Alaska. Even when I think about it, a hollow sense of the vast wide open makes my stomach drop a little. I’ve traveled to Alaska a few times and I truly love it; its primitive beauty is breathtaking—though I’m not sure I could live there. I’ve visited the big city of Anchorage, the capital city…
I am in awe of Truman Capote’s work. He is an exquisite writer. If you read Other Voices Other Rooms, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Music for Chameleons, which includes the brilliant novella “Handcarved Coffins,” you’ll see what I mean. They are literary classics.
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…
Having grown up with multiple dogs and now living with three spoiled mutts, I’ve learned quite a bit about the canine species. Of course, all of the dogs in my family have been consistently unemployed, unless you count barking to announce the arrival of the mail carrier as a job. When I set out to…
So how did we go from small-town country boys to uniformed police officers in our local communities, to U.S. federal drug agents, to being “the guys who inspired the hit Netflix series Narcos,” to authors? Believe us when we say, no one is more surprised by all of this than we are! Javier grew up…
The painter Paul Cézanne was never comfortable with the Paris art scene, despite claiming he would change it “with an apple” (and he did). He was mal à l’aise with people, especially the fashionable, the wealthy. He once said, “The world doesn’t understand me and I don’t understand the world, that’s why I’ve withdrawn from…
Join New York Times bestselling author Shelley Noble for a look back at four iconic women and their equally memorable sleuths who would change the Gilded Age mystery genre forever and inspired her new novel!
From a writer’s perspective, the mystery genre is often a rigid one—someone committed a crime that needs solving, and the protagonist will methodically work through the clues to do so. And while that rigidity might seem downright restrictive, it’s also played into the hands of authors who want to introduce outlandish concepts and worlds: the…
As president of the Atlanta Writers Club and director of its twice-yearly Atlanta Writers Conference, I have the privilege of getting to know a diverse blend of authors in every genre. I’m particularly struck by the varied backgrounds of our mystery, suspense, and thriller writers: police officers, lawyers, journalists, soap opera assistants, corporate executives, teachers,…
There are two kinds of readers, as far as I can tell, when it comes to 1997’s Edgar Award-winner, The Chatham School Affair by Thomas H. Cook. There are those utterly perplexed by a crime novel that moves at what they deem a glacial pace and bears contents as literary as they are mysterious, and…
