Historical mysteries, especially those set in the early decades of the last century, have been a staple of my reading diet over the past year or so. In the end, Wings of Fire disappointed me slightly. (But, then, most mystery novels do. They must operate on so many levels, and with so many moving parts, [...]
Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
Unquiet on the Western Front
Posted in Books, Crime Fiction on 16 May 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Same Page Next Week
Posted in Books, Reflection on 15 May 2007 | Leave a Comment »
For a while now, the editors of the New York Times Magazine have been contracting well-known fiction masters to write serialized works whose carefully doled-out segments, presumably, will give readers a spot of relief from reports on Darfur and advertisements for lingerie. This past Sunday, the magazine published the first chapter of an art-heist caper [...]
Fair—and Foul
Posted in Books, City Life on 14 May 2007 | Leave a Comment »
My mom recommended that I read The Devil in the White City in advance of my recent trip to Chicago. So I did. And I liked it. Crime, history, architecture, the seam-bursting vitality of a great city: What’s not to like? Since the book sold quite well, a wave of copycat works—books that use criminous [...]
Windy City, Winding Trail
Posted in Books, Crime Fiction on 11 May 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Here’s a review of the classic PI novel from which I quoted a while back.
HOWARD BROWNE, Halo in Blood (1946).
Circles. A halo is a circle. The Chicago Loop, where private investigator Paul Pine keeps an office, is a circle. Around the inner circle of the Loop are ringed outer circles, extending to Oak Park and [...]
Way Out West
Posted in Books, Crime Fiction on 4 May 2007 | Leave a Comment »
To provide content for this journal, I am strip-mining my file of brief detective-novel reviews. (I’ve been writing these little squibs for several years now.) This one covers a fine, fine work that I read a couple of months ago.
James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss (1978).
Crumley hits a series of notes that another virtuoso of [...]
Rookie Season
Posted in Books, Crime Fiction on 1 May 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Spring came along, and thoughts turned naturally to baseball—the crack of wood against horsehide, the sight of a fresh green infield, the annual return after a long winter of sentimental chatter about the National Pastime. Brimming with seasonal spirit, I read a mystery novel that uses the game (and the sepia-tinted memories of it that [...]
Karma Killer
Posted in Books, Crime Fiction on 25 April 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Season of the Monsoon, set in Bombay (or Mumbai, as Indians have called its since 1995), leaps forward from Bombay Mail both in time and in realism. I saw no serial killers—that I know of—on my visit to Mumbai. But I saw much else that Mann had noticed, and skillfully captured, before me.
PAUL MANN. Season [...]
Indian Winter
Posted in Books, Crime Fiction on 25 April 2007 | Leave a Comment »
In late January and early February of this year, I traveled to India. This was my first trip to the subcontinent, and it may well be my last—not because it failed to leave an impression on me, but because it left such a bewilderingly strong one. In fact, the title of this journal takes its [...]
A Fine Italian Murder
Posted in Books, Crime Fiction on 24 April 2007 | Leave a Comment »
The detective novelist Michael Dibdin, a Brit who lived in the United States and wrote about Italians crimes, died last month. Seeing his obituary spurred me to take down from my shelves a book by him that I bought years ago, on the strong recommendation of a friend, but had never read. So I read [...]
