Poem: “Concrete and other measures of a neighborhood”
Concrete and other measures of a neighborhood By Patrick T. Reardon . Let me tell you about my neighborhood. Like any neighborhood. Like yours. . In the curb, in the [...]
Book review: “The Feud” by Thomas Berger
Thomas Berger’s 1983 novel The Feud is a screwball comedy which features two killings, a natural death after a fistfight, a botched suicide, a car bomb and a hardware store [...]
Poem: Chemistry
Chemistry Patrick T. Reardon . The 1904 book is chemistry formulas for mixing drinks, and, paging through, I wonder, if the bartender blueprint for Whiskey Daisy No. 3 calls for [...]
Book review: “The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death” by Timothy Taylor
Timothy Taylor raises many questions in his 2002 book The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death, and, like any good anthropologist, he doesn’t provide clear-cut answers. How could he? The [...]
Poem: First parents
First parents Patrick T. Reardon . Eve and Adam, the Bible’s Barbie and Ken, lived in the Garden, a Dreamhouse of empty echoing outdoor rooms, an insipid Paradise, except for [...]
Book review: “Cat Chaser” by Elmore Leonard
Early on in Cat Chaser, I realized that the 1982 novel just didn’t have Elmore Leonard’s usual pizzazz and punch. For one thing, George Moran, a rundown motel owner-operator [...]
Book review: “But Come Ye Back” by Beth Lordan
When Mary Curtin, a Boston nanny in the late 1950s, gets the telegram MOTHER DYING, she thinks, I’d be too late. She’ll never admit that she doesn’t know what she’d [...]
Book review: “The Art of Pulp Fiction: An Illustrated History of Vintage Paperbacks” by Ed Hulse
I ordered Ed Hulse’s The Art of Pulp Fiction: An Illustrated History of Vintage Paperbacks and started reading it soon after it arrived. The text is a lively discussion of [...]
Book review: “In the Aftermath” by Jane Ward
Jane Ward’s In the Aftermath is an earnest, even affecting examination of the strong waves of guilt, sadness and anger among family and friends that follow the suicide of a [...]
Book review: “Killer’s Choice” by Ed McBain
Detective Cotton Hawes gets off on the wrong foot when he’s transferred from the cushy, affluent 30th precinct to the rough and tumble 87th. He knocks on a door and [...]