From the category archives:

52 novels

What’s taking so long?

November 12, 2007

Some of you have e-mailed to ask, “What’s taking you so long to read Joe Hill’s HEART SHAPED BOX?”
Good question. After all, it’s been down there in the Reading right now widget going on three months since August 21st.
I realize I can take some time to get through some of the books I’ve read, but [...]

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THE GODFATHER’S REVENGE, by Mark Winegardner

November 3, 2007

39 Not sure what to call this book. The sequel’s sequel? I’m being a little flip because I don’t know whether I liked this book.
Mark Winegardner wrote another pageturner. But it’s not as if he did it from nothing. The characters from the Universe That Puzo Made are already rich and well known.
It’s as [...]

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GONE, BABY, GONE, by Dennis Lehane

October 17, 2007

38 I picked this book for two reasons:

Lots of crime fic readers—Lehane fans a given—recommended it highly.
I knew the movie was getting lots of advance buzz, so I wanted to read it before I saw it.

That said, I waited to write this review (which I’m doing on November 11th… the post date says October 17th) [...]

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THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE, by Ed McBain

September 25, 2007

37 What do you get when you mix a drunk, down-and-out former-PI with a trio of beautiful girls and a murder?
The perfect Ed McBain novel, that’s what.
Well, perfect might be a stretch. Let’s just say it’s a perfect Ed McBain novel from his salad days. By the time THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE was hit [...]

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CON ED, by Matthew Klein

September 24, 2007

36 ”The road the Hell is paved with good intentions.”
Whoever uttered this famous quote—it wasn’t Samuel Johnson—knew what he was talking about.
Such is the tale of CON ED’s Kip Largo, a wannabe reformed con man who gets pulled back into the game to save his son from the States-side edition of the Russian Mob.
In the span [...]

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LISEY’S STORY, by Stephen King

September 18, 2007

35 I remember all the hype for this book when it dropped in hardcover last year: if I remember correctly, most, if not all, of it was through the roof. King even got interviewed by The Paris Review… a sure sign this “once-favorite target of critics, has been embraced by at least some in the [...]

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