Book Review: One More Lie The murder of a child is a horrible tragedy. When a child is murdered by other children, that’s horrific. These visceral socio-cultural reactions form the backbone of One More Lie, the story of a convicted killer who just wants a normal life after being released from prison. As […]
Frederick Porter Wensley, Jack the Ripper, and Why You Never Want to be Second on the Stair Tower One of my favorite books on criminal investigations is nearly a century old. 40 YEARS OF SCOTLAND YARD was published in 1931 by Chief Constable Frederick Porter Wensley. I found an original hardcover in the back […]
A Sense of Place: Raymond Chandler, Sherlock Holmes, and Spies Coming in From the Cold Of course, crime fiction is about good ideas: who did it? The butler did it, they all did it, the detective did it, the narrator did it. We know who did it but will they be caught? We know […]
A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO POISONING Growing up, I always knew that one day I’d kill someone with poison. That was partly because I was fascinated by Agatha Christie novels, in which poison often plays a prominent role. Alfred Hitchcock used it to wonderful effect in his films — think of how Ingrid Bergman […]
Top Ten New England Suspense Novels I’m from New England, and something about the combination of landscape—craggy coastlines, blue-blood cities, university towns, and country roads winding into dark forests, and history—witch trials, whaling ships, the first constitution of the United States hidden in the hollow of an oak tree—has always made me wonder (and want […]
DVD Review: Queens of Mystery, Series 1 By Chris Chan Queens of Mystery is an amiable crime show, with a promising premise that starts solidly and could blossom into something brilliant in future seasons given the proper writing. The show centers around the investigations of the Stone family. Matilda Stone (Olivia Vinall) is […]
CONFESSIONS OF A STORY-TELLER I can’t say for certain when the urge to tell a story first came to me, but I suspect it was when I read Kipling’s The Jungle Book. It wasn’t a mystery, of course, like the books I was later to write, but I can remember to this day how the […]
DVD Review: Manhunt: Series 1, Blood, and London Kills, Series 1 This review will cover three newly released Acorn Media UK crime series, two British police procedurals and a Irish family tragedy. Manhunt: Series 1 Based on the memoirs of the police officer at the center of this drama, Manhunt is a three-part series […]
Lisa Unger and John Lescroart on Steinbeck I don’t usually list John Steinbeck as one of my favorite authors or early influences, though he is unarguably one of our finest writers. Steinbeck was a clear-eyed chronicler of American life in a certain place, at a certain time, for a certain person who might not otherwise […]
Dead Ringers – Sherlock Holmes Stories by Robert Perret Join Holmes and Watson on eleven original adventures, spanning their earliest collaboration to their service to the Crown in the Great War. Revisit A Study in Scarlet, return to The Copper Beeches, and learn the shocking truth behind the Bogus Laundry Affair. There will be murder […]