Tom Cruise returns to the big screen in an outrageous crime thriller based on the true story of pilot and drug smuggler turned informant Barry Seal. An American airline pilot, Seal began using his skills to smuggle drugs and guns for the Medellín Cartel. When arrested, Seal negotiated a deal that became one of the…
The Man on the Washing Machine by Susan Cox is a debut crime novel about Theophania Bogart, a former Englishwoman who flees to San Francisco and gets caught up in a smuggling operation and a series of murders, who has to race to find the killer before they find her (Available December 15, 2015). When…
Devil's Harbor by Alex Gilly follows Nick Finn, a California Customs and Border agent wrongly accused of murdering his partner forced to evade capture while attempting to prove his innocence (available June 23, 2015). Brutal, real, sweaty, and scary, with the power of the sea roiling just below the surface, Devil’s Harbor is a frightening…
At the start of “Friendless Child,” the penultimate episode of Boardwalk Empire, the war between Nucky (Steve Buschemi) and Luciano (Vincent Piazza) has escalated. Nineteen men are dead, trucks are being fire bombed, and Nucky is ready to hit back harder. Despite Maranzano’s counsel of patience, Nucky, feeling “impetuous,” moves on his own, kidnapping Bugsy…
South by Lance Charnes is a dystopic thriller set in an alternate future, one in which American policy is driving citizens across the southern border (available November 12, 2013). It’s been a long time since I’ve wanted so much for a character in a novel to kill a bad guy, or for the good guys…
Orange Is The New Blackis to the Women In Prison flick what The Sopranos was to the mobster movie. It uses the form and tropes of the genre as a springboard into serious issues that the genre itself is usually content to avoid. I hope that doesn’t make Orange Is The New Black sound grim.…
“95 percent of all antiquities in the U.S. have been smuggled.” —John Cooney, former curator of ancient art, Cleveland Museum of Art Our story begins with a pot and a pig. In 1970, an Italian man working on a canal near Naples discovered a remarkable piece of crockery: a 27-inch-tall, double-handled chalice or krater, black…
Did you watch the new ABC crime drama Red Widow this weekend? I think the ratings weren’t great. The short ads I saw everywhere teased a Marin County housewife and mother, whose drug-smuggling beloved was in debt to a dangerous gangster, taking over for her husband after his murder. And I thought: This is way…
According to Reuters, Mexican marijuana smugglers are using cannons to get their product across the border. No, not by shooting border patrol agents, but by stuffing canisters filled with drugs into the cannons and firing them into Arizona. The report says: Mexican smugglers used a pneumatic-powered cannon to propel cans packed with 85 pounds (38kg)…
A cautionary tale as we approach one of the year’s busier travel seasons: Snakes on a Plane got real on December 3 when an EgyptAir pilot was forced to make an emergency landing after a passenger aboard a flight from Cairo to Kuwait was bitten by a snake. His own snake, apparently. Ahram Online reports:…
