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Hector DeJean

Rock Fought the Law and the Songs Won: Pop Music Gets Criminal (but stops short of homicide)

By Hector DeJean

October 16, 2020

Crime has inspired so much music that multiple volumes could be devoted to the subject. Certainly the blues, country, punk, and hip-hop have all produced songs with crime at the center, but so have Cole Porter (“Miss Otis Regrets”), Berthold Brecht (The Threepenny Opera), folk singers, and big bands. There are whole categories of songs—“murder…

Film Review: Enola Holmes

By Hector DeJean

October 2, 2020

Sherlock Holmes was, is, and likely will remain a solid fuel source for the entertainment industry, and the very latest offering is the Netflix film Enola Holmes, based on the Edgar Award-nominated YA series by Nancy Springer. Millie Bobby Brown, who launched her career playing Eleven on Stranger Things, dives into the part of Sherlock…

Once Upon a Crime: “Axel’s Lament”

By Crime HQ

June 25, 2020

We teamed up with five crime writers to create a short story in real-time. The end result was “Axel’s Lament” which you can read in full below. A special thank you goes out to the participating authors (in order of appearance): C. J. Box, Ellison Cooper, Gregg Hurwitz, Michele Campbell, and Allison Brennan. The full…

Michael Connelly’s Edgar Award: The Birth of Bosch

By Hector DeJean

October 4, 2019

At the 1993 Edgar Awards banquet, the best first novel award went to a new author named Michael Connelly, whose debut Harry Bosch novel The Black Echo had been published the previous year. The promise of that first book has clearly been fulfilled, with Connelly going on to become one of the most prolific and…

The Edgar Awards Revisited: Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett (Best Novel; 1979)

By Hector DeJean

June 28, 2019

Ken Follett published Eye of the Needle in 1978, and the book achieved a level of success that few other Edgar Award winners have matched; I can only think of a small handful of Edgar winners that ascended to similar heights (The Long Goodbye, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and The Day…

Jack Vance’s Edgar Award: A Mystery Novel Wrapped in an Enigma

By Hector DeJean

February 22, 2019

Like many other distinguished science fiction and fantasy authors, Jack Vance won multiple Hugo awards, a Nebula award, a World Fantasy Award, and plenty of other honors. Unlike most other holders of these awards, Vance also has the highest award in the field of mystery writing, an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.…

Marvel’s Luke Cage Season 2 Review: Episodes 11-13

By Hector DeJean

July 18, 2018

As several philosophers will tell you, all things eventually transform into their opposites. To see the proof of that, we need look no further than the final three episodes of Luke Cage Season 2. Luke (Mike Colter), who has sought to avoid shifting from Harlem’s hero to just another destructive force hurting his neighbors, finds…

Marvel’s Luke Cage Season 2 Review: Episodes 8-10

By Hector DeJean

July 11, 2018

Episode 7 ended in a bloodbath (Comanche, Piranha, Captain Ridenhour, Mariah’s brownstone), so it’s no surprise that Episode 8 has the cops rushing in and taking things over. We’ve come to that point in the crime story where the damage has grown so great that law enforcement starts getting the bulk of the face time.…

Marvel’s Luke Cage Season 2 Review: Episodes 5-7

By Hector DeJean

July 4, 2018

The only difference between the poor and the rich, according to a highly disputed piece of conventional wisdom, is hard work; conventional wisdom also says that the only difference between crime and legitimate enterprise is the law (this can also be disputed). So at what point does a criminal’s hard work result in legitimate success?…

Marvel’s Luke Cage Season 2 Review: Episodes 1-4

By Hector DeJean

June 27, 2018

One difference between a comic book story and a crime story is the amount of face time given to the villain. In the early days of comics, only the heroes had to make tough choices; villains rarely stayed around beyond a couple of issues. In contrast, a crime story gives its dangerous characters a chance…

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