Suppose you deeply love your half-sister, Desiree, someone you’ve grown up with and been close to for most of your twenty-eight years. But two years ago you despaired about her self-destructive lifestyle and cut off all contact. Less painful,…
Category: Reviews
Review: Sheehan’s Dog by Les Roberts
Les Roberts’s latest hard-boiled crime novel introduces Brock Sheehan. Sheehan sits on his houseboat in a Lake Erie marina ten years after retiring as a persuader for the Irish organization on the west side of Cleveland. He drinks Bushmill’s Black…
Review: By Way of Sorrow by Robyn Gigl
By Way of Sorrow by Robyn Gigl My rating: 4 of 5 stars Erin McCabe and Duane “Swish” Swisher, criminal defense attorneys, are asked to defend a Black transgender woman accused of murder. Erin is a white transgender woman, and…
Review: Preacher Turned Cop
Only The Holy Remain by Alverne Ball My rating: 5 of 5 stars This thriller takes us to the streets of Chicago that author Alverne Ball knows well. It introduces Detective Frank Calhoun, currently on psychiatric leave. Calhoun, a sometime…
Review: Crime, Guilt and Identity
Blind Faith by Alicia Beckman Leslie Budewitz, writing as Alicia Beckman, presents her second non-cozy novel, a gripping story whose characters struggle with moral and religious issues and the challenges of their personal histories. Lindsay Keller is a lawyer whose…
“Once You Go This Far” review
Once You Go This Far by Kristen Lepionka My rating: 5 of 5 stars This complex and intriguing mystery is the fourth to feature Roxanne Weary, the Columbus, Ohio PI. Rebecca Newsome, in her fifties or early sixties, is found…
The Dark Hours: Bosch Backs up Ballard in New Connelly Mystery/Police Procedural
I’ve read all but a few of Connelly’s mysteries, and I just scarfed down the newest, The Dark Hours, the fourth in the Renée Ballard series. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all four, but was disappointed that Connelly pulled Bosch into the…
Zachary Carter, The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes
Can John Maynard Keynes teach us anything new for dealing with the problems created by the covid-19 pandemic? Hasn’t his thought been thoroughly integrated into current economics? (“We’re all Keynesians now.”) We can learn something, argues Zachary Carter, maintaining that…
Review: “Bitter Medicine” by Sara Paretsky
This is the 4th novel in the V. I. “Vic” Watshawski, P. I., series, an interesting story of murder and medicine, set in 1985 or ’86. The central issue is, who killed Dr. Malcolm Tregiere, the assistant at the women’s…
Review: Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart
These days we take female police officers for granted, even if they still don’t have the same status and representation that male officers have. These days we take the legal rights of labor—to organize and strike—for granted, even if management…