Dungeons & Dragons was never cool. Fun? Totally. But the game cannot, and probably never will, rise above its stigmata of being a holy place for geeks, dweebs, nerds, and the Simpson’s Comic-Book Guy. Polo-shirt wearing drones need not apply. Thanks to Stranger Things, the game has regained some of its collective groove. A counter-culture…
Category: Book Reviews
Bearskin
Guys, and c’mon talking real men here, are similar to baseball. Guys need a task. A job to do. A solid win and pride in the task. That job gets too complex? Then you go into extra innings. Bearskin is a true man’s novel. Part crime thriller, part observational literature. Tactical. Contemplative. Silent. Compelling. You…
’80s Teen Movies
Life moves pretty fast. Sage advice of a hallowed teen from the mid-1980’s, when Reaganomics’s voodoo charmed ideologies, a generation of kids were being raised at the shopping mall, and Huey told us to get back in time. Hollywood noticed these changes and, like John Bender piercing his ear in triumph, transformed pop-culture into the…
Believe It
Nick Foles cries. A lot. But he can afford to. He’s the Super Bowl MVP of the E-A-G-L-E-S Eagles. More to the point, I endorse his message of finding strength through weakness. Foles’ honesty is refreshing as he is not playing for fame, for wealth, or an accumulation of trophies. He’s playing to honor God….
The Syndicate
The Pictures was author Guy Bolton’s entry into pure, noir fiction. The read was golden as it was retro. Why then does his follow-up, The Syndicate, lack any of that LA snap? The Pictures was smooth, single-malt brewed to a James Cain beat. As a sequel, The Syndicate is as memorable as that last Coors…
A Conspiracy Of Tall Men
Author/Creator/Director Noah Hawley. You know him. You dig him. From the trippy, mind-sprawling chaos of FX’s Legion to the Coen Bros-cool re imagining of Fargo, Hawley gets deep, he gets fun, he gets weird. Following the success from his latest novel, Before The Fall, Grand Central Publishing reissued Hawley’s debut novel, A Conspiracy Of Tall…
November Road
Beautifully efficient. That is how I described Lou Berney’s writing style to my wife referencing his latest, and allow me to add the hyperbole of masterful, book November Road. Within November Road, Berney fashions the perfect genre mashup. The tale is a first-rate crime story, that’s also a chase story, joined with a love story,…
Debris Line
The thriller Debris Line interchanges the sunny, idyllic life of coastal Portugal, crashing it into a star-spangled actioneer of drugs, hijacking, murder, and oh yes, crimes even more sinister. Matthew FitzSimmons runs his dangerous version of To Catch A Thief by placing his team of semi-retired hackers and military ops at play on vacation and…
Wrecked
Joe Ide opens Wrecked, the latest of his neo-noir IQ series, with the book’s protagonist in a world of trouble. For Isaiah Quintabe, the eponymous hero of Ide’s novels, his world consists of the mean streets of LA. Yet, hot to help a desperate artist track down her long-lost mommy, IQ’s world expands as he…
