When Dietrich Kalteis’ Zero Avenue came out in 2017, I remarked on The Rap Sheet that I’d once heard author Owen Laukannen describe Kalteis’ writing as being like “jazz on the page.” If you want to boil Kalteis’ work down very tightly, for me descriptions just don’t get any better than that. Kalteis’ voice is taut, tight, and if it were any more noir, it would be too dark to see. With all of that, […]
Last year, I waxed poetic about Sam Wiebe’s sophomore novel, Invisible Dead, in The Rap Sheet’s Best of the Year feature. As I said then, in that book Wiebe worked with just about all of the tropes of crime fiction and turned them around, pulling them masterfully beyond the cliché. That was the first book featuring Vancouver, Canada-based Dave Wakeland, an ex-cop turned private eye. In 2018’s Cut You Down, we meet Dave again […]
In the tradition of the very best of overnight sensations, Ann Cleeves, author of the Shetland Island and Vera Stanhope novels, was an overnight sensation. It’s just that it took 20 years. labored away in relative obscurity for a long time before being recognized as one of crime fiction’s leading voices. Cleeves’ first novel, A Bird in the Hand, was published in 1986, so she’s been at the game a very long time. The Seagull, […]
by Hubert O’Hearn Let’s imagine a scene together. You’ve received an invitation to a swank literary event, one of those champagne and piano evenings where the conversation is all dry wit and sincere chuckling; hands are kissed, cuffs are linked, and may I say you’ve never looked lovelier? You wander through the room, not quite sure who to talk to but finally somewhere near the Utrillo hanging above the cheese selection you find yourself chatting […]
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