America’s youth. Angry parenting groups are burning comic books, and the industry is losing money. Enter Jack Starr, the Starr syndicate’s troubleshooter. Whenever trouble rears its ugly head, Jack has to go and take care of it, and Dr. Frederick’s passionate anti-comic-books crusade certainly qualifies. This forms the plot of Max Allan Collins’ excellent new mystery, 'Seduction…
"... the miracle of Fátima and my Cuban experiences inspired 'The Tragedy of Fidel Castro'."
See, I’d seen that look before. That wrinkled nose, that laughing sparkle in the eyes. In the movies, evil guys laugh out loud. Bwa-ha-ha. Or they chuckle suavely, swirling their drinks in their glasses. But this is the real deal, the real look most monsters have. A sort of cute, dainty, delicate recoil from speaking the thing out loud. The forbidden joke of it. Are we being naughty now? I know you’re used to seeing me review Andrew Klavan’s books, and I know you’ve come…
"As these cases often do, 'The Bughouse Affair' begins as a relatively simple matter. Sabina Carpenter is hired to catch a ruthless lady pickpocket. Meanwhile, John Quincannon is hired to tackle a house burglar who seems to be working his way down an insurance company’s list. These cases have no apparent connection to each other, but after some investigation, the detectives realize that there is a connection between the two crimes. But almost on cue, a bizarre locked-room murder takes place, and the detectives are…
Marsali Taylor is really quite a promising talent. She throws plot threads wildly in the wind as though they were confetti, and then navigates the reader through the pea-souper she’s created with almost alarming ease. It’s all very well-done, with clues fairly planted for the reader to spot. And I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t spot the culprit. I was convinced we were going to get ending X, and all the time I failed to realize that was what the author wanted me to…
One thing that can be said for Dean Koontz is that he likes to mix it up. His characters may tend to look similar (as what author’s don’t?), but he likes to experiment with his stories. 77 Shadow Street, I think, is unusual among his books in featuring quite a large cast of characters and constantly jumping the point of view from one to another. I wish I could say I thought the experiment was a great success, but I wouldn’t call it a total…
John Sandford is a darned good mystery/thriller writer, and more than a one-note performer. While the Lucas Davenport “Prey” novels that made his fortune continue to draw readers, he’s added a second, related series character, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator Virgil Flowers, who looks like a surfer boy, practices journalism as a sideline, and is pretty successful with the ladies (which explains the obscene nickname his colleagues have given him, which I won’t share here). The Flowers books have a different flavor from the…
It’s a matter of record that my mother’s mother grew up in the logging and mining town of Hurley, Wisconsin, generally considered the wickedest town in the north. So when I learned that a novel had been written (at least in part) about Hurley (fictionally renamed “Iron Ridge”) by an estimable American novelist, I had to read the book. Come and Get It is one of Edna Ferber’s big American books. In novels like Showboat, So Big, and Cimarron, she attempted to capture the essence…
The Western mystery story is not as rare a phenomenon as you might think. The conventions of the mystery transfer pretty well to the Wild West, and many famous mystery writers cranked out westerns as well, back in the days when you could make a living writing for the pulps. Contemporary author James D. Best carries on this tradition with his Steve Dancy stories, adding freshness to the enterprise by adding an interest in business. We often forget that cowboys shared a country and a…
James Lilieks's "Graveyard Special" is a funny mystery novel with a weak mystery but cracking good comedy. Lileks is writing an elegy here, for a time and a place and old friends as the '60s ethos reached its end. I can understand that. Although I’m older than he is, one of the book’s characters is correct when he says that the fall of 1980 was really the end of the ‘60s. So the U of M he knew is very much the U I knew…
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