In a not-too-distant future, yet another pandemic has sent the world into lockdown. But this deadly novel virus, with its 4% mortality rate, comes with a stunning twist. Those who survive emerge with a renewed lease on life, seeming almost enlightened as they shed their most negative feelings and embrace happiness instead. Teenaged Mariel Mudroch…
In typical fashion, what seems to be a routine assignment for Pike Logan and his Taskforce team turns into them having to thwart a deadly plot in India. A simple site survey for the CIA to assist in a security detail operation for the director sounds boring, but they will be dropped into the middle…
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was published on April 10th, 1925. It was not an instant success. Not until after Fitzgerald’s death in 1940, did it become part of the pantheon of Great American Novels, thanks to the support of literary critics, “among them his friends Malcolm Cowley and Edmund Wilson, and partly the…
A verse from a blues song “about girl troubles,” by bluesman Furry Lewis, encapsulates Professor Neil Weber’s life: the 1928 anthem “I Will Turn Your Money Green” is a bluesy anthem to the troubles Neil feels. I been down so long It seem like up to me Woman I love She done…
Glenn and Rachel Stanfield are your average well-off Indiana couple. Both have high-powered jobs and are active parents to their oldest daughter Abby, who’s away at boarding school near Chicago. But things haven’t been quite right between the couple lately. Glenn has been more irritable than usual, and talking about Abby while they’re preparing dinner…
Deputy Sheriff Ben Packard has certainly gone through a lot since returning to Sandy Lake at the behest of its dying sheriff Stan Shaw. Packard just couldn’t say no when his mentor asked him to take on the role of acting sheriff. After Stan passed, Packard was persuaded to run for sheriff himself. He looked…
Siblings Kagan and Hazel Bailey are almost uniquely 21st-century failures. Born into inherited wealth on their mother Janice’s side, their little family endured the abuse of patriarch Charles until he keeled over from a massive heart attack at the age of fifty-eight. No one was particularly sad to see him go, but Janice subsequently took…
A year has elapsed since the events chronicled in David Dodge’s classic crime novel, To Catch A Thief. Gentleman thief John Robie has earned the continuing parole of not only himself but also the Resistance comrades who were once imprisoned with him, by proving that neither he nor they were responsible for the string of…
Homicide Detective Kit McKittrick’s “origin story” is painful. The violence and abuse she endured as foster-child and street kid, before stumbling into the McKittrick’s barn as a teenager, have made her wary of romance involvement. A passion for justice propels Kit to right wrongs and protect her chosen family, at all costs. No wonder she…
One of my greatest regrets in being a voracious reader (to a tune, on average, of over 300 books a year) is that I don’t often find time to watch movies, at least not for their own sakes. So when I learned that Poisoned Pen Press is reissuing David Dodge’s To Catch A Thief, simultaneously…
