Brian Garfield had written over 50 books by the time Hopscotch, the 1976 Edgar winner for Best Novel, was published. Born in New York City in 1939, Garfield started writing young, and his first book came out when he was eighteen. Throughout the 1960s, he wrote mainly westerns, churning out… Read more
Perhaps you know the sensation: that an inanimate object has somehow found you. That perfect-fitting, too soft-to-be-true t-shirt that was shoved on a sale rack with your favorite line from Star Wars or The Godfather or whatever you want emblazoned on the front. Or the gnome statue at a garage… Read more
For readers of the 1974 Edgar finalists, the authors took extra care to embed some of the reigning societal and political issues of the time into excellent mysteries and thrillers. While women’s rights were slowly advancing with the passage of Title IX (U.S., 1972) and the Equal Pay Act (Great… Read more
The Lingala Code might be the most mysterious Edgar award-winning novel out there, and I don’t just mean the plot. Even getting a copy of this book required internet research and a special order. Doing background for this review, I stayed up until 3:00 AM one night trying to untangle… Read more
It is cold at 6:40 in the morning of a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad. So opens Frederick Forsyth‘s The Day of the Jackal, on the entirely non-fictional 1963 execution of Lieutenant-Colonel Jean Bastien-Thiry, a key cog… Read more
For a Scandinavian crime fiction devotee like yours truly, no author’s legacy looms larger than that of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, whose Martin Beck books are largely considered the launching point for the Nordic Noir sub-genre. Writing in the 1960s and 1970s, husband and wife duo Sjöwall and Wahlöö… Read more
When he released Forfeit in 1969, Dick Francis was already a legend, at least among racing fans in England. As a jockey, Francis won more than 350 races between 1946 and 1957 and was Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’s personal jockey from 1953 to 1957. His triumphs on the track… Read more
[An abortion] is not a particularly difficult operation—a well-trained nurse can do it with no problem. There’s only one small catch. It’s illegal. This is the driving thrust of Michael Crichton‘s (writing here as Jeffery Hudson, for reasons we’ll get into later) A Case of Need, a potent literary… Read more
My parents were mystery readers. And when my mother died, she left behind a comprehensive library of mysteries popular in the 60s and 70s. Sayers. Le Carré. Margery Allingham. Ngaio Marsh. Most of them were British or British Empire. One lone American stood out: Donald Westlake’s Who Stole Sassi Manoon?… Read more
Nicolas Freeling considered himself a true European. Though born in London to English parents, he spent most of his life on the continent, an influence that shows in his fiction writing. His debut series features Inspector Piet Van der Valk, a student of history and a dogged, somewhat cynical investigator…. Read more
