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 […]
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 […]
Three years ago, author-screenwriter Anthony Horowitz’s Golden Age-style whodunit, Magpie Murders, won critical applause on both sides of the Atlantic. And not without ample justification. The novel introduced us to Susan Ryeland, one of the editors at a minor London publishing house, who was busily working her way through the manuscript of the ninth, and apparently concluding, entry in author Alan Conway’s best-selling mystery series starring Atticus Pünd, a 65-year-old half-Greek, half-German concentration camp survivor […]
Harlan Coban fans (and there are a lot of them) should keep their eyes out for a six-part Netflix mini-series based on The Woods, Coban’s 2007 novel, transformed here from New Jersey to Poland. The switch creates some real magic: Coban’s terrific storytelling reimagined here with a gritty European sensibility. “The Woods from Netflix Poland is really different from The Stranger,” Coban told Variety back in February. “Much more atmospheric and moody and centered on […]
Among the changes I made in my life during these last 12 months was to accept an invitation to join the staff of an independent bookshop serving one of Seattle, Washington’s more upscale neighborhoods. This has succeeded in getting me out of my often lonely office, increasing my contacts with other human beings, and further enlarging my reading tastes beyond crime, mystery and thriller fiction. Nonetheless, my interest in tales of criminality and espionage has […]
Critics have been hating on the latest Rambo movie, calling it “MAGA fantasy,” an “orgy of death” and worse. But critics aren’t the only ones. Author David Morrell, who created the character and has had input into several of the films, agrees with negative reviews of the film. “I agree with these RAMBO: LAST BLOOD reviews,” the author reported on Twitter a few days ago. “The film is a mess. Embarrassed to have my name […]
I seem to be flipping back and forth this summer between fiction and non-fiction, all of it dealing in some fashion with crime. I usually try to mix other types and genres of books into my reading diet, but the last couple of months have left me craving exclusively works that either imagine mysteries and malefactors, or revisit historical lawbreakers. Below are two of my favorite new books along those lines. Lady of the Lake, […]
Jonathan Lethem’s seminal 1999 novel Motherless Brooklyn gets an all-star film treatment from actor-filmmaker Edward Norton. From Deadline Hollywood: Norton adapted the Jonathan Lethem novel and plays the lead character Lionel Essrog in a drama set in 1950s New York. Essrog is a lonely private detective with Tourette syndrome who attempts to find out who murdered his mentor and finds himself drawn into a multilayered conspiracy that expands to encompass the city’s ever-growing racial divide […]
The Canadian mystery writer Howard Engel has died at age 88. According to the CBC, Engel was recovering from a stroke, but died of pneumonia. Author of the Benny Cooperman series, Engel’s writing included the first mystery novels many Canadian read. The first Benny Cooperman book, The Suicide Murders, was published in 1980 and was later adapted for television with Saul Rubinek in the title role. From CBC: “The great Canadian detective did not exist […]
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