101 by Tom Pitts is set in California only a few months before the legalization of marijuana. The game is about to change. Tom Pitts’ new book, 101, is his third novel. He has also written two novellas. Of this output, I’ve read all but one of the novellas, and it’s safe to say that…
Daphne du Maurier’s novel My Cousin Rachel is a study in character ambiguity. Published in 1951, it takes place—not unlike her earlier Rebecca (1938)—on a sprawling estate in the author’s beloved Cornwall. Du Maurier again works in the mystery-romance mode, and to a large degree, My Cousin Rachel inverts her most famous novel’s premise. Rebecca charts the…
Blackout by Alex Segura is the fourth book in the Pete Fernandez Mystery series. If you’ve read the earlier books in Alex Segura’s Pete Fernandez series, you know that Pete—a Cuban-American Miami native—is a recovering alcoholic who almost inadvertently came to the work of being a paid PI. No Philip Marlowe or Lew Archer here; Pete…
Character-driven and evocative, The Lonely Witness by William Boyle brings Brooklyn to life in a way only a native can and opens readers’ eyes to the harsh realities of crime and punishment on the city streets. When a writer has a good premise for a novel, they can develop that premise in various ways. Should plot construction—complete…
A page-turning whodunit set in the wilds of a remote movie ranch, Bottom Feeders by John Shepphird describes the hapless Hollywood cast and crew that eke out a living working on low-budget fare. The biographical information on the back of John Shepphird’s Bottom Feeders states that the author is the director of nine feature films and hours…
The Devil at Your Door by Eric Beetner is the third volume in the Lars and Shaine series. Eric Beetner’s The Devil at Your Door is the third and presumably final entry in his Lars and Shaine series. It follows The Devil Doesn’t Want Me and When the Devil Comes to Call in chronicling the…
Jack Waters by Scott Adlerberg is a historical thriller set in 1904 about an American guy from New Orleans—a poker player and fugitive murderer—who joins a Caribbean island revolution for utterly non-political reasons. He has his own reasons for joining the rebellion, based on revenge against someone high up in the country (available January 17,…
Revenge is a drink best served cold. So is this week's Pick Your Poison—where we create a cocktail inspired by a recently published mystery, thriller, or crime novel—the “Gamblin' Jack” cocktail, inspired by Scott Adlerberg's historical revenge thriller, Jack Waters! I bet you can't have just one…
Jack Waters by Scott Adlerberg is a historical thriller set in 1904 about an American guy from New Orleans—a poker player and fugitive murderer—who joins a Caribbean island revolution for utterly non-political reasons. He has his own reasons for joining the rebellion, based on revenge against someone high up in the country (available January 17,…
The Student by Iain Ryan is high-paced, hardboiled regional noir: fresh, gritty, unnerving, with a stark and lonely beauty. University campus novels involving crime date back to at least Dorothy L. Sayers’s Gaudy Night (1935), in which Lord Peter Wimsey and his mystery writer friend Harriet Vane investigate vandalism, poison-pen messages, and threats of murder at Oxford…
