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Read it and shiver – and laugh
By Paul O’Connor CORPORAL BOSKIN’S COLD, COLD WAR: A Comical Journey. By Joseph Boskin. Syracuse University Press. Hardcover. 178 pages. $24.95. As a scholar of American culture, Prof. Joseph Boskin is very familiar with the work of Joseph Heller. As a Korean War-era draftee, Corporal Boskin can attest to the accuracy of Heller’s masterpiece, Catch-22.…
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Wexford is still Wexford
I’ll be tidying up from 2011 for a while. Somehow, life intervened, and I got behind with reviews toward the end of the year. Here’s a review of a book that Bob Moyer read during his trip to Germany, a review that somehow did not get posted in a timely fashion. But hey, the book’s…
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H Is for Happy New Year
When it comes to mysteries, I usually like cozy, village-type mysteries better than ones featuring hard-boiled detectives and on-page violence. But there are exceptions. I enjoyed Sue Grafton’s series starring P.I. Kinsey Millhone way back when she was working through the early letters of the alphabet. Then somehow I lost touch with Kinsey around “M”…
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A thought-provoking new look at the Father of Our Country
We all know that our Founders were devout, practicing Christians favoring small government and no taxes, right? Guess again. Or better yet, read Paul O’Connor’s review of a new biography of George Washington on Briar Patch Books. By Paul O’Connor WASHINGTON: A LIFE. By Ron Chernow. The Penguin Press. 817 pages. Hardcover, $40. Softcover, $20.…
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Not really a Christmas book – but who cares?
This book arrived at the same time as several Christmas-themed volumes, so naturally I thought it was another holiday story. After all, its title is Twelve Drummers Drumming. So I put it on the stack right under Anne Perry’s annual Christmas mystery. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the action takes place in the…
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Back to the beginning
Bob Moyer has kindly sent me an early Christmas present: a new review for Briar Patch Books. I’m most grateful, as always. By Robert Moyer THE AFFAIR. By Lee Child. Delacorte Press. 405 pages. $28. REACHER: THE PREQUEL. How about REACHER BEFORE HE WAS REACHER? Whatever you call it, this adventure is proto-Reacher. Lee Child takes…
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Need Christmas spirit? Read (or listen to) this book
Talk about getting into the Christmas spirit: In the past couple of weeks, I’ve read two enjoyable novels in which a murder is committed at Christmastime in a large English country house where lots of people (i.e., suspects) are snowbound. Save from those details I’ve just listed, the two books could hardly be more different.…
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Christmas reading arrives
For nine years now, Anne Perry has been writing a short novel for Christmas, drawing on her expert knowledge of Victorian England, as well as some of her familiar characters. For Perry’s many fans, the arrival of her latest holiday book is as much a herald of the season as the parade, the bell ringers…
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Rita Mae rides again
The prolific author Rita Mae Brown now gives us a new book in her “canine mystery series” each fall, to tide us over while we wait for the new book in her Mrs. Murphy mystery series (feline and canine) to arrive in spring. By Linda Brinson MURDER UNLEASHED. By Rita Mae Brown. Ballantine Books. 267…
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All aboard for a magical ride
Because I listen to audio books when I drive, I’ve developed a rating system that involves how far extra I’ll drive to keep listening to a book if I reach my destination in mid-chapter – or even mid-book. This one cost me a lot of extra miles and gas. But that investment paid off handsomely…