In Coldwater, a young couple moves to Sacramento after the tragic loss of their baby. But instead of a quiet life in the suburbs, they find themselves involved in the fight of their lives with a group of drug-addicted squatters with a dark past. I wonder whether Tom Pitts likes jazz. I ask this question…
Famous in Cedarville by Erica Wright, author of the acclaimed Kat Stone series, is a standalone novel and a diabolical mystery wrapped in Hollywood tinsel. Erica Wright, creator of the Kat Stone series, has written her first standalone novel with Famous in Cedarville. Whereas the Stone books are about a former cop turned private detective…
Miami Midnight by Alex Segura is the fifth and final entry in the Miami-based Pete Fernandez series, where the recently retired private investigator is drawn back into detective work by his most personal case. Pete Fernandez is back from the dead. As Miami Midnight opens, Pete is sitting in his therapist’s office telling her about…
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 three or four novels per…
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 a classic case of an…
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 Upfield’s, largely because it’s part…
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 are the writers, and a…
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 it’s safe to say that…
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 novel’s premise. Rebecca charts the…
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 or Lew Archer here; Pete…
