Category Archives: Mystery

Roundup: February 2017

March 1, 2017 by Drew

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch Rating: 3 out of 5 The Short Version: Locke Lamora is a young thief at the head of a band of merry misfits known as the Gentlemen Bastards. Alternating between tales of his rise to the head of the Bastards and an ongoing story in Camorr that starts as a simple job but quickly expands to be far more deadly, it’s time to meet Locke Lamora… The Review: I had the highest of hopes for this […]

Categories: Fantasy, Fiction, Graphic Novel, Horror, Literature, Mystery, Spy • Tags: All Hail God Mammon, All the Old Knives, CIA, Comic Books, Douglas Preston, Elizabeth Strout, Fantasy, Fiction, Gentlemen Bastards, Horror, Jonathan Hickman, Lincoln Child, Literature, My Name is Lucy Barton, myths, Neil Gaiman, norse mythology, Olen Steinhauer, Pendergast, Preston & Child, Review Roundup, Roundup, Scott Lynch, Spy, Storytelling, The Black Monday Murders, The Lies of Locke Lamora, The Obsidian Chamber, The Tournament of Books 2017, Thriller, Tomm Coker

Roundup: January 2017

January 31, 2017 by Drew

Neuromancer by William Gibson Rating: 3 out of 5 The Short Version: A former hacker, crippled by a job gone wrong, is given a second chance at what he does best by a mysterious benefactor. Soon, he’s teamed up with an programmed version of his former mentor and a badass samurai girl to launch a major hack – but what is the real target of this operation? The Review: Neuromancer is one of those books that even non-speculative-fiction-reading folks have heard […]

Categories: Essays, Fantasy, Fiction, History, Literature, Mystery, Non-Fiction, Sci-Fi, Short Stories

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Roundup, December 2016

December 23, 2016 by Drew

Samedi the Deafness by Jesse Ball 4.5 out of 5 The Short Version: When James Sim comes upon a stabbed man, his life is upended. Who (or what) is Samedi? Why are people following him? What is the horrible plan that will happen on the seventh day? Can his own mind be trusted? The Review: Ball’s earliest novel is in some ways his most categorizable. It reads like a thriller in the mold of John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps or Hitchcock’s mistaken-man […]

Categories: Fantasy, Fiction, Literature, Mystery, Sci-Fi • Tags: Cibola Burn, Classics, Consider Phlebas, Culture, Fiction, Futurism, Iain M. Banks, James S. A. Corey, Jesse Ball, L. Frank Baum, Literature, Mystery, Normal, Samedi the Deafness, Santa Claus, Sci-Fi, Science Fiction, Science Future, The Culture, The Expanse, Warren Ellis

Roundup, October 2016

October 31, 2016 by Drew

The Grownup by Gillian Flynn 3 out of 5 The Short Version: A young woman on the margins, working as a fraudulent psychic, lands a gig investigating a creepy house and creepy child for another woman. What ensues is a classic gothic battle for sanity. The Review: Flynn’s voice is unmistakeable and it was great to hear it again, seeing as it’s been awhile since Gone Girl and we’re likely to have to wait a while longer yet for her next […]

Categories: Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Literature, Mystery, Non-Fiction, Poetry • Tags: A Head Full of Ghosts, A Thousand Mornings, A Visit to October Country, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Contagion, Dana I. Wolff, Disease, Exorcism, Fiction, Gillian Flynn, Heidi Julavits, Horror, Literature, Mary Oliver, Metafiction, Mikhail Bulgakov, North Brother Island, Novella, Paul Tremblay, Peace, Poetry, Psychics, Religion, Review Roundup, Reviews, Roundup, Russia, Speculative, Stalin, The Devil, The Grownup, The Master and Margarita, The Prisoner of Hell Gate, The Vanishers, Thriller, Typhoid Mary

Fifty Feet of Trouble

October 24, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: Nick Moss, last human PI in Los Angeles, goes from having no cases to several in the blink of an eye. But what could two missing girls, a missing familiar, and a mysterious vampiric paramour have in common? Knowing this town, more than Nick can handle – and with a fifty foot woman and a Kong involved, boy is that ever the case. The Review: Sometimes, a simple concept is all you need to make something downright brilliant. […]

Categories: Fiction, Horror, Mystery, Noir • Tags: A Visit to October Country, Advance Review, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Candlemark and Gleam, Fiction, Fifty Feet of Trouble, Horror, Justin Robinson, Mystery, Nick Moss, Night War, Noir, review, Reviews

Crimson Shore (Pendergast #15)

October 17, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: Intrigued by the prospect of a low-key case (and the promise of a very rare bottle of wine as payment), Pendergast and Constance head to the Massachusetts coast. What they uncover there, however, is a dark scene from the town’s history – and an even darker scene playing out in the present… The Review: One of my favorite things about the Pendergast series was, especially in the early going, the willingness to tightrope along the line of the […]

Categories: Fiction, Mystery • Tags: A Visit to October Country, A. X. L. Pendergast, Aloysius Pendergast, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Constance Greene, Crime, Crimson Shore, Douglas Preston, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Fiction, Horror, Lincoln Child, Mystery, review, Reviews, Thriller

The Final Solution

September 2, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: An old man, once a famous detective, has retired to keeping bees in the English countryside. When a young mute German boy arrives in town – accompanied by an African gray parrot – the old man must once more apply his powers of deduction to determine what happened to the boy, what the parrot’s reciting strings of numbers could mean, and who might have interest in taking the bird for themselves… The Review: In an odd bit […]

Categories: Fiction, Mystery • Tags: Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, England, Fiction, Germany, Michael Chabon, Mystery, review, Sherlock Holmes, The Final Solution, World War II

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Underground Airlines

June 22, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: Victor is a middle-aged black man working for the U.S. Marshals as a sort of bounty hunter – a bounty hunter of escaped slaves, in a present day where the Civil War never happened. When his latest case begins to spin out of his control, he finds himself in a position to potentially do something great… maybe even great enough to change the world… The Review: Imagine, if you will, a world where Abraham Lincoln was shot […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature, Mystery • Tags: Advance Review, Alternate History, Ben H. Winters, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literature, Mystery, Politics, Race, Reviews, Slavery, Underground Airlines

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End of Watch

June 20, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: Brady Hartsfield was put into a coma at the end of Mr. Mercedes. In the years since, he has come out of it but remains nearly vegetative – or so it would appear. But Brady has his old nemesis, Bill Hodges, on the brain and that brain has achieved some decidedly psychic capabilities. When otherwise healthy individuals begin committing suicide, Hodges is drawn into the case – a race against time not only to save those he loves, but […]

Categories: Fiction, Horror, Literature, Mystery • Tags: Bill Hodges, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Crime, End of Watch, Fiction, Horror, Literature, Mystery, Reviews, Stephen King, Thriller

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Raging Biblio-holism

The overwhelming urge to collect, consume, and consider books

Category Archives: Mystery

Roundup: February 2017

Roundup: January 2017

Roundup, December 2016

Roundup, October 2016

Fifty Feet of Trouble

Crimson Shore (Pendergast #15)

The Final Solution

Underground Airlines

End of Watch