Introduction by Sarah Stewart Taylor, author of The Drowning Sea, part of the Maggie D’Arcy Mystery Series set in Ireland When I’m traveling, my favorite moments—and memories—are those when I suddenly see a place in a way I couldn’t have if I’d stuck to the tourist quarter or only visited the highlights in the guidebook.…
In the old days before streaming video, the only place you could reliably see a Chinese martial arts movie was on your local TV station’s Saturday afternoon broadcast of Kung Fu Theater, or some similarly named program. Chances are it would a double feature—Shaolin Executioners followed by Dirty Ho, perhaps—featuring guys in bad wigs and…
What is noir? It’s legendarily hard to define but you know it when you see it: Dark streets slick with rain. Seedy hotel rooms lit by a reddish neon glare. A wisp of smoke curling up from a cigarette in a shadowy corner. Desperate men and women with obscure motives and shifting loyalties. In Asia,…
If you can’t decide on what to read, the Minotaur Spring Sampler is the perfect way to choose. Whether you want to start a series or read a standalone novel, the Sampler has you covered. With five books to choose from, the Sampler contains the beginnings of five different mysteries. Just download for free on…
SATURDAY Apart from their other characteristics, the outstanding thing about China’s 600 million people is that they are “poor and blank.” This may seem a bad thing, but in reality it is a good thing. Poverty gives rise to the desire for changes, the desire for action, and the desire for revolution. On a blank…
Brian Klingborg’s Thief of Souls (Minotaur Books, May 2021) marks the launch of a new mystery series following Inspector Lu Fei. When a brutal murder in a rural village in Northern China sends shockwaves all the way to Beijing, Inspector Lu Fei, exiled to this tiny town, is seemingly the only one interested in finding…
As most cops will attest, your typical criminal is not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. According to an oft-quoted statistic, criminals possess, on average, an IQ of 8 to 10 points lower than law-abiding citizens. Naturally, one has to be wary of drawing a correlation between intelligence and illicit behavior. There are an astronomical…
Kill Devil Falls by Brian Klingborg is a debut novel that follows U.S. Marshal Helen Morrissey as she tracks a fugitive bank robber to a town with some dangerous secrets. When U.S. Marshal Helen Morrissey is tasked with collecting a fugitive bank robber from a remote town in the Sierra Nevadas, she braces for a…
