• THE WEATHER IS BAD One of the many things that impresses me about Michael Connelly is that he manages to bring drama and suspense to Los Angeles, where the sun is always shining. You’d think that the criminals would simply put down their guns and say, “Wow, what...
The fact that usable DNA can survive for hundreds, if not thousands of years after the death of an organism. It all depends on how securely the body has been protected from light, heat, water, and oxygen. Recently archaeologists found the bones of England’s King...
Silence of the Lambs This was probably the first serial killer movie I watched and it set the bar for all the others. The beautiful monster, Hannibal Lecter, stayed with me throughout my life. I devoured all the movies, the wonderful TV show, but have yet to...
If you’re like me (Sam the Eagle voice: “And you MUST be”) you have a noirish soul. Like any kind of a soul, this occasionally needs tending to, looking after, I mean. Feeding, like a racehorse from Hell or a bonsai tree somebody gave you once but nobody really...
This book is the second with the same editor. The first, Full Fathom Five, was non-fiction, Paraiso is fiction. I found that the same editor was much more invasive and persnickety with fiction, even down to punctuation. I happen to love ellipses (…) and he hates...
This is not my list of best all-time crime books, or a list of my favorites, but instead this is a list of those books that, for whatever reason, ended up scaring the bejeebies out of me. 1. I THE JURY by Mickey Spillane (1947) – I picked this up in a used...
