Month: July 2023

Fiction: Somebody’s Fool
by Richard Russo

July 26, 2023 J. Kingston Pierce 0

North Bath, the fictional upstate New York setting of Richard Russo’s “Fool” trilogy, seems to be finally and firmly on the skids in the brand-new novel Somebody’s Fool (Knopf). The town is slated for annexation by a wealthier, more liberal neighbor, Schuyler Springs. Even the local police station is being shuttered, its longtime chief, Douglas Raymer, surplussed to make room for his Black ex-employee and sometime-girlfriend, Charice Bond, at the helm of the Schuyler PD. […]

Crime Fiction: Unnatural Ends
by Christopher Huang

July 24, 2023 J. Kingston Pierce 0

Christopher Huang’s twisty new whodunit, Unnatural Ends (Inkshares), should make you feel better about your own upbringing, no matter how wretched it seemed. It’s 1921, and Sir Lawrence Linwood has been bludgeoned to death in the study of his Yorkshire manse, likely by someone he knew. His three adopted, adult, and successful children—Alan, Roger, and Caroline—return home for the funeral, only to learn of a peculiar clause in their pater’s will: the one of them […]