The Big Click

Suspect Robert Crais Berkley Trade; Reprint edition (January 7, 2014) Suspect, by Robert Crais, offers one of the great pleasures of crime fiction by welcoming the reader into the mind of a born killer, Maggie. Maggie is a pain-wracked veteran who after three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Through […]

The Friendly Animals of Patricia Highsmith: An Appreciation of The Animal-Lover’s Book of Beastly Murder About a decade ago, I had a quiet literary love affair with Patricia Highsmith (1921–1995). She was a difficult person apparently, but a hell of a writer. Over a couple of years I read, in an occasionally feverish state, about 21 […]

I first became aware of the work of David Liss in 2006, with the release of The Ethical Assassin. The title was irresistible. I loved that crime novel’s complex and darkly satirical look at the intersection of capitalism’s drive for profit at any cost and the ethics surrounding both the factory farming of animals and […]

“Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.” —The Wolf Man (1941)   Werewolves exist. I’ve seen them. I’ve met them. First, I heard about them, the way people always have, around a campfire. When I was a […]

Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler of The Magnetic Fields) has style to burn. His first YA opus, the thirteen-volume (and then some) A Series Of Unfortunate Events, put three clever and reasonably attractive orphans in ahistorical but distinctly Victwardian-as-drawn-by-Gorey situations and landscapes as they struggle to unmask a nefarious Count, learn about “V.F.D.” (the secret organization […]

In 2009, after not quite ten years of living in Oakland, my father calls me on the phone. “What’s the name of your neighborhood?” he asks without preamble. “My neighborhood doesn’t really have a name,” I say, which is true. “Usually I tell people we live in the Grand Lake neighborhood.” “Where’s that?” he asks. […]

The Forgers by Bradford Morrow (The Mysterious Press) is one of those self-consciously literary novels that is cross-marketed to the mystery market thanks to its subject matter—in this case a bloody murder, a number of rival literary forgers working the antiquarian book and holographic manuscript circuit, and an unreliable narrator. Unfortunately, the book stumbles on […]