Rook is based on the true story of Al Nussbaum. To his unsuspecting wife, Lolly, Al is a loving, chess playing, family man. To J. Edgar Hoover, he is the most cunning fugitive alive. Al is the mastermind behind a string of east coast robberies that has stumped law enforcement. After his partner, one-eyed Bobby Wilcoxson, kills a bank guard and wounds a New York City patrolman, Al is identified as one of the robbers […]
I’m a huge fan of crime novels set in Europe during World War II. Although the deaths of Philip Kerr and, more recently, J. Robert Janes have lessened the supply of high-quality stories in that field, British author Simon Scarrow has stepped up with Blackout (Kensington), the top-notch opening installment in a Berlin-set series featuring Criminal Inspector Horst Schenke of the Kriminalpolizei. Like Kerr’s protagonist, Bernie Gunther, Schenke steers clear of Nazi affiliations. That makes […]
Searching for the truth can be murder… A dark, gripping debut crime novel set in gritty 1970s London. – Readers of Eva Dolan, J.M. Dalgliesh and Joseph Knox should enjoy Below the Strandline. Jerry runs away from a chequered past to start a new life in the city. He wants to be in control of his own destiny, to live by his own rules and, above all, to protect the girl he is falling in […]
Let’s get one thing straight first: This is not “a Philip Marlowe novel.” Yes, that claim is made on the cover; and yes, there is a Los Angeles private eye in these pages bearing said moniker. But Joe Ide’s The Goodbye Coast (Mulholland) isn’t a Marlowe yarn in the same way as some other previous works of note. There is no intimate, first-person narration in these pages, and no indelible metaphors. Instead, this book imagines […]
Just yesterday morning, I posted — in The Rap Sheet — my selections of a dozen favorite crime, mystery, and thriller works from 2021. But those were certainly not all of the genre books I enjoyed reading over the last year. Below are five more that were also contenders for my list. Blood Grove, by Walter Mosley (Mulholland): Mosley had a good thing going with his African-American series sleuth, Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, when he considered […]
Hush-Hush Holiday is the first book in the Doc Holiday Private Investigator Mysteries. When hard up L.A. private investigator Edgar “Doc” Holiday learns that his ex-fiancé Candy Leigh Parker has gone missing he’s hesitant to get involved. Mixing business with matters of the heart as complicated as his isn’t worth it. But then the first in a series of heinous murders take place and Doc is forced to revisit his dark past as he traces […]
A small, sleepy New England town in 1980. Out of nowhere, a series of devastating murders threaten the safety and well-being of the community. A serial killer has begun a deadly game of catch-me-if-you-can with local police, who have dubbed the carnage, “The Mommy Murders.” Frightened residents are certain the violent rape/murders are in some way connected to the psychiatric unit of Parkhirst General Hospital. Nella, a nurse angst-ridden by her service during the Vietnam […]
First came the finalists for this year’s Ned Kelly Awards. Now we have what’s being billed as the “rather long shortlist” of contenders for the 2021 Davitt Awards, organized by Sisters in Crime Australia and intended to recognize to “the best crime and mystery books by Australian women.” The Davitt Awards take their name from Ellen Davitt (1812-1879), Australia’s first crime novelist. From a total of 127 books in contention, 25—including a dozen debut novels—have […]
It’s not easy keeping up with Max Allan Collins’ literary production. Over the last nine months alone, that Iowa-based author has come out with Skim Deep, his ninth novel starring a professional thief known only as Nolan; what I believe is the 15th “Trash ’n’ Treasures mystery,” Antiques Carry On, penned by Collins and his wife under the joint pseudonym Barbara Allan; his sixth Caleb York western adventure, Shoot-Out at Sugar Creek (on which the […]
Summer. Great for lounging by the pool or the ocean or on the sun porch, your nose in a good book. And of course what you want is a book whose thrills actually thrill, whose twists and turns cause whiplash, a book you really can’t put down. Dear reader, I introduce you to Falling by T.J. Newman. Imagine you’re an airline pilot, and you’re minutes into a long flight. You get a message: crash the […]
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