THE FLIP SIDE OF PROFILING: COERCION & THE CAPTIVE MIND By Carla Norton Years ago, I wrote a true account of an astonishing crime that gave me nightmares: Twenty-year-old Colleen Stan was kidnapped at knifepoint, locked in a coffin-sized box, and held captive for over seven years. She was subjected to unthinkable deprivation and abuse. […]
I came to crime late in life, by which I mean that my preferred reading and my early novels had to do with the mysteries of different genres. But I have always been interested in 19th-century England: the dichotomy between the haves and the have-nots, the mansions and the slums, the low status of women […]
Top Ten Mysteries Set in Asia Two decades ago, I was waylaid by Asia. My original travel plan called for a lengthy stay in either London or Paris, but I stopped in Tokyo “on the way.” I never imagined that stopover would have me building a career as an editor, getting married, and raising children […]
British actor Arsher Ali who is starring in Arthur and George which airs on Masterpiece Theater spoke to us about Sherlock Holmes, acting, and much more.. TSM: Have you always been a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories? AA: Alas, no. But I do remember my first introduction to Sherlock Holmes. It was as a […]
ALWAYS THE FIRST TO DIE By R. J. Jacobs Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2022. $16.99 J. Jacobs may be an emerging name in the world of crime fiction, but he’s got the bona fides that make for a storied career. A practicing clinical psychologist for nearly twenty years, he completed a postdoctoral residency at Vanderbilt and […]
2021 Reviews Our reviews section examines the latest mystery offerings, covering books, anthologies, audio books, and DVDs. THE CLEANER By Mark Dawson London: Welbeck, 2021. $24.95 In this 2021 rerelease of Mark Dawson’s The Cleaner, originally published in 2013, John Milton is a black ops assassin, working for MI5. His latest mission goes badly […]
2020 Reviews Our reviews section examines the latest mystery offerings, covering books, anthologies, audio books, and DVDs. THE MISADVENTURES OF NERO WOLFE: PARODIES AND PASTICHES FEATURING THE GREAT DETECTIVE OF WEST 35TH STREET Edited by Josh Pachter New York: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road, 2020. $17.99 The surest sign that something has become a genuine part of […]
Interview: Douglas Preston on old museums and co-authoring bestselling thrillers… (EXCERPTS In 1988, Douglas Preston—then editor, writer and manager of publications for the American Museum of Natural History in New York—received a letter from St. Martin’s editor Lincoln Child asking him if he was interested in writing a book detailing the history of the museum. […]
The New Strength of Independent Bookstores While I am not consistently doing a happy dance—January and February here in Ann Arbor, Michigan, are long, cold months—as an independent bookseller, I have new reasons to be cautiously optimistic. After the closing of Borders, whose mother ship store was just a few blocks away, we’ve seen […]
Top Ten Fictional Women Detectives and PIs GUEST POST FOR THE STRAND FROM KARA THOMAS AUTHOR OF LOST TO DUNE ROAD, Thomas & Mercer Crime fiction has come a long way in terms of how women characters are represented—gone are the days where women were either office secretaries or nagging wives to the male […]