by Scott D. Parker (To commemorate the Apple TV series, Manhunt (the story of the search for John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators), here is a review (from 2020) of a book that looks at the first attempt on Lincoln's life.) There's a moment in The Lincoln Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Killed America's 16th President - and Why It Failed where the President-elect hears dire warnings from two independent sources that his life is in danger and he takes action. He agrees to sneak out of a pre-Inauguration Day party in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, don a disguise, and be whisked away by train, all ..read more

You could say that the current Netflix series Ripley goes retro since it uses black and white. Of course that use reflects the era Ripley is set in, but for a different kind of retro connected to Patricia Highsmith, there is an old TV series called Chillers, which I hadn't thought about in a while until I saw Ripley’s trailers and began thinking about all the Highsmith adaptations there have been over the years. I wrote a long piece once about many of these adapations, starting with 1951's Strangers on a Train and running through the 2009 adaption of The Cry of the Owl (I wrote the p ..read more

by Scott D. Parker In his newsletter this week, author Rob Hart gave some recent recommendations, including one outside of his typical genre. I concur but mere days earlier, I had done the same thing. To quote a wise man, I have taken my first step into a larger world. How It Started My wife has read nearly every book Elin Hilderbrand has written. Back five, six years ago, I even created a list on my phone with the books we had so that if I found myself at a bookstore and I happened upon one of her books, I knew which ones we owned. Heck, we even went to an event where we got to meet her ..read more

By Scott D. Parker When was the last time a book delivered an emotional response? One of my science fiction book club guys texted me earlier this week. He had finished a book that he admitted wasn’t great, but the sad ending actually touched him. He recalled the book  REDSHIRTS by John Scalzi as one about which I very much had an emotional response. Heck, that response smacked me in the face so much so that I could barely relate the ending of the book to my wife without bawling. Later, when the book club met, I still was rather emotional in explaining why I loved the book so much. My f ..read more

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by Scott D. Parker I’m not sure how many folks might need to read Chip Copley’s Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age, but I certainly did.  Now, before we go any further, I must say that I am not going through a midlife crisis. At all. Most people who see me ask me why I’m always smiling or be-bopping to a song I hear in my head. I’m an optimistic, happy person. Have been for as long as I can remember. But this book ignited something in me. I refer to my current age as “fifty f*cking five!” so you know where I am in life. It’s true that when it comes to, say ..read more

The other day I saw the teriffic Love Lies Bleeding. It's a refreshing blast of neo-noir that certainly upholds the promise of director Rose Glass' first film, Saint Maud. Set in New Mexico in the late 1980s, the film unfolds with the heightened realism of any topnotch noir, until a key climactic moment toward the end. What happens in that moment I'm not about to give away, though anyone who's seen the film will know exactly what I'm talking about. It's something that in every way, stylistically and otherwise, comes out of nowhere, and it takes the film, for a few essential moments, into anoth ..read more

By Scott D. Parker I’ve now watched the second season of Amazon’s “Reacher” and not only am I caught up, I’m all in. Let’s be fair: I was all in back in the first fifteen minutes of the pilot episode, when Reacher did the Sherlock Holmes thing to the local police detective. Alan Ritchson’s portrayal of Reacher is fantastic. He has the brawn to take on anyone and be scared of no one. He has the brain to outthink any opponent, usually before they even realize it. But it’s Ritchson’s gentle demeanor that is probably my favorite part of the character on screen. Season 1 is Reacher the Wanderer, t ..read more

By Steve Weddle Bobby Mathews is a University of Alabama fan, but don't hold that against him. He won the Derringer Award for Best Long Story with "Negative Tilt," the title track for his new collection. He won awards with the Alabama Media Professionals for his novel, Living the Gimmick, and for his short story, "The Ghost of Buxahatchee Creek." And, about Mathews's 2023 novel, Magic City Blues, Peter Farris said: "Somewhere at the great poker game in the sky, Donald Westlake, Robert Parker and James Crumley are raising a glass to Magic City Blues." Now Bobby Mathews is here to chat ..read more

By Scott D. Parker (This is a rerun, originally written in 2022, but this is a perennial reminder that Resistance is always present and we need to keep it at bay.) Where has this book been all my writing life? Well, right in front of me, the entire time. I’ve known about Steven Pressfield for a good number of years. In fact, I have his blog feed in my Feedly app and I am a subscriber to his email. But in all that time, I had never sat down and read his most famous non-fiction book: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles. I guess I just wasn’t ready for ..read more