Killer books

This is going to be a “quick and dirty” post, which is what we print types always called stories we just bang out on deadline to get them over and done with. I have no deadlines, but I’ve been meaning to write about these three books from first-time crime novelists for awhile, and so before I [...]

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And then there was Agatha

During my recent malaise, I happened on Joan Acocella’s excellent story in the August 16th edition of The New Yorker, “Queen of Crime,” about how Agatha Christie created the modern murder mystery. It reminded me how I went straight from Nancy Drew and The Dana Girls to Christie’s whodunits and never looked back. She ushered [...]

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‘I’d know you anywhere’

The headline writer in me wanted to call this post “Catch and release,” but I realized I was diminishing the subject just to get your attention. ”The one who got away” doesn’t really work either because Laura Lippman’s new novel is not just about a woman who survived a serial killer’s abduction as a teenager.  It’s also the story [...]

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Woundikins!

Call it malaise, or maybe ennui. Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s lupus mist. I think it started Monday when I showed up on time for my dentist’s appointment — but a week early. So I went on to the grocery store for supplies, and the heat index was like 107. I spent Tuesday in a [...]

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Yes to the dress

I’d like to think of my clothes as vintage chic, but, really, they’re just old ordinary. I do have a hat that belonged to my grandmother, its wide brim now more yellow than the original cream. Also a darling if impractical little black Kate Spade purse I discovered on a junking expedition with Cousin Gail. My best find ever is a [...]

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French’s Ireland

Some writers have the gift of immersing you so completely in their world that you look up from the page with a start, surprised by the reality of your living room or cafe corner, or, heaven forbid, cramped airport seat, wherever you happen to be reading. Tana French whisks you away to Ireland with not so much a brogue [...]

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Off the road

Unlike Carl Hiaasen, who uses Day-Glo colors in his almost-black comedies of Florida, John Brandon goes for the dark side of the palette in his second novel, Citrus County. This disquieting tale of adolescent crimes of the heart and worse plays out in a off-the-road, middle-of-nowhere world of muddy browns and greens, mosquitoes, mushrooms and mildew.  This is [...]

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Skink and skank

I fully expect Clinton Tyree to garner a number of write-in votes in the upcoming Florida gubernatorial election. Or some may just scribble ”Skink,” the name the former governor of the Sunshine State goes by these days in Carl Hiaasen’s wild and crazy novels. Ever since Tallahassee politics drove him off the deep-end, Skink has been hiding in [...]

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