I ran across the most recent book by Ken Bruen in the Jack Taylor series, the 17th and it was just published this year (2024). Bruen has been a prolific writer, producing nearly a book a year since the first, The Guards, in 2001. The last book of his that I read was six years ago, In The Galway Silence, published in 2018. I wrote a brief by positive review. He did write Galway Girl in 2019 which we did not review, and it was East Coast Don who did the beautiful review of A Galway Epiphany in 2020. Then, he did not publish again until this year with the current book, Galway Confide ..read more

Okay, it’s not a mystery thriller, not an espionage novel, but if sleep has ever been a problem for you, then this short book is worth having on your bedside table. Hush, a Book of Bedtime Contemplations was a well-written, well-researched, and fascinating book by Rubin Naiman, Ph.D. He is often quoted by the sleep and meditation coach, Jennifer Piercy. Although, as a psychoanalyst, I don’t agree with all that he writes about dreaming, it is clear that one effect of his work is to bring dreaming into one’s waking life as a useful tool for self-contemplation.   Many of Naiman’s passages ..read more

In early 3/24, I read the first in a series known as the Maggie Hope Mystery Series by Susan Elia MacNeal. I really enjoyed the first book, Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, and now in mid 4/24, I’ve read the last in the 11-book series, The Last Hope. This isn’t the way I typically take on a new series, much preferring to read through the books in order so I can see the characters and storyline develop. I least I know I have nine more books available to look forward to.   Maggie is a compelling character. She is an Irish lass whose parents, or so she thought, were killed in a car crash when sh ..read more

 The Lost Coast by Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman is my first read of this father and son author team, although I’ve read and reviewed many Jonathan Kellerman ‘s books. It’s certainly different than the Jonathan Kellerman books that I’m familiar with, different characters and a very different type of plot. This one is actually the fifth novel in the Clay Edison series. Edison is a private investigator who had involuntarily left the police force a year before for reasons that were not fully explained. Edison was approached by a former client about digging into a land deal on the coast in n ..read more

 Cleopatra Caper is a novel by John Amos, his first novel reviewed in this blog. I thought the story had a clever beginning regarding two recent Oxford College grads who are fascinated with becoming private investigators. This is a period piece that takes place in London at the same time that Sherlock Holmes and his pal Dr. Watson are constantly solving cases. The two young guys, Flinders Petri and Thomas Pettigrew, open an office just across the street from Holmes’ office, and they are frustrated that while Holmes has a constant parade of clients, their office remains empty. Clearly, t ..read more

 The Real Hoosiers, Crispus Attucks High School, Oscar Robertson, and the Hidden History of Hoops, by Jack McCallum, was just released in March 2004. I don’t remember being more excited about getting to read a book, not just a sports book, but one that covered the all Black high school in Indianapolis, the first such school to win the Indiana State High School Basketball Championship in 1954 and 1955, but also their star, “The Big O,” Oscar Robertson. In addition to being about those high school teams and the legendary player, it was also about the rampant racism that existed in Indiana ..read more

Pelecanos is a supremely gifted crime writer. 21 crime thriller/mysteries to his credit - I've read them all. He's also an Emmy-nominated screenwriter/producer best known for what many critics have said is/was the best crime show ever on television: HBOs The Wire. Add to that other HBO titles like The Deuce, The Treme, and We Own This City. Look him up on IMDB.com And he graduated from my high school, the venerable Northwood HS in Silver Spring, MD . . . yeah, I'm biased. But I didn't know he was a fellow alum until well after I'd been hooked by his work.  Owning Up isn't a crime novel ..read more

The Diabolical is David Putnam’s 11th Bruno Johnson Novel. ECD, my fellow blogger and great friend of 52 years since we were beginning our post-college degrees, reviewed the 9th book, The Scorned about one year ago, and the eighth The Sinister about two years ago. All three books have been published by Oceanview Publishing, one of our very favorite publishing houses. At some time, were going to have to do a deeper dive to get all of Bruno’s background stories. In ECD’s review of The Scorned, he described that much of the first half was devoted to backstory and especially about feelings. He w ..read more

 This is the 10th novel in the Arkaday Renko series. I first read Smith’s novel Red Square nearly 10 years ago when I was going to have my first trip to Moscow, but for some reason that is now hard to fathom, I panned that particular novel. On the other hand, nearly a year ago, I read the first novel in this series entitled Gorky Park, and that was a great detective story that took place under the frightening reign of Putin, and there were major forces to deal with when any blame on Putin or his cronies was suggested by the facts Renko was uncovering. The 10th book, Independence Square ..read more

 Tired of reading nonfiction books about the WWII in the Pacific, what do I do? I listened to an audiobook fiction of WWII in England.  Mr. Churchill’s Secretary is a very clever story about Maggie Hope who graduated at the top of her college class and had all the smarts and skills to be a part of the British Intelligence Service. It was early in WWII, and England was preparing itself for the inevitable German assault, and Churchill was the newly elected Prime Minister. However ever talented she was, because of her gender, she was relegated to being typist #10 at 10 Downing Street ..read more