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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

The first in a series of uniquely clever detective novels

The first in a series of uniquely clever detective novels

Anthony Horowitz possesses one of the crime genre's most original minds. He's proved it over and over again in scores of novels and several long-running television series. But nowhere is his cunning intelligence more in evidence than in The Word is Murder. It's the first of...

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NONFICTION

Popular Fiction

Why do some novels win literary awards?

Why do some novels win literary awards?

Let's see if we can figure out why this paper-thin work of fiction won wide recognition and a literary award for its author. Snow Hunters introduces . . . let's count them: eight characters in 226 pages: Yohan, a North Korean soldier captured by UN forces late in the Korean...

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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!

 

Cover image of "The Man Who Walked Like a Bear," a novel about crime in the Soviet Union

An honest detective confronts reality in Soviet Russia

Award-winning Chicago-based mystery author Stuart Kaminsky wrote sixteen police procedurals featuring an honest Russian detective named Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov. The first of these novels, Death of a Dissident, appeared in 1981 and depicted crime in the Soviet Union under Leonid Brezhnev....
Cover image of "Murder Under a Red Moon,"

Murder in Bangalore brings corruption into the light

Here's a murder mystery with an implausible plot and an unlikely heroine that's fun and rewarding to read despite the flaws. Harini Nagendra's Murder Under a Red Moon, her second effort about the Bangalore Detectives Club, stars nineteen-year-old Kaveri Murthy. Because she recently solved a...
Red Thunder is wacky science fiction.

Wacky science fiction from a master of hard SF

If there's a sub-genre that might be called wacky science fiction, then surely John Varley's novel, Red Thunder, is a prime example. Oh, it's not zany like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or Doctor Who. But as the story's protagonist and narrator notes, the technology at the center of the...
Cover image of "The Woman Who Smashed Codes" by Jason Fagone, a book about a famous woman codebreaker

The woman codebreaker who caught gangsters and Nazi spies

When Richard Nixon asked Chou En-Lai in 1972 about the impact of the French Revolution, the Chinese Premier famously said, "It's too early to tell." That terse response is generally understood to illustrate the Chinese ability to take the long view of history. But it might be more accurate to...
Cover image of "Empire of Secrets,"

British espionage as the Empire faded into history

Six pivotal events set the course of history in the twentieth century. The emergence of the United States as the world's preeminent economic and military power. The Bolshevik and Chinese Revolutions. World Wars I and II, often lumped together into a latter-day Thirty Years War. And decolonization,...
Cover image of "Tombland,"

Tudor England comes to life in this brilliant historical novel

When C. J. Sansom died early last year at the age of 71, he left behind a series of seven outstanding historical novels set in the time of Henry VIII. Illness prevented him from continuing the series during the final years of his life. Otherwise, we might have followed his uniquely insightful mind...
WWII's most highly decorated spy is the subject of Code Name Lise.

A woman was World War II’s most highly decorated spy

She was the most decorated spy in World War II of either gender. Her name was Odette Sansom (later Odette Hallowes). From 1942 to 1945, she served as an officer of Britain's Special Operations Executive. From November 1942 to April 1943, she worked in southern France as a courier for an SOE...
Cold Eyes

First Contact with the people of a Super-Earth

Dali Patel wakes up screaming. He thinks at first that he's dead. He's naked, trapped inside a narrow glass cylinder, and covered with goo. A young woman helps him out onto his feet. She explains that Dali is, in fact, a clone, hatched at the age of 18 aboard the UN starship Magellan. The two of...
Murder at the Savoy

The Swedish police procedurals that launched Nordic Noir

The ten Swedish police procedurals in the Martin Beck series launched the genre known today as Nordic or Scandinavian noir. Published from 1965 to 1975, they captured the reality of life in Sweden at a time of momentous change. The authors, a Marxist couple named Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, set...
Cover image of "Operation Double Cross,"

Were British double agents the key to the Normandy invasion?

A review of Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies, by Ben McIntyre. ★★★★☆. How British intelligence, working through six European secret agents, misled the Germans about the date and place of the Normandy invasion and helped make its success possible.

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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