Thomas Jefferson Parker has done well in the crime-story world, having written 16 well-received novels. The last two (LA Outlaws, The Renegades) featured LA Sheriff’s Department deputy Charlie Hood and the legend of a 19th-century Mexican outlaw Joaquin Murrieta, aka El Famoso. His newest opus, Iron
Despite his early books’ preoccupation with vampiric themes (which seem to be all the rage), if you haven’t heard of or read Charlie Huston (The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death), its probably because he hasn’t had a movie made from one of his books. Huston,
As long as I am banging the drum for short fiction, let me apprise you of the latest addition to the Akashic Books Noir Series: Boston Noir edited by Boston homeboy Dennis Lehane (The Given Day). Since the 2004 publication of Brooklyn Noir, that series has added some 30 titles,
For 25 years Lou Manfredo was a functionary in the Brooklyn courts and it is clear the knowledge and culture he internalized there is ably and compellingly exhibited in his maiden effort as a crime novelist in Rizzo's War (Minotaur Books). Especially noteworthy is his success in making
It is not uncommon for doctors (Ethan Canin, Daniel Mason), lawyers (Scott Thurow, John Grisham, Barry Reed), and television anchors (Jim Lehrer, Tom Brokaw) to venture into the novel writing game. One might think it would be a more common occurrence but as far as I know only bookseller Sonny
Californian Richard Lange (Dead Boys) has written a taut, sure-footed walk on L.A.'s wild side with This Wicked World (Little, Brown)--certainly not of the city of angels and movie stars, but the metropolis of hopeful and exploited immigrants, low-life hustlers, psychos, and all stripes
Texas writer James Lee Burke, author of 30 or so books (his Dave Robicheaux novels no doubt being the most well-known), and winner of two Edgar Awards for best crime novel of the year, likes to tell the story of submitting his novel The Lost Get-Back Boogie 111
Crime story writer Michael Connelly’s latest offering brings back cop beat reporter Jack McEvoy from what I consider the finest of his 20 novels, The Poet, a standalone story that leaves aside Connelly’s long-running L.A. homicide detective Harry Bosch series—though the lethal serial killer the
English writer Philip Kerr, who has authored 19 novels (including some children’s books) and found himself on Granta’s second “Best of Young British Novelists” list in 1993 (along with Louis de Bernières, A.L. Kennedy, Will Self, and Kazuo Ishiguro), may be most well known for what has
