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Gabino Iglesias

Book Review: Chasing the Boogeyman by Richard Chizmar

By Gabino Iglesias

September 14, 2021

Like any kind of writing, literary criticism must strive to find the most precise words to communicate what it wants readers to see as it deconstructs a narrative. That’s why vague words like “special” and “unique” are frowned upon; they fail to be specific. That said, both of them apply perfectly to Richard Chizmar’s Chasing…

Book Review: American Serial Killers: The Epidemic Years 1950-2000 by Peter Vronsky

By Gabino Iglesias

March 18, 2021

Peter Vronsky’s American Serial Killers is a brutal, engaging, meticulously researched account of the start, development, and conclusion of the fifty-year period knows as the “golden age” of serial killers in the United States. While the book focuses on serial killers, Vronsky digs deep into the psychology that shapes them, tracing the development of the…

Book Review: Girl A by Abigail Dean

By Gabino Iglesias

February 4, 2021

There’s something about dark narratives about dysfunctional families that pulls readers in. It probably stems from a sense of empathy mixed with familiarity. However, some stories take dysfunction into places so dark and dangerous that readers aren’t pulled in; they’re brutally dragged. Abigail Dean’s Girl A belongs to this second group. A crushing tale that…

Book Review: What’s Left of Me is Yours by Stephanie Scott

By Gabino Iglesias

July 8, 2020

What’s Left of Me Is Yours is a gripping debut set in modern-day Tokyo and inspired by a true crime that charts a young woman’s search for the truth about her mother’s life—and her murder. Stephanie Scott’s What’s Left of Me Is Yours is an outstanding novel that occupies the interstitial space between crime and…

Book Review: Worse Angels by Laird Barron

By Gabino Iglesias

June 10, 2020

In the third Isaiah Coleridge novel from Laird Barron, Isaiah finds himself entangled with a rich and powerful cult while looking into a mysterious death and a shady real-estate deal worth billions.  There’s a secret to creating something great and then consistently making it even better, and Laird Barron possesses that arcane knowledge. With Worse…

Book Review: Hard Cash Valley by Brian Panowich

By Gabino Iglesias

May 28, 2020

Brian Panowich’s Hard Cash Valley is a violent crime narrative with an undeniable sense of place and a series of unlikely protagonists that somehow coalesces into a tense, fast-paced slice of Southern grit. Dane Kirby has a decent job and a loving girlfriend, but he’s a broken man haunted by the ghosts of his dead…

Book Review: Take Me Apart by Sara Sligar

By Gabino Iglesias

May 12, 2020

Take Me Apart by Sara Sligar is a spellbinding debut novel of psychological suspense and a chilling, thought-provoking take on art, illness, and power that follows a young archivist’s obsession with her subject’s mysterious death as it threatens to destroy her fragile grasp on sanity. Sara Sligar’s Take Me Apart is a fascinating narrative that…

Book Review: Little Secrets by Jennifer Hillier

By Gabino Iglesias

April 30, 2020

All it takes to unravel a life is one little secret… In Jennifer Hillier’s riveting new thriller, a woman desperately tries to save her marriage in the face of overwhelming tragedy.  Jennifer Hillier is one of the best in the business. The elements that make her one of the best are clear and present in every…

Book Review: Like Flies from Afar by K. Ferrari

By Gabino Iglesias

March 26, 2020

K. Ferrari’s Like Flies from Afar does not feature your average protagonist. Luis Machi has a cocaine habit, an affinity for women who are not his wife, millions of dollars in the bank, and a bloody corpse in the trunk of his BMW… but as far as the body goes, he’s completely innocent. Like Flies…

The Edgar Awards Revisited: Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger (Best Novel, 2014)

By Gabino Iglesias

February 28, 2020

William Kent Krueger’s Ordinary Grace is one of those crime novels in which crime is just one of the elements of the story. While there is murder in its pages, this book is a celebration of language, a brilliant and nostalgic study of life in small-town America in the 1960s, a look at the complex…

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