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Lay it on, MacBob
Oh Bob, Bob! Wherefore are thou Bob? I’d be tempted to say there’s something rotten in the state of Bob Moyer’s book reviews, but he obviously had a lot of fun writing this one. And after all, the play’s the thing right? Plus, there may be method in the madness. By Robert Moyer STAGESTRUCK. By…
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A chase with a twist
In advance of his homecoming from his European junket, Bob Moyer has been sending book reviews. I’ll have to reward him with more books when he arrives stateside. By Robert Moyer THE DEVIL SHE KNOWS. By Bill Loehfelm. Farrar Straus Giroux. 322 pages. $26. By page 43, both the bar maid Maureen and the reader…
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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
Before he roared off on a motorcycle, in a cloud of dust and exhaust fumes, Bob Moyer left us a review of a book by and old favorite. By Robert Moyer A DROP OF THE HARD STUFF. By Lawrence Block. Mulholland Books. 319 pages. $25.99 Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder, who has walked down many a…
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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,…