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…
Happy As Lazzaro
An odd yet beautiful film. However, its morality play center and rambling narrative diminishes the film’s quirkiness The first act of the Italian film Happy As Lazzaro focuses on naïve, worker-bee Lazzaro, an all-around good-guy who’s as gullible as Charlie Brown. He, along with his fellow working community, is exploited by a tobacco heiress as…
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…
Chapter 11 – Duplex, San Gabriel
Valentin and Emily were together in bed. The sheet, rising and falling with their pronounced breathing, covering their perspiring bodies, both wet with love. The window was cracked open but any breeze was negligible. Too hot outside for it to only be spring. After the coos and promises of love quieted down, Emily asked the…
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…
Stoker’s Dracul
Vampires are real. And the biggest, baddest, best known of them all, that Transylvania tramp himself, is not simply Vlad the Impaler, but rather is something much older, darker, and even more evil. At least that’s what horror writer Dacre Stoker, great-grand nephew of some dude named Bram wants you to believe. Dracul, an official prequel…
