Robert Jackson Bennett’s novel Mr. Shivers (Orbit) made its way into the scrum of books that have taken over the room where I sleep. I am not aware of anything previously written by Bennett or what prompted me to procure the book from his publisher. Or, over this past
In case you are wondering, the pop-up book has been around for centuries, more often referred to as a movable book. There was a wave of popularity in the U.S.A. in the 1930s, but it wasn’t until the ‘60’s that they achieved widespread appeal (mostly
The late and lamented Boston writer George V. Higgins wrote nearly 30 books, most of them pretty good. But none was better than The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Picador), which is being reissued in a 40th anniversary edition with a new introduction by Dennis Lehane. Set in Boston, Eddie Coyle,
The factual platform for Khalil Gibran Muhammad’s The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America is the appalling reality that the United States “is the world’s greatest jailer.” Though this may be taken as a commendation, let me assure it is a condemnation—
Of our planet’s largest species I understand why the whale receives more attention than the elephant. The Megaptera Novaeangliae, after all, has Herman Melville to once and forever create a metaphor and narrative to enchant homo sapiens while we busily eradicate big mammals from our ecosphere. Pachyderms have no
Having read a number of crime stories by Scandanavian writers (Peter Høeg, Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbo), I am wondering what the fuss is about, and moreover what the components of the Scandanavian genre are. Leaving such analytic concerns aside, another writer is joining the rising tide of north-country pulp
Though I am certain a regular diet from the overflowing stream of brain science would result in unconscious mimicry of various symptoms, I have continued to find neurologist Oliver Sacks’s (Musicophilia) case studies of neurological deficits and aberrations provocative and enlightening. As I did British literary consigliere Robert McCrum’
The relationship of the Israelites to capitalism is, of course, the stuff of ethnic mythology and racial slander—Jews are both the sniveling Fagin-like shylocks controlling the world’s economy and the ardent, anti-capitalist, revolutionary zealots. This is also the stuff of contradictions. Good thing Catholic University mentor
A number of Canadian authors of my acquaintance—Gil Adamson, Wayne Johnstonand, Michael Ondaatje—have sung the praises of Newfoundlandian writer Lisa Moore (Alligator). Now comes her second novel, February (Black Cat), and I am pleased to report I can see that the awards and accolades are justified. Based on
These days bookstore shelves are littered with biographies of defrocked, repentant (and repulsive), scandal-laden politicians, not to mention the sorry batch of whatcha-ma-call-its by their current and former wives, courtesans, and sycophants. Now I find it understandable that many people are fascinated by train wrecks, car
