Combining the colorful pyrotechnics of Breaking Bad with the best of the gritty crime genre, The Dime is Kathleen Kent’s brilliant mystery debut and the launch of a sensational new series. I’ve been a fan of Kathleen Kent since I read her spectacular female-centric Western The Outcasts, so when I heard she had a cop thriller coming out, I…
Tornado Weather by Deborah E. Kennedy is an affecting portrait of a complex and flawed cast of characters striving to find fulfillment in their lives—and Kennedy brilliantly shows that there is nothing average about an average life. Tornado Weather is a difficult book to classify. Sure, there is a crime or two—but is it really a…
One of the most memorable highlights of the five years I lived in London took place one sunny summer afternoon when I was invited to Buckingham Palace to have tea with the Queen of England. Okay, I was one of 10,000 people who also attended that garden party, though you wouldn’t have guessed—the Queen has…
Inspired by true events, Dark Chapter by Winnie M. Li is both a literary masterpiece and a riveting novel of suspense about of the dark chapters and chance encounters that can irrevocably determine the shape of our lives. It’s a good thing Dark Chapter is nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel because…
Prussian Blue by Philip Kerr is the 12th Bernie Gunther novel, where the former Berlin bull and unwilling SS officer Bernie Gunther’s cover is blown, so he must re-enter a cat-and-mouse game that continues to shadow his life a decade after Germany’s defeat in World War 2. First, a moment to mourn Philip Kerr’s passing, just over…
When people hear the name Jim Jones, I think it’s fair to say that most would also think immediately of suicide by Kool-Aid. In November of 1978, 909 people—304 of them children—died of poisoning in Jonestown, Guyana. All were members of Jim Jones’s religious group, the Peoples Temple. Jeff Guinn’s Edgar Award-nominated work, The Road…
The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti is an adventure epic of literary suspense that follows the relationship of a low-level criminal father and his beloved daughter. Survival, as it plays out in Hannah Tinti’s Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, is not a one-time lucky feat. In this, Tinti’s second novel, we learn…
The Man from the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery shows legendary statistician and baseball writer Bill James applying his analytical acumen to crack an unsolved century-old mystery surrounding one of the deadliest serial killers in American history. Anyone who knows me will tell you I am addicted to true crime stories, especially…
She Rides Shotgun by Jordan Harper is a propulsive, gritty novel about a girl marked for death who must fight and steal to stay alive, learning from the most frightening man she knows—her father. Jordan Harper is a Missouri native who’s been fascinated with crime since childhood, likely due to a familial involvement in law enforcement.…
Ragged Lake by Ron Corbett is the first book in the Frank Yakabuski Mystery series—a richly atmospheric mystery with sweeping backdrops, explosive action, and memorable villains that will keep you guessing about the violent crime, the nature of family, and secret deeds done long ago on abandoned frontiers. As Ragged Lake opens, the reader is immediately…
