Reviews

If a series debut rests squarely on the shoulders of the lead protagonist, Joanna Schaffhausen’s Gone for Good could hardly ask for a more worthy advocate than Detective Annalisa Vega. After four books (and counting) in her popular and well-received debut series,...

When it comes to regional crime fiction, one would be hard-pressed to find a more accomplished practitioner than William Kent Krueger. In both his Cork O’Connor series and his stand-alone literary mysteries, location is a central focus and readers can always count on...

It has been roughly three years since Megan Abbott released Give Me Your Hand, so fans are eager to snag a copy of her new novel, The Turnout. In many ways, this novel is a natural progression from her previous books looking at the culture of cheerleaders, gymnasts,...

Iceland continues to assert itself as the source of some of the strongest crime fiction being written today. Last year, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir released her award-winning debut novel, The Creak on the Stairs, during a worldwide pandemic and yet readers still discovered...

With such diverse examples such as Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird, On Writing by Stephen King and Walter Mosley’s Elements of Fiction, it’s clear that novelists sometimes enjoy experimenting when it comes to releasing a craft book. The act of writing is so personal that...

One of the joys of being a voracious reader is that it allows one to explore new writers on the scene, without ignoring our tried-and-true favorites. After all, a new writer today could very well be a legend of tomorrow. There is often a freedom in debuts, a sense...

Disclaimer: Catriona McPherson’s A Gingerbread House is dedicated to me, Kristopher Zgorski, so some readers may justifiably feel that I would be biased in my opinions of the novel. However, I am confident that the following review retains the high level of honesty...

It would be difficult to conjure up a more consistent writer than Carol Goodman. While each of her books is different in tone and style, there are unifying elements that mean readers who enjoy one of her novels will most likely find enjoyment in each of the others....

With My Darkest Prayer, his debut novel, S. A. Cosby leapt onto the literary landscape of crime fiction by showing himself to be a true wordsmith dedicated to crafting exquisite sentences and revelatory metaphors. Cosby followed this up with his break-through novel,...

Laura McHugh has made a career of writing literary mysteries set in atmospheric locations, but with What’s Done in Darkness she stakes her claim as the queen of rural noir. What’s Done in Darkness is a tightly-coiled narrative with the venomous bite of a rattlesnake....

It requires a unique talent to take what amounts to long-standing tropes of a particular genre then bend them ever so subtly in such a way whereas to end up with something that feels totally fresh and innovative, however that is exactly what P. J. Vernon has...

Photographs are virtually ubiquitous in all of our lives; we want to document those special moments – even sometimes the mundane ones – so that we can look back on them and reminisce. However, unless it is a selfie or a photograph we have taken ourselves, one rarely...

It appears we are in a renaissance period for crime fiction from LGBTQ+ perspectives. It is not that these stories never existed before, but now we are witnessing the end of the days when they were deemed “special interest” or hidden away in the farthest reaches of...

It is always astonishing that no matter how many domestic suspense novels are released, authors still find new ways into these twisted tales and inventive methods to fool the reader as to their eventual outcome. Katherine Faulkner does both – to stunning effect – in...

One of the buzziest anthologies of the year is How to Write a Mystery from the Mystery Writers of America, edited by Lee Child with Laurie R. King. The cover calls this work a handbook and that is the perfect way to describe this now-invaluable resource. The book is...

Experimental narratives have long been part of the literary tradition, which also means they have made their way into the crime fiction realm. Recent books like Janice Hallett’s The Appeal (told entirely via email communications) or modern classics like JJ Abram/Doug...

Melissa Ginsburg’s debut novel, Sunset City, was released in 2016 to great acclaim and amassed a cult following of fans who can still recall the joys of discovering a skilled wordsmith at the dawn of her crime writing career. It has been a hot minute, but 2021 has...

While it is not the work for which she received the William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant for unpublished writers, Mia P. Manansala’s Arsenic and Adobo feels so authentically from her soul, readers will recognize how this is the novel Manansala was destined...

Voracious readers know there are many excellent books released every year, but that finding something that has never been done before is rare. Janice Hallett’s The Appeal may fit that bill. Certainly we have seen epistolary novels and works that incorporate email...

The Last Thing to Burn is not Will Dean’s first novel, but it is likely to be the book that breaks him out to a wider, worldwide audience. This is the type of book that shakes readers to the core and becomes a touchstone reference in the years that follow. Jane – not...