1. The iStun: In Once a Spy, which I wrote in 2008, a spy uses a million-volt stun gun that's disguised as an iPhone. When the book was published in 2010, readers thought the device stretched credulity. Today not only are such devices available online for $35, they...
UNFORGIVEN I love this film for a number of reasons. Mostly it showed us the consequences of killing someone and the cast was just amazing on every level. THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES This is the one that was my “JONAH HEX” movie for real. When I was younger I liked the...
Watch: LONESTAR– My first crooked cop crush was on Matthew McConaughey’s Buddy Deeds from John Sayles’ 1996 flick about the discovery of a shallow grave outside a small border town in Texas. The moral complexities of the character were a revelation to me. Yes he...
Today we have a specific genre we call Crime Fiction, but crime in fiction existed long before that label existed. The early stories in Classical Greek drama are tales of incest, murder, rape and mutilation. The Bible offers equally terrible atrocities. Think of...
As a child growing up, my mother was always singing, and I was fascinated by songs she chose – traditional songs, hymns, hits from American musicals, pop songs in the ‘hit parade’ as we called it then. For some reason I thought that the lyrics of these songs would...
I read a lot of screenplays. Most of them are terrible. But when I find a diamond, the experience is intensely pleasurable—I’m swept along in the story, whipping through the pages, desperate to find out what happened to the characters I’ve fallen in love with....
