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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

A clever whodunit author outdoes himself

A clever whodunit author outdoes himself

In A Deadly Episode, the sixth book in his Hawthorne and Horowitz series, Anthony Horowitz delivers a belated sequel to the novel that launched the series, The Word is Murder. And, true to form, he delivers a baffling story with a devilishly clever premise. Yes, Horowitz does...

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NONFICTION

How the Occupied nations helped win World War II

How the Occupied nations helped win World War II

Thousands of books memorialize the story of World War II in Europe. Every aspect of the conflict has received its due, from the fighting itself, to the deprivations on the home front, to the role of intelligence and the personalities of the civilian and military leadership on...

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Popular Fiction

Laughs in sci-fi? P. G. Wodehouse did humor better.

Laughs in sci-fi? P. G. Wodehouse did humor better.

The legendary English humorist Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975), known to readers as P. G., wrote about 100 books in a career that spanned much of the 20th century. His output included 71 novels, 24 collections of short stories, 42 plays, three memoirs, and a lot...

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Explore My “BEST OF the category” selections

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE BOOK?

When people ask me that question, I never know what to say. In a lifetime of reading, I’ve read many thousands of books. And I’ve reviewed well over 2,000 of them on this site. Picking just one as a “favorite,” or even a handful of them, makes no sense to me.

The problem is, I read for many different reasons. Perhaps you do, too. And I read many different sorts of books. Mysteries and thrillers. Popular fiction, especially historical fiction. Science fiction.

And nonfiction, history in particular. You’ll find hundreds of reviews in every one of those categories on this site.

Look to the right for a rotating random selection culled from throughout this site.

Happy reading!

 

The Galton Case

A classic detective novel that’s hard to put down

Reading as much as I do, it's highly unusual for me to come across a book I find so riveting that I lose track of time. But this masterpiece of detective fiction did that to me. Strangely, I had read the novel nearly half a century ago, when I was in the process of devouring all 18 of the Lew...
Cover image of "The Troubled Man," a Kurt Wallander novel

Farewell Kurt Wallender, we’re sad to see you go

A Review of The Troubled Man: A Kurt Wallender Novel, by Henning Mankell. @@@@ (4 out of 5). All good things come to an end, and for Kurt Wallender, this is it. The Troubled Man is aptly titled. The book tells the story of Wallender’s last big case, taking him deeply into Sweden’s politically complex past and arousing self-doubt that is more profound than ever.

Cover image of "IQ," a novel about a crimesolver

Sherlock in the hood: inner-city crimesolver

Most readers of detective fiction are well educated and live in comfortable circumstances. So it's not surprising that most novels about people solving crimes involve well-educated investigators who live in at least middle-class homes. There are many exceptions, of course. George Pelecanos...
A former British intelligence officer wrote Moscow Sting.

A former British intelligence officer imagines a female Russian superspy

Reading the sequel to a successful novel is always a chancy proposition. Writers and publishers know it as "the curse of the second novel." It's one of those rules of thumb that may hold true much less often than believed. But it does seem valid in the case of Moscow Sting, the second of four...
Cover image of "Unscripted," a book about "Succession" in real life

Drama in a real-life version of “Succession”

In the four seasons of the award-winning HBO drama, Succession, the sons and daughter of billionaire media mogul Logan Roy fight like children in a sandbox for their father's favor—and the nod to succeed him in controlling the family business. Now, in a brilliant new book by two Pulitzer-winning...
Cover image of "Our Game," a novel by John Le Carre

John le Carré on British espionage at the end of the Cold War

At the peak of his game, nobody writing espionage novels can match John le Carré. However, like anyone, he can't always operate with all cylinders firing. The proof of that lies in Our Game, first published in 1995. Though the novel is worth reading for what it reveals about life inside Britain's...
Cover image of "The Man Who Went Up in Smoke," a great example of early Scandinavian noir

They invented Scandinavian noir

Some mystery novelists trace the origins of their craft to any one of several nineteenth century writers: Edgar Allen Poe, Willkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, and others. But there appears to be a consensus among contemporary writers—at least among those who are partial to police procedurals—that...
Cover image of "Custer's Trials," a biography of George Armstrong Custer

A superb biography of George Armstrong Custer

When we learned American history in school, a few easily identifiable names stuck in our memory. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, of course. Thomas Jefferson, FDR, and John F. Kennedy, probably (though Kennedy was after I'd left for college). But high on the list is one man who was never...
Cover image of "Land of Dreams," a novel about mythmaking and murder in Hollywood

What lay beneath the glittering surface in Golden Age Hollywood

Three big things happened in America in March 1933. On the fourth day of the month, Franklin Delano Roosevelt took the oath of office as President. He immediately declared a national banking holiday, temporarily closing every bank in the US and freezing financial transactions. And on March 10, a...
Cover image of "Blue," a book that asks, Should police police themselves?

Should police police themselves?

Despite the Serpico scandal that roiled the New York Police Department in the 1970s, despite all the tales about corruption in the Chicago Police and the low esteem in which all police have been held in the public mind for much of U.S. history, it's likely that no police department in any large...

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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