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Of crime and the river
Whenever a new Anne Perry Victorian novel arrives, I know I am about to be immersed in another place and time, a place that is sometimes heartbreaking and grim, but always fascinating. Perry out-Dickens Dickens in exposing the social ills and inequities of the Victorian age in England. And she makes you eager to read,…
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Off to the South of Thailand
It’s always a pleasure to run across another good author. And if you make this discovery by reading what’s billed as the first in a new series, that’s all the better. Colin Cotterill is, apparently, someone whose works I should have been reading already. He’s done quite well with a series featuring Dr. Siri, a…
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Listening and laughing
There’s an odd thing about audio books. I find that I can enjoy listening to books that I most likely would not read. That’s been true of some pretty heavy nonfiction. And now I’ve found it to be true of one of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books. I started to say “mysteries” or “thrillers” instead…
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Reading Hillerman in Hillerman country
A day in June found me in Tuba City, Ariz., on the Navajo Nation. My husband and son and I were camping in the Four Corners area where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah meet. This is Indian country, with large reservations occupying much of the area. Naturally, I thought of Tony Hillerman, who wrote…
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One of the best
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Goodbye, and thanks for the series
Bob Moyer says this about this review: “I had the privilege to hear Robert B. Parker read from his excellent baseball novel Double Play. Afterward, he answered questions in his gruff but somehow gracious way – until someone asked him about his ‘research’ on the times, Jackie Robinson, etc. Parker interrupted him and said, ‘Wait…
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Watch out: Here comes Miss Julia
Ann B. Ross of Hendersonville, N.C., is a delightful lady whom I’ve had the privilege of interviewing twice – once for the Winston-Salem Journal back in the 1980s when she published The Pilgrimage, a novel about two orphaned sisters traveling on the Oregon Trail, and then for Our State magazine when her 11th Miss Julia…
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Back on the mean streets
Bob Moyer has been reading Walter Mosley’s new series again – with pleasure. By Robert Moyer WHEN THE THRILL IS GONE. By Walter Mosley. Riverhead Books. 368 pages. $26.95 Leonid McGill makes only his third appearance in Walter Mosley’s new series, but we’ve seen his kind before — the hard-boiled kind. Short, stocky and deadly,…
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Kellerman on his game
What has Bob Moyer been reading lately? It’s a mystery. By Robert Moyer MYSTERY. An Alex Delaware Novel. By Jonathan Kellerman. Ballantine Books. 320 pages. $28. Mystery would seem a presumptuous title for a genre all about them. The Mystery here, however, is merely the moniker of an older-than-she-looks bimbo trolling the Internet for an older-than-the-hills sugar…
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If it’s spring, it must be Rita Mae and Sneaky Pie
Spring brings an abundance of new life and activity in the briar patch outside. Two bluebirds, I suppose a pair hoping to nest, have been ferociously attacking the windows of the office (a former screened porch) where I write. I’d love for them to find a home close by, but I just don’t think inside…