The 2008 Edgar Awards were not exactly a banner year for diversity, with no nominees being women or writers of color, but it was a year of heavy-hitters nevertheless, with John Hart, Benjamin Black (Christine Falls), Ken Bruen (Priest), Reed Farrel Coleman (Soul Patch), and Michael Chabon (The Yiddish Policemen’s Union) vying for the honor.…
In his marvelous introduction to the Istanbul of the 1860s in The Janissary Tree, Jason Goodwin invites the reader into a city poised between worlds—in the process of modernizing, but clinging to the rites and traditions of the past; hungry, hustling, magnificent, yet quick to betray even the city’s most impervious elites. The Sublime Porte…
Once I read a review in the New York Times about a book called Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin, a book that turned out to be one of my favorite books ever. And the reviewer, I don’t remember who, was clearly apprehensive about writing it. The reviewer said something like: I’m worried, writing this, that…
The 2005 Edgar Award winner for best novel, California Girl by T. Jefferson Parker, is part police procedural and part family saga focused on the lives of the three Becker brothers caught up in a tangled web of love, betrayal, and murder. I was excited to review this novel because Parker’s other Edgar Award winner,…
2004 was a strange year. At least in terms of awards, if nothing else. Clocks by Coldplay picked up Record of the Year at the Grammy’s, inexplicably beating Hey Ya! by OutKast. Across town, at the Oscars, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won Best Picture instead of Mystic River. (Peter Jackson…
Lifelong New Yorker S.J. Rozan’s storied career has spanned decades and encompassed both writing and teaching. Her unique melding of substance, style, and structure has branded her one of the most decorated members on the contemporary mystery scene. Rozan has been the recipient of the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero, and Macavity Awards, as well as…
Before I dove into Silent Joe, T. Jefferson Parker was one of those names alongside Michael Connelly, Robert Parker, Sue Grafton, and dozens of others on a mental list titled “Authors I Should Probably Read One of These Days.” Thanks to this reread, I can finally cross him off, though if I’m being honest, I’m…
I’d like to start this review of Joe R. Lansdale’s The Bottoms by admitting that my only exposure to his work prior to this 2001 Edgar Award winner was a love of the film adaptation of Bubba Ho-Tep (which I only recently learned was based on a Lansdale short story) and a general understanding of…
Jan Burke wrote what would become the first of ten crime novels featuring journalist Irene Kelly in the evening hours after work. That manuscript, Goodnight, Irene (1993), sold to Simon & Schuster without the benefit of an agent or solicitation—and readers took note when then-President Bill Clinton mentioned it during his first White House interview…
Some things just never go out of style. Like nostalgia. And the further we get, the more people like to look back. Folks will always love to romanticize the past; put it up on a pedestal as if it was better or more exciting than the turbulent, messy present. Since the past is an open…
