Trio wins $700K Vesuvius Challenge grand prize for deciphering ancient scroll
Spike Lee on His Collection of WWII Propaganda Posters
‘Reading is so sexy’: gen Z turns to physical books and libraries
Barbiecore, bussin’ and more Gen Z slang added to Dictionary.com
Macron shelves plan to remove riverside Paris booksellers for opening ceremony of Summer Olympics
Racy Presidential Love Letters: ‘I Take a Long, Deep, Wild Draught on Your Lips’
Inside the World’s Largest Comics and Cartoons Collection
Can You Find the 10 International Thrillers Hidden in This Text Puzzle?
‘Mrs Sherlock Holmes’ and the other real female sleuths who were written out of history
Girl Gangs of New York and the Godmother of Gotham Crime
Terrible news for pedants as Merriam-Webster relaxes the rules of English
Sealed case of rare hockey cards found in basement sells for $3.72M
“Russell conjugation”: A rhetorical trick that loads words with emotion
“Independent” Investigations Into Sexual Abuse Are Big Business. Can Survivors Really Trust Them?
Ransomware Payments Hit a Record $1.1 Billion in 2023
U.S. adults lost a record $10 billion to fraud in 2023
Department of Justice takes down Russian intelligence botnet
US charges Japanese crime leader with trafficking nuclear materials from Myanmar
Émigrés Are Creating an Alternative China, One Bookstore at a Time
Ransomware Groups Are Bouncing Back Faster From Law Enforcement Busts
Backpfeifengesicht : idiomatic German term for “A face that begs to be slapped.”
WA House bill would make it illegal for police to lie during interrogations
‘Head hunting’: Irate Portland boyfriend raps of vengeance before killing the wrong man
Seattle theater abounds in mystery — of the fun kind
Ted Bundy bludgeoned and almost killed me. I resolved he would not ruin my life
The Attempted Assassination of Charlie Chaplin
This Artist Has Been Using Only a Typewriter To Create Drawings for the Last 10 Years
Explore Five Volumes of the History of Cartography for Free Online
Sloshed, plastered and gazeboed: why Britons have 546 words for drunkenness
A Celebrity Dies, and New Biographies Pop Up Overnight. The Author? A.I.
What It’s Like to Be a Sociopath
Pattie Boyd to sell letters from love triangle with Eric Clapton and George Harrison
CIA’s Former Chief of Disguise Reveals Spy Secrets: ‘People Who Knew Me Well Will Be Shocked’
Erbsenzähler: idiomatic German term for “Someone who is obsessed with details and a bit of a control freak.”
Starting this year, the National Book Awards will be open to non-citizens.
Western Writers of America Announces Its 2024 Wister Award Winner
The Barry Award Nominations 2024
My First Thriller: Lisa Gardner
Inside the Censorship Scandal That Rocked Sci-Fi and Fantasy’s Biggest Awards
Iconic Sci-Fi Novelist Disowned His Greatest Novel
The Backlist: Naomi Hirahara and Polly Stewart Read Chester Himes’ Noir Classic
A Chester Himes Appreciation by S.A. Cosby
Drama King: Hake Talbot and the Art of the Impossible
Sister-in-law’s letters provide insights into Charles Dickens’ life and legacy
How anarchists in North Carolina rescued books banned in Florida
Sherlock Holmes, That Enigma We Know So Well
130-Year-Old California Bookstore Seeks Buyer
David Handler: Authors Need Support Systems
Contents of Charles Darwin’s entire personal library revealed for first time
6 Books That Elevate the Serial Killer Thriller
Florida law blasted after permission slip sent to hear Black author’s book
Sexily ever after: how romance bookstores took over America
Librarians could face criminal charges over “obscene” books in some states
How the Queens of Crime Fiction Developed a Modern Myth
20 Classic Murder Mystery Books to Test Out Your Detective Skills
Mar. 1: actor Jon Lindstrom signs his debut thriller, Hollywood Hustle, Powell’s 7pm
March 6: local, writer Jeff Ayers signs Leave No Trace: A National Parks Thriller, written under the pen name A.J. Landau with Jon Land., Third Place/LFP, 7pm
Matthew Macfadyen, Michael Shannon, Set to Star in President Garfield Assassination Historical Drama
The 48 Best Murder Mystery Movies of All Time
Denzel Washington, Spike Lee Reteam for Adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s ‘High and Low’
How Stanley Kubrick Brought Stephen King’s The Shining to the Big Screen
UTA Signs James Ellroy, Shops His Marilyn Monroe Novel ‘The Enchanters’
Always Rooting for the Antihero: How Three TV Shows Have Defined 21st-Century America
James Bond exhibit to debut at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry
Dr No: Sean Connery behind the scenes on the first James Bond film – in pictures
“The Truth About Jim”: She Suspected Her Step-Grandfather Was the Zodiac Killer
He Uncovered a Rogue CIA Conspiracy. Then He Was Found Dead.
‘I recently went back to the Texas border – and urinated on the wall’: how we made Lone Star
‘True Detective’ Renewed for Season 5 With Issa López at the Helm
Verschlimmbessern: idiomatic German term for “To make something worse by trying to improve it.”
Jan. 22: Laurie Johnson, ‘The Avengers’ Composer, Dies at 96 [sorry – we didn’t hear this news until 2/19, one of the greatest theme songs, right up there with “Mission: Impossible” and “Hawaii 5-O]
Feb. 1: David Kahn, historian who cracked the code of cryptology, dies at 93
Feb. 2: Carl Weathers, Apollo Creed in the Rocky Films, Dies at 76
Feb. 12: ‘The voice we woke up to’: Bob Edwards, longtime ‘Morning Edition’ host, dies at 76
Feb. 23: Pamela Salem, Miss Moneypenny in ‘Never Say Never Again,’ Dies at 80
Feb. 2: Mafia boss who escaped prison using bedsheets recaptured in France
Feb. 4: Patty Hearst was kidnapped 50 years ago. Was she a victim or terrorist?
Feb. 5: No new evidence found after review into death of British spy found in bag
Feb. 7: The 1931 Murder That Foretold a New Era of Crime and Corruption in New York City
Feb. 9: Hawaii’s high court cites ‘The Wire’ in its ruling on gun rights
Feb. 12: Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. — even if Americans don’t believe it
Feb. 13: The Gangsters and the Star
Feb. 19: Paul McCartney’s missing bass and other mysterious musical instrument disappearances
Feb. 25: Series of recent DOJ cases show foreign operatives plotting assassinations in U.S.
Feb. 28: Edith Thompson: Hanged woman’s case denied pardon bid
Feb. 28: 2 men are found guilty for the 2002 killing of Run-DMC’s Jam Master Jay
Feb. 29: Stakeknife: Prosecutors decide not to charge final 12 people
Feb. 29: Women were ‘not believed’ on Emma Caldwell killer warnings
Torschlusspanik: idiomatic German term for “As one gets older, the feat that time is running out and important opportunities are slipping away.”
(Pics of books from both series)
Chloe Neill — Cold Curses
Endings are not necessarily a bad thing. Bibliographies, especially lengthy ones, allow bummed-out readers to take solace in the knowledge they can revisit their favorite characters anytime they wish. However, what can leave a sour taste in a reader’s brain is when the final book in the series fails to land the ending either by indulging in maudlin sentimentality, nonsensically cramming every crowd favorite character into the narrative, or just failing to wrap up the story arcs in a satisfying way.
Happily, Cold Curses, the last of the Heirs of Chicagoland series, doesn’t succumb to any of these pitfalls. Chloe Neill does a fantastic job of wrapping up all the stray storylines in a way that feels natural and, most importantly, makes sense.
Even better? The book is a fun read! Full of mystery, ass-kicking, and clever traps, Cold Curses doesn’t let the reader down. Perhaps the epilogue could’ve been longer. However, this is a very minor gripe that really stems from not wanting to say goodbye to everyone you’ve grown to love and all the mouth-watering food Elisa, Lulu, Alexei, Conner, and everyone else eats in both the Chicagoland and Heirs series.
Seriously, I would recommend either series to anyone who enjoys reading urban fantasy, about vampires, and enjoys Chicago as a book setting. You won’t be disappointed.
Not your typical mystery review
I’ve never read anything by Cassandra Khaw, but I have read a lot of Richard Kadrey’s stuff, so I blew my new book budget on this one. I’m so glad I did!
The Dead Take The A Train is a love story. Filled with blood and gore and demons and weird eyes and things with tentacles. Also, a bit more blood and gore. So worth it.
Julie is a bargain basement demon hunter in New York, living mostly on vodka, cocaine, and spite. She’s very good at what she does, but she is seriously burned out, and her retirement plans are dying young, although she’s 38 so she thinks she may have missed that boat.
And then her best friend (and huge crush) from her past shows up unexpectedly at Julie’s doorstep, and suddenly Julie finds new purpose in life. Protecting Sarah from her violent douchebag of a husband, and making sure Sarah learns how to smile again.
It really goes downhill from there, and if you’ve read the opening scene where Julie is trying to free an unwilling bride from a demon at the bride’s mom’s behest, you know that going downhill means actually digging a deeper hole. It’s not just bloody, it’s the eyes and the eggs. But you’ll read it for yourself.
And The Dead Take The A Train really is a love story. Well, a couple of them. The obvious one is between Julie and Sarah, although Sarah isn’t quite aware of how much Julie loves her at first, but there’s a darker love story about power and corruption and how much someone is really willing to give for the right partner. Hint: Everything.
This is also, in its own way, a love story about New York City, all its weirdness and pockets of normalcy sandwiched in between the eclectic and vibrant madness that is what makes NYC what it is. It makes me want to have lived there all my life while simultaneously reminding me that I’m not cut out for big city living.
Yes, it’s gory and bloody and filled with all manner of supernatural horror, but it’s also the story of perseverance in the face of adversity, the sheer power of the human spirit, and how important friendships are. If you can look past the devouring slime and crunching bones, this is a book of hope.
And I hear there’s a sequel in the works!
In Chandler’s famous essay “The Simple Art of Murder”, he describes anything hoping to achieve art must include “the raucous laughter of the strongman“. When I first read that in college, I, of course, first thought of the circus figure – leopard print toga, bald with a handlebar mustache, holding up cartoon-sized barbells. Over the decades, watching politics and reading hardboiled fiction has expanded my view of such a person. His strongman stood for corruption and those who hold all the cards.
But it fits Louis Ferrante‘s Borgata – Rise of Empire: A History of the American Mafia perfectly. Ferrante was a member of the Gambino mob and spent time in prison. In confinement, he educated himself on the classics, history, and writing, to emerge with a sharp sense of how it all has always worked. Borgata is a salty story, told with the language of the street, underpinned with a historian’s eye for detail and Big Pictures.
From the beginnings of strife-torn Sicily, he sketches the social structure that seemingly grew into the mafia inevitably, and how that was then exported to America, again, inevitably. From his time in that world, his style flows with a shrug and a deep chuckle, as if to say “of course, this is how it happened – what were you expecting?!?” Ferrante also uses his own time in the mob to edit the mafia’s history from what has been accepted to what he knows to be true.
If I have a complaint – and I write this knowing that this is book one of three – his focus is NYC and the figures who organized the organized crime exclusively. Capone is suddenly in charge of Chicago without any lead-in, Kansas City is tossed off with a couple of sentences, and LA’s history is mostly mentioned to give Bugsy’s history there. This does leave time for a deep view of New Orleans and then the colorful life of Arnold Rothstein, though. Maybe the other areas will be covered more deeply in the next two volumes.
It’s a fascinating and fun read. Borgata is filled with strongmen, laughing at us civilians. It is a blunt and bloody history – couldn’t be anything else.
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And in his 31st with Detroit Private eye, Amos Walker, witnesses one of the strangest murder weapons of all time: a propeller – in City Walls.
Loren D. Estleman‘s books are reliably entertaining and, it seems as if they get more inventive as they go, as well.
He’s the best Chandlerian private eye writer – now and forever.
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In a recent newzine, we included an interview with S.A. Cosby in which he said his ideal reading experience included re-reading Lehane’s Darkness, Take My Hand (something I whole-heartedly agreed with as it is a favorite of mine).
“Evil is rarely complicated. It’s just fucking bold.” Titus touched the brim of his hat and left.
“You really think it’s that simple?” Dr. Kim asked.
In his latest novel, All the Sinners Bleed, Sheriff Titus Crown deals with his own Darkness. He keeps a professional image but chaffs at the unhidden racism of his being the first black sheriff in Charon County, VA. His native county’s name is enough to give him pause but he’s dedicated to treating all of it’s residents equally. He’s got his own demons earned after being an FBI agent in Indiana. He’s carrying a huge load when a school shooting leads to something far uglier, a deep horror that’s been living below the everyday.
“Faith is a fragile thing, Sheriff. Do you know that? They like to talk about mustard seeds and not walking by sight and that shit, but the truth is it don’t take much to break your faith. Get sick, get broke, or lose your only son. Your faith will run out of town faster that a deadbeat daddy.”
In this story, Cosby has created his mirror of the Lehane masterpiece, showing that he’s capable of telling a story of depth and humanity to warrant being shelved next to the Lehane. It’s a stunning book of family and home and what it takes to hold on to them.
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Every now and then, I like to check up on the small presses we used to stock to see what interesting new stuff they might be releasing. Recently, I got directed to one of them and found something to order.
Stark House Press started out reissuing crime classics that had been long out of print. Since then, they’ve broadened their selection – check it out. I found that they reissued one of my favorites, Jonathan Latimer’s Solomon’s Vineyard – but under Latimer’s own title choice. Gotta get me one of those!
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And should you find yourself in need of a healthy dose of hardboiled pulp, jump over to the latest iteration of my image blog: old magazines (mystery, crime, true crime and more) and paperbacks, from the 20s to, well, whatever new fits in. seattlemysteryhardboiled.com Updated daily!
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