Three shades of noir
In the days of cheap paperbacks, publishers sometimes printed two pulp novels in one volume, back to back. Ariel Winter…
The Hillicker Curse
Michael Carlson's Bookends
Engrossing obsessions
With Blood’s a Rover James Ellroy finally finishes his ‘Underworld USA’ trilogy.
Lost in the fog
Inherent Vice, by Thomas Pynchon
This is America
Homicide, by David Simon; Death Dyed Blonde, by Stanley Reynolds
Murder in the South
When David Rose visited Columbus, Georgia, to write a story about capital punishment in the United States, it drew him…
Grace under pressure
In Alan Furst’s nine novels, it always seems to be twilight. The second world war is being fought off-stage, or, as…
How many deaths?
‘Suspicion is a shifting shade,’ Mark tells the police lieutenant who’s questioning him, and no one appreciates the tensions of…
Reheating the Cold War
In the days when the Cold War provided depth and context to all spy fiction, Charles McCarry was the strongest…
A second, darker diagnosis
In 1976 Godfrey Hodgson published In Our Time, a portrait of America in the years from ‘World War II to…
Down to the last detail
One might assume that the Oxford novel, like some long-delayed train finally pulling into Paddington, has run its course. Bright…
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