Book Reviews

Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip — two cold-blooded killers who, eventually, will get their comeuppance from the skeletal guy with the scythe — are tourists in Anhk-Morpork.  Well, not actually [...]

Sgt. Sibyl Sue Blue of the spaceport city of Hammond is just, as one of her police colleagues says, “a little bitty girl.” He says this after she knocks a [...]

Back around 2800 BC or 2700 BC — in other words, nearly 5,000 years ago — lived a Middle Eastern ruler who later became the inspiration for the hero of [...]

There’s something deeply attractive to the idea of bad guys doing good things. That was the idea behind the 1965 bestseller by E. M. Nathanson The Dirty Dozen, about a [...]

The cover of Menachem Kaiser’s book features several line drawings of large apartment buildings on an orange and white background that gives the appearance of having been Scotch-taped in place.  [...]

I’m the sort who, when reading a novel, looks for the title in the text.  Sometimes, it’s not there, but, often, I can find it.  And, usually, its placement in [...]

In 1989, Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel about a British butler, was published to great acclaim and great sales.  The book was soon turned into a highly praised [...]

Teddy Carella is the hero of Ed McBain’s fourth 87th Precinct novel The Con Man, published in 1957. Teddy — Theodora — was born without the ability to speak and [...]

Elmore Leonard’s novel Split Images opens in this grim way: In the winter of 1981 a multimillionaire by the name of Robinson Daniels shot a Haitian refugee who had broken [...]

At the center of Thomas R. Nevin’s revelatory, deeply felt and actively contemplative 2013 study The Last Years of Saint Therese: Doubt and Darkness, 1895-1897 are nearly two dozen sentences [...]