This post, about how a scenery-chewing TV series rekindled one New Orleans crime author's love for his own city, is offered for your delight and in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of Mystery Writers of America. When it was announced that American Horror Story was setting its third season in New Orleans, and it was…
My fifteen-year-old son is reading Ernest Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories for his high-school English class. He started with “Indian Camp,” the story in which Nick and his father leave their summer cottage in the Michigan woods and row across Walloon Lake to help a Native American woman give birth. My son could easily picture their…
Alcatraz, that most famous of American correctional facilities, has been a national park longer than it was a Federal prison. It housed Federal inmates from 1933 to 1963, a mere 30 years. The island’s history goes back much further. Its name comes from the Spanish for Island of the Pelicans, though the birds no longer…
The following story is true. It is my own experience of living in a haunted house and if, when you have read it, you are still sceptical about the existence of ghosts, I will be very surprised. All I have done is to change the names of the house and the other people involved, to…
One of my favorite subgenres in the dessert case of crime fiction is prison stories, which would be the hidden file in the seven layer cake. To most of us, prison is a hidden world, a mythological place akin to purgatory or hell, a place difficult enough to visit as a tourist, much less live…
Harry Truman reportedly once said that if you want a friend in Washington you should get a dog. Here’s my corollary: if you want someone in law enforcement to stick by your side in D.C., show up at a national monument with a camera and try to appear nonchalant as you ask the park ranger…
Hot vacation spot? Hip dining emporium? Readers of the online service Yelp! are accustomed to seeing ratings of both. But a trend outlined in this New York Post article is a bit different. Apparently, NYC denizens have taken to reviewing…jails. Yes, that’s right, Central Booking (Manhattan), Central Booking (Queens) and Riker’s Island all have their…
I have found the world’s most beautiful bookstore. I don’t say this lightly, and I am well aware that everyone has his or her favorite, but I will not accept any arguments this time. Even The Guardian backs me up—for sheer gorgeousness, Selexyz Dominicanen in Maastricht wins. (For the record, I first visited it two…
