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…
Tag: NetGalley
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…
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…
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…
The Night Crossing
Author Robert Masello’s latest travels back for another go of historical fiction set in Victorian London. Two years back, Masello had Robert Louis Stevenson stalk Jack the Ripper in The Jekyll Revelation. Upping his game, Masello bites into the most-enduring of all horror stories, Dracula. The Night Crossing exhumes Bram Stoker’s background as he investigates, of…
The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a highly original mashup of genres. A “what if” concept mixing elements of Quantum Leap and Groundhog Day written as an Agatha Christie mystery. The conception is compelling, the story more-than-intriguing, and the fast-paced read irresistible. Congrats, Stuart Turton, on one incredible debut. Set in the early 20th century, Aiden Bishop…
Ohio
Ohio begins with a funeral and ends in murder. What happens in between is as depressing as a high school reunion, but man, Stephen Markley’s writing elevates the wrist-slashing fatigue into a Stanley Kubrick-like, art-house style circa Clockwork Orange. Still, Ohio is 500-page work that feels like it takes all four years of the riding…
Thrill Girl
Thrill Girl has all the ingredients of a great genre read. Set in 1950’s LA, you got the war-hero-turned-beat-reporter, a leggy blonde, gruesome murders, ex-Nazis, and smoking. A lot of smoking. So much that the pages are saturated with tobacco. Stirred, definitely not shaken, within, author Jack Curran mixes an exciting tale of murder, vigilantism,…
The Big Picture
Ben Fritz of the Wall Street Journal loves movies. He is passionate about the experience of communally watching a film, the unique ability for artists to tell their stories, and the Hollywood business machine behind it all. But man, he hates franchise features. From Marvel and DC to Star Wars and Star Trek to dinosaurs and robots,…
