Posts Categorized: Guest Posts

Dunn’s Conundrum: A Real Find

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Jared Shurin reviews books for one of our favorite websites, Pornokitsch. Today he shares his admiration for Stan Lee's darkly funny espionage thriller Dunn's Conundrum. First, to clear away any misconceptions, this is not the Stan Lee that appears in all those awful Marvel movies, this is a completely different Stan Lee - an advertising man, in fact, who wrote a couple political thrillers in his spare time. In fact, if you had to compare this Stan Lee to someone in the comics industry, the best choice would be Warren Fucking Ellis, as Dunn's Conundrum is a tangled, blackly comedic thriller about espionage and the dangers of information. Certainly there's great power AND... more

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Tom Kakonis: The Best Hardboiled Writer Working Today

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Criss Cross by author Tom Kakonis

Don Herron is a crime fiction reviewer and an acknowledged expert on the hardboiled greats Dashiell Hammett and Charles Willeford, two authors that are hard to match, much less top. But now he says there's a writer on the scene who is in the same league... Okay, so you’ve read Hammett and you’ve read Raymond Chandler, and you still want more great hardboiled writing. I’m not going to give a personal recommendation to a lot more, but then I’m tough. I think the novels The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity by James M. Cain and Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson are great. You won’t go wrong reading the crime novels of the black ex-patriat writer Chester... more

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How “Blanche On the Lam” Inspired Naomi Hirahara

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Our guest blogger Naomi Hirahara is the award-winning author of the mysteries featuring gardener-sleuth Mas Arai: Summer of the Big Bachi, Gasa-Gasa Girl, Blood Hina, and the Edgar Award-winning Snakeskin Shamisen. Hirahara is the past president of the Southern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America. Today she talks about how much she loves Barbara Neely's Blanche on the Lam. Before Mma Precious Ramotswe came on the American scene, there was another “traditionally built” sleuth who had been introduced to mystery readers here--Barbara Neely’s Blanche White, an African-American housekeeper in the South who is on the run for writing some bad checks in the first book in the... more

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Bragg: Credit Due

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Whenever long term mystery fans gather there is often talk of obscure private eye series still considered to be gems of the hardboiled genre, like Jack Lynch's Bragg novels. These long out of print, usually paperback original series, are learned about by word of mouth from one mystery fan to another. This action often causes mini-tsunamis on Internet used book sites as the new fan seeks out the titles to which they have been referred.  Tattered copies often change hands for ridiculously high prices for what are slim volumes with bad ‘70s cover art. However, it is the words between those tattered covers that keep readers rediscovering the series again and again. Other series falling... more

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Delilah West – Crime Fiction’s First Female Private Eye

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Death is Forever by author Maxine O'Callaghan

Bestselling author Marcia Muller, creator of the Sharon McCone mysteries, talks about her fondness for Maxine O’Callaghan’s groundbreaking private eye, Delilah West. Before dozens of fictional female private investigators took to the mean streets, Delilah West had already solved her first case, in the short story, “A Change of Clients.” Before dozens of women authors began to alter the face of a previously male-dominated subgenre, Maxine O’Callaghan introduced her engaging detective to wide audiences in the action-packed and emotionally charged novel Death is Forever. Now this impressive start to an excellent series has been re-issued by Brash Books. Readers who are already... more

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