“Cuanto,” the fourth episode of the season, starts with a revealing flashback. Summer is over and the Commodore dismisses Nucky (but not before Nucky sees both the Commodore’s vision for Atlantic City as well as his pornographic photo collection of young girls). Nucky, lost without a job and furious over his family’s moral and economic…
The first two episodes of Boardwalk Empire’s final season were sprawling and raucous, with assassination attempts, mob hits, and multiple severed ears. Last night’s episode, “What Jesus Said,” is distinctly quieter and more plaintive than its predecessors. This isn’t to say that the episode is free from carnage. Far from it. Violence—or the threat of…
At the end of last week’s stellar season premiere, Nucky’s new bodyguard slices the ear off of a would-be assassin. Episode Two, “The Good Listener,” continues this auricular theme in both its visuals and its message. The opening shot is of Eli’s ear (both the outer and the inner) as Eli lies passed-out, drunk on…
Season 4 of Boardwalk Empire was both its most satisfying and gloomiest season to date. A host of new characters and plotlines were introduced, allowing the show to avoid the pattern of having each new season revolve around a different foe for Nucky to tangle with and defeat. Still, going into last year’s finale, it…
The Sun is God by Adrian McKinty is a historical crime novel featuring a veteran of the second Boer war trying to solve a murder on an island of religious cultists in Colonial New Guinea in 1906 (available September 9, 2014). After reading the setting for The Sun is God, a fan of Adrian McKinty…
The Cairo Affair by Olen Steinhauer is a contemporary novel of espionage and geopolitics, unraveling the dangerous relationships between a diplomat who's just been assassinated, his unfaithful wife, her ex-lover in Egyptian intelligence, and a CIA analyst (available March 18, 2014). Note: Read on to the end for a special audiobook excerpt from Chapter 1!…
The Dealer and the Dead is the 27th international thriller by Gerald Seymour, featuring a small Croatian village that plans its revenge for decades following a deadly betrayal by an arms dealer (available February 11, 2014). Gerald Seymour’s novels are set all over the globe. From South Africa (A Song in the Morning) to Guatemala…
San Francisco has always embraced the weird, the outrageous, and the rebellious. From the raucous times of the Barbary Coast, to the howling poetry of the Beats, to the free love of the hippies, letting your freak flag fly is not just a slogan in the City by the Bay, but a way of life.…
