Every Wednesday, we here at Criminal Element will put together a list of Staff Picks of the books that published the day before—sharing the ones that we are looking forward to reading the most! This week, Iris & Roy Johansen uncover some of the secrets behind the Night Watch Project in their 4th Kendra Michaels…
If modern robots can write your letters, why not poetry, and what richer fodder for auto-verse than CrimeHQ's tweets could there be? Submitting our thread to the genius of Poetweet (meaning Edgar Allan, we'll assume, rather than some merely generically tormented garret-dweller), the following mashed-up sonnet was generated. It's loosely rhymed stanzas are odd enough…
Over what is, in the U.S., a typically festive weekend, we were saddened to learn of the recent death of novelist and reigning “queen of crime” P.D. James. Having published her first novel in her early forties, she went on to write for more than half a century, creating unforgettable characters while examining thorny questions…
Here on Criminal Element there’s been talk about horrific casting decisions (Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher) and ones that make you go “hmm” (Jason Statham as Richard Stark’s Parker), but there’s also another class of casting decisions that gets less notice, those that just absolutely work. In fact, this post was inspired by one of…
Want to understand what’s great about contemporary British mysteries? The essential qualities can be demonstrated from any one of P.D. James’ novels about Scotland Yard's Adam Dalgleish. In A Taste for Death, the seventh in this series, two men are discovered with their throats slit in a London church, Commander Adam Dalgliesh of New Scotland Yard is…
