What Tana French, one of my favorite authors, has done here with The Witch Elm (her first non-Dublin Murder Squad book) is very interesting, but I will acknowledge it probably won’t be for everyone. The two starting points for inspiration on this book are Who Put Bella in the Witch Elm? and the idea of: what if your protagonist was a guy who has never had to work hard for anything in his life? And then you swirl those ideas around for a while in […]
Probably my least favorite of these books.
I liked this, I did. But the first half was just an extended Holmes story (a pretty good one!), while the second half was basically pointless. I don’t think this should have been a full length novel. The content of the story just doesn’t justify it. The Valley of Fear was published in full in 1915 (after being serialized in The Strand of course), so by this point, Conan Doyle had been writing the character for almost thirty years. (This was also around the time […]
#CBR10Bingo: Award Winner – Malin reads another book she’s owned for many years (Bingo #8)
#CBR10Bingo: Award Winner (LA Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller 2013 and an Anthony Award for Best Audio Book in 2014) Supermodel Lula Landry topples from her third floor balcony and cracks her head open on the snow-covered pavement far below. Strangely, the paparazzi that were surrounding her apartment building earlier in the evening were nowhere to be seen when it happened. After careful investigation, the police rule the death a suicide, although the tabloids have all manner of conspiracy theories, the most popular being that she […]
Hollywood Horror Story
For as often as I listen to it, I’m not much of a fan of Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald, co-hosts of The Watch podcast. They both come off as smug and insufferable. But they have excellent taste in books, particularly crime fiction. Their suggestions have opened some new doors in a genre I thought I was familiar enough with. So they’re not THAT bad I guess; I just don’t listen to them talk about anything else besides books. Anyway, Newton Thornburg is probably the most obscure […]
Desperate Times
I listen to a lot of cozy mystery audiobooks in a year and I usually don’t review them. But I’m starting to worry I won’t hit my cannonball if I don’t start reviewing some more of the books I read, and so here we are. Earlier this year I finished the Agatha Raisin series by M.C. Beaton (well, at least what was written to that point), and needed a new series of cozy mysteries to listen to while driving. I’ve found that cozy mystery audiobooks […]
Just Enjoy The Ride
Part of my sudden interest in reading James Crumley was the news from this past spring which suggested Mel Gibson’s interest in adapting this book with famed Chinatown screenwriter Robert Towne. Gibson described the story as “basically Chinatown set in a 7-11 in 70s Montana, with a lot of cocaine.” First and foremost, Mel Gibson is a lousy human being whose continued popularity in the film industry is a national disgrace. I hope he doesn’t make this movie. But I hope someone less vile than him does (the Coens, […]
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