crime

  • H is for Gar Anthony Haywood

    Talking with fans of detective fiction, you tend to hear the same authors come up a lot, so it is a real pleasure to introduce readers to great crime novelists who are less well known, such as Gar Anthony Haywood. Hawyood’a Fear of the Dark won a Shamus Award in 1989 for best first private eye novel, introducing… Continue reading

  • Beyond Tea & Crumpets: Gritty Brits on DVD

    Think of British TV mystery and you may conjure up images of teacup wielding dowager sleuths, peering through the foxgloves at some suspicious goings on about the Village green. Lord Peter Wimsey and Miss Marple. Arsenic and tweed. But there’s a whole other side to British Crime – a tough contemporary side where hardened detectives battle it… Continue reading

  • Crime: Imagining Jack the Ripper

    Whitechapel, London, 1888 Would Sherlock Holmes identify Jack the Ripper using his astute powers of deduction? Arthur Conan Doyle never put Holmes on the Whitechapel set, but Lyndsay Faye pits the pipe-smoking, cognitively-advanced detective against the Ripper with disastrous results in her novel Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John… Continue reading

  • Crime: Stealing Mona Lisa

    You think someone would notice if the Mona Lisa (or La Gioconda, as I now like to call her) disappeared from a wall in the Louvre. But in 1911, the painting was gone an entire day before anyone reported it stolen. Guards actually did notice it was gone, but assumed it had been taken by… Continue reading

  • G is for Goodis, Dark Prince of Noir.

    I know – you were thinking G was for Grafton, but as the Kinsey Milhone series already made an appearance in a recent post on the most prolific female detectives, I get to resume my Alphabet of Crime with one of my all time favorites: David Goodis. Close your eyes and think of “Noir.” What do you see, hear, feel?… Continue reading

  • Crime: Evil under the Rising Sun.

    Watching the cherry blossoms burst forth and fade always makes me think of Japan. But my Japan is not a place of samurai, ninja and serene Zen temples. The Japan I think of is lit by neon rather than a rising sun. A place of tailored suits, leather jackets, discos and hostess bars, a place where… Continue reading

  • Crime: If You Like Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch series.

    In his 1950 essay The Simple Art of Murder, Raymond Chandler outlined the character of the modern detective, in words fit to quote at length: “…down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. … He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual… Continue reading

  • Nightstand Reads: Dana Stabenow

    Alaksa native Dana Stabenow is the author of two popular crime series set in her home state: nearly a score of titles featuring kickass Aleut private eye Kate Shugak, and a quartet of titles centering on straight-shooting state trooper Liam Campbell. The pair finally meet in Stabenow’s newest title, Restless in the Grave, released on Valentine’s Day.… Continue reading

  • Crime: The Man Who Was Thursday, by G.K. Chesterton

    Last week I talked about E.C. Bentley’s singular mystery Trent’s Last Case, which was dedicated to his old friend G.K. Chesterton; now that I’ve reached the C’s in my alphabet of crime, it seems only fitting to revisit Chesterton’s singular thriller, The Man Who Was Thursday, itself dedicated to Bentley. Although mystery fans will best… Continue reading

  • Crime: The Singular Pleasures of E.C. Bentley

    This year I’m reading my way through the mystery section, A-Z. Read along, won’t you? I’ve just had the best time reading E.C. Bentley’s Trent’s Last Case, a beguiling whodunit that prefigured crime’s Golden Age. It is 1913, and detectives are very much dominated by Sherlock Holmes and his countless imitators, such long forgotten ratiocinators as Sexton Blake, Duckworth Drewe,… Continue reading

  • An Alphabet of Crime: Killer B’s

    Arriving at the B’s in my project to read through the mystery aisle, I can’t help but notice some favorite darker mystery authors that I’d love to share. Next week I’ll try something new, but for now here are some old friends: Christine Falls, by Benjamin Black. Black has brilliance to spare. Having already written a layered spy novel to rival… Continue reading

  • An Alphabet of Crime: Margery Allingham

    I made a couple of New Year’s resolutions involving crime this year: to start up a regular weekly crime column here in ShelfTalk, and to alphabetically read my way through the mystery section at the Central Library, two authors/letters each month. My colleague Linda has done this twice, up to the letter G anyway, and so I… Continue reading

  • Finding a Hit Man at your Public Library

    The seasoned professionals at your library pride ourselves on helping our patrons with their every need. We are highly skilled at cleaning up messes and tying up loose ends, at rubbing out your troublesome irritations, and making problems go away. So we have a certain grudging admiration for the skilled operators seen plying their deadly… Continue reading

  • When journalists turn to crime . . .

    The other day a journalism student came to the Library wanting to try a novel by Edna Buchanan, one of her favorite reporters, and we began talking about why some of our favorite mystery/thriller writers (e.g., Connelly and Buchanan, among others) earned their chops on the crime beat or as investigative journalists.  Of course there’s… Continue reading

  • Trying to get back a stolen life

    Editor’s note: Susan Hildreth, our City Librarian, will be checking in with us from time to time to let us know what she’s been reading. I just finished reading The Girl She Used to Be by David Cristofano. This is the story of Melody Grace McCartney who has been in the Federal Witness Protection Program for… Continue reading

  • Staying Safe in Seattle

    Seattle is a very friendly place to live. It has one of the lowest crime rates in the country and, just over a year ago, Mayor Nickels and Chief Kerloikowske (who has since been tapped to be the new national drug czar) announced that crime had hit a 40 year low. But Seattle is still a… Continue reading