'Person of Interest '(Thursdays, 9 p.m. EDT) is one of the few TV series I like. The show instills a deliciously intricate sense of creeping paranoia in the viewer. By the finale of Season One there were so many conspiracies and wheels within wheels that I--a hardened mystery thriller fiction addict--felt like I was getting a really good mental workout with the show. . . .
While literally thousands of fictional characters have fallen by the wayside over the past century, Sherlock Holmes remains imperishable. Well, why, exactly? Author Michael Dirda explains the appeal of genre fiction in his new book, "On Conan Doyle, or, The Whole Art of Storytelling." Dirda's attractive little volume manages to range far beyond Sherlock Holmes or even Conan Doyle. The book is a paean to imaginative literature and the profound impact it has over the span of readers' lives, from childhood into older age. TAC's…
“It snowed all day and all night. On the 22nd it was still snowing. Snowballs flew, snowmen grew. Sceptical children regained their belief in fairyland, and sour adults felt like Santa Claus, buying more presents than they had ever intended. In the evening the voice of the announcer, traveling through endless white ether, informed the millions that more snow was coming…. More snow came. It floated down from its limitless source like a vast extinguisher. Sweepers, eager for their harvest, waited in vain for the…
To be sure, Ian Rankin, the leading figure in the so-called “Tartan Noir” movement, has been a powerful force in moving British detective fiction away from its cozy, genteel, village and country house gentry stereotype, but in his own day Freeman Wills Crofts did much the same thing, albeit more gently, decades earlier. Both series are well worth reading and discussing today—the two detectives share a defining quality, one that readers will find bracing in an era seen as rife with immorality and excessive concentration…
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