I enjoy Charles McCarry’s Paul Christopher series, a great blend of espionage intrigue and commentary on American foreign affairs. Many consider The Last Supper to be his magnum opus. While I enjoyed parts of the book, I will not be one of those people. The Last Supper is not a conventional Christopher novel in that there’s a case and he’s working it. Instead, it’s kind of a biographical work that traces his father’s life and his own. Throughout it are multiple espionage cases handled by the OSS and […]
Mulholland Drive in Fiction Form
I’m not sure if I even liked this book but I’m fascinated by it. I’ve never tried bizarro fiction. It’s not a genre that appeals to me. But when I saw this on a list of weird crime novels from the irreplaceable CrimeReads.com website, I figured I’d give it a chance since I love LA noirs. I went in with low expectations, knowing this isn’t the kind of thing I normally read. And while I don’t have a desire to try more bizarro fiction, I […]
True Detectives
While it’s never been a favorite genre of mine, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö have permanently spoiled me on the police procedural. It simply cannot be done better than this series. In the hands of lesser writers, The Laughing Policeman is an uninspired, formulaic mystery-thriller that would likely come with a heavy dose of toxic masculinity if it were written stateside. A person shoots up a bus full of people and then disappears. Cops work hours on ends, scouring the city’s underbelly. Discussions about women’s sexuality, mental […]
Hell Hath No Fury
Widows the movie was perhaps my favorite film of 2018. A crackling crime thriller with polished dialogue and sharp social commentary, it’s the best crime movie I’ve seen in recent years. I didn’t know until after seeing it that it was based on an English time show created by famed auteur Lynda La Plante. The book is a tie-in to the show. La Plante’s Prime Suspect was one of my least favorite reads in 2018. It wasn’t bad by any stretch, but the writing felt static. I later […]