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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

A young police detective pursues an escaped Nazi spy

A young police detective pursues an escaped Nazi spy

Nazi Germany reportedly dispatched as many as 135 spies to Britain during World War II. And, according to numerous historical accounts, every single one of them was either captured or turned themselves in to authorities. (At least one didn't fit the pattern, though. He...

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NONFICTION

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.

Check out our rotating random selection here, culled from throughout this site.

Happy reading!

 

The Dark Hours

Harry Bosch teams up with Renée Ballard again

Harry Bosch is getting old. Years earlier, he was forced to retire from the LAPD. After a stint with a small police force in the San Fernando Valley, he obtained a P.I. license as a way to continue following up discreetly on the cold cases that eluded him while he was on the job. Though aging, he...
Cover image of "The Soul of Viktor Tronko," a novel about the mole in the CIA

Digging down deep to find the mole in the CIA

At the time, few if any inside the Agency would have called him a "mole." That term didn't enter wide use until the publication in 1974 of John le Carré's novel, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. But for a decade in the 1960s and 70s, the CIA's counterintelligence chief, James Jesus Angleton, turned the...
How We Got to Now is one of the 10 best books about innovation.

10 best books about innovation

Today innovation is customarily associated with the digital revolution and Silicon Valley. Up to a point, that’s fitting, since how most of us in the world’s wealthy nations now live our lives has changed in major ways as a result of work done in what is generally called the tech industry. But...
Cover image of "2054,"

Who murdered the US President?

Suddenly, with nothing in his medical history to indicate it might happen, the President of the United States slumps to the floor, victim of a massive heart attack. He dies shortly afterward. The postmortem reveals a hugely enlarged organ that bears no resemblance to the president's heart. Even on...
Cover image of "Invasive," a novel about genetic engineering

Genetic engineering, designer ants, and murder

We live in an era when breakthroughs in science and technology have immeasurably improved our lives. And we're told by many of those in high tech that unimaginably new wonders are in store for us. Yet most of us are cautious, if not fearful—and for good reason. Our oceans are clogged by plastics...
Cover image of "Zealot," one of the great books about Jewish topics

Worthy books about Jewish topics

Only when I glanced through the archives of this blog did I realize that I'd read and reviewed so many excellent books about Jews and the Jewish experience. Though I'm not observant, I was raised in the faith and still identify myself as Jewish, and I probably pay more attention to the news from...
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...

The Chicago Mafia, “body-laundering,” and the Talmud

A legendary hit man for the Chicago Mafia named Sal Cupertine is spirited off to Las Vegas in a refrigerated meat truck after a botched job. There, after six months of radical plastic surgery and cramming with the Torah and the Talmud, he resurfaces as Rabbi David Cohen in a thriving suburban...
Cover image of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," the first of the Lisbeth Salander novels.

The magical Lisbeth Salander novels

To date (January 2021), a total of six books have been published in the Millennium Series originated by Swedish author Stieg Larsson. Larsson wrote the first three Lisbeth Salander novels in a projected series of ten before suddenly passing away at the age of fifty in 2004. Three new books were...
Cover image of "Pathogenesis," a book that shows how disease shaped history

How microbes have shaped world history

The surprises start on page three. "If one of our distant ancestors hadn't been infected by a virus hundreds of millions of years ago," Jonathan Kennedy writes, "humans would reproduce by laying eggs." In Pathogenesis, Professor Kennedy sketches the often-decisive role of infectious diseases from...

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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