Why do we read novels? We all know they aren’t true, but we allow ourselves to believe, to get caught up as though in a dream. Readers’ willingness to suspend disbelief is perhaps one of the strangest things about fiction. However, there are limits. Some readers will happily swallow stories with fanciful creatures, sci-fi […]
Category Archives: Authors
The Writer Inside Me
Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me (1952) established him as one of the preeminent practitioners of hardboiled crime fiction. A first-person confession of a small town deputy sheriff going on a murder spree, it is a frightening and gripping novel that earned Thompson the sobriquet “Dimestore Dostoevsky.” Stanley Kubrick, who directed two Jim […]
Leon Turrou: The Greatest Detective of them All?
by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones Look at the FBI’s official website, and you’ll find a reference to one of America’s greatest detectives, Leon Turrou. The website explains that in 1938 Turrou was the Bureau’s lead investigator into a German spy ring. However, this official FBI narrative observes that his “background simply did not prepare him for […]