Brian Garfield had written over 50 books by the time Hopscotch, the 1976 Edgar winner for Best Novel, was published. Born in New York City in 1939, Garfield started writing young, and his first book came out when he was eighteen. Throughout the 1960s, he wrote mainly westerns, churning out… Read more
Filled with a cast of colorful characters and told with sardonic wit, Hipster Death Rattle by Richie Narvaez is a fast-moving, intricately plotted debut novel that plays out against a backdrop of rapid gentrification, skyrocketing rents, and class tension in New York City. Richie Narvaez’s debut novel, Hipster Death Rattle, is… Read more
In 1958, the nominees for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award were Arthur Upfield’s The Bushman Who Came Back, Bill Ballinger’s The Longest Second, Marjorie Carleton’s The Night of the Good Children, and Ed Lacy’s Room to Swing. Of these four books, the best-known today among mystery aficionados is… Read more
Hey, lethal listeners. Tig Torres here. Stay tuned for the next episode of Lethal Lit. These are the opening words for each of the six episodes that make up Lethal Lit: A Tig Torres Mystery, the new podcast from Einhorn’s Epic Productions and iHeart Radio. Alex Segura and Monica Gallagher… Read more
101 by Tom Pitts is set in California only a few months before the legalization of marijuana. The game is about to change. Tom Pitts’ new book, 101, is his third novel. He has also written two novellas. Of this output, I’ve read all but one of the novellas, and… Read more
Daphne du Maurier’s novel My Cousin Rachel is a study in character ambiguity. Published in 1951, it takes place—not unlike her earlier Rebecca (1938)—on a sprawling estate in the author’s beloved Cornwall. Du Maurier again works in the mystery-romance mode, and to a large degree, My Cousin Rachel inverts her most famous… Read more
Blackout by Alex Segura is the fourth book in the Pete Fernandez Mystery series. If you’ve read the earlier books in Alex Segura’s Pete Fernandez series, you know that Pete—a Cuban-American Miami native—is a recovering alcoholic who almost inadvertently came to the work of being a paid PI. No Philip Marlowe… Read more
Character-driven and evocative, The Lonely Witness by William Boyle brings Brooklyn to life in a way only a native can and opens readers’ eyes to the harsh realities of crime and punishment on the city streets. When a writer has a good premise for a novel, they can develop that premise in… Read more
A page-turning whodunit set in the wilds of a remote movie ranch, Bottom Feeders by John Shepphird describes the hapless Hollywood cast and crew that eke out a living working on low-budget fare. The biographical information on the back of John Shepphird’s Bottom Feeders states that the author is the director of… Read more
The Devil at Your Door by Eric Beetner is the third volume in the Lars and Shaine series. Eric Beetner’s The Devil at Your Door is the third and presumably final entry in his Lars and Shaine series. It follows The Devil Doesn’t Want Me and When the Devil Comes… Read more
