The glory of the historical mystery is in recreating a time and place both familiar and new. Too often (for me, at least), I find the details in historical fiction maddening and anachronistic, a result of superficial research or the easy belief in old tropes about a period. Happily, William Shaw has avoided these…
I’ve written about one of Lionel White’s novels here before (The Big Caper), and now I’ve got some thoughts about a film based on one of his books. White is seen by many noir aficionados as a master of the heist story. Stanley Kubrick made the author’s 1955 novel Clean Break into the classic film…
Rainy Day Women by Kendall Kay is the 2nd Austin Starr mystery set in 1969 amidst the Charles Manson murders and the Woodstock Music Festival (available July 7, 2015). In 1969, during the week of the Manson murders and Woodstock, Austin Starr, the intrepid amateur sleuth with an infant in tow, flies across the continent…
Reykjavik Nights by Arnaldur Indridason is a prequel set in the 1960s about the up-and-coming Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson (available April 21,2015). The beat on the streets in Reykjavik is busy: traffic accidents, theft, domestic violence, contraband … And an unexplained death. When a tramp he met regularly on the night shift is found drowned…
It’s 1968, the height of the Cold War, and we are in Mexico City. Filiberto Garcia is a sixty year old Mexican policeman. Over the course of his life he has killed people: men, women, a priest. As a young man, he fought in the Mexican Revolution, serving under Pancho Villa, his killing backed by…
Mightier than the Sword by Jeffrey Archer is the fifth installment in The Clifton Chronicles (available February 24, 2015). This is Jeffrey Archer’s fifth entry in the Clifton Chronicles and it literally opens with a bang. On the Buckingham, the cruise ship built by Emma (Barrington) Clifton’s company, the IRA sets off a bomb designed…
Life inside prisons makes for interesting stories. I wouldn’t know where to begin in reeling off some of the more compelling books, movies, and TV shows that have explored this world. But having just read Malcolm Braly’s 1961 prison novel Felony Tank, I can add it to my personal list of favorite jail tales. It…
Pardon the Ravens by Alan Hruska is a legal thriller set in 1960s New York about a young lawyer who falls for a mobster's wife and risks losing it all (available February 10, 2015). This is another good mystery with great courtroom drama and the continual inner battle of a good man who has to…
The Cowboy Rides Away is a series on the final Western films of great cowboy stars. Other entries include John Wayne’s The Shootist (1976) and Gary Cooper’s The Hanging Tree (1959). The supposed immortality of movie stardom is a funny thing. Some stars only grow in stature as the years go by, but others shrink.…
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