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MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

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For a century, the spy next door has been a reality

For a century, the spy next door has been a reality

Every self-respecting spy service equips agents with false credentials and dispatches them to conduct espionage illegally in other nations. But one country has been doing so for far longer and on a dramatically bigger scale than all the others. And the practice started more...

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Popular Fiction

American history, laughing all the way

American history, laughing all the way

Scoot yourself over, Huckleberry Finn! Make room! Here comes Henry Shackleford, aka Henrietta, aka Little Onion, with a tall tale ripped and twisted out of the pages of history that's like to set your britches afire. Yes, here's The Good Lord Bird, courtesy of James McBride, a...

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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!

 

Corrupt spies take center stage in "Twilight at Mac's Place" by Ross Thomas.

Corrupt spies and bent politicians in this clever murder mystery

Ross Thomas was forty-one years old in 1967, when his first novel was published. He had already lived an eventful life. Thomas served in the infantry in the Philippines in World War II and later worked as a reporter and a public relations specialist. Most famously, he also hired out as a political...
How to Hide an Empire

A supremely entertaining history of American empire

Is the United States an imperial power? No doubt, the overwhelming majority of Americans would answer the question with an emphatic no. But historian Daniel Immerwahr has a different take on the matter. In How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States, he argues with impeccable...
Cover image of "Enigma of China," a novel about Chinese corruption

Politics intrudes as Inspector Chen investigates corruption

No large institution is free of corruption. The temptation to gain personal wealth or power is too great for some individuals to ignore. Of course, the incidence of self-dealing may be lower in business organizations engaged in fierce competition. Corruption adds costs that top executives are...
Cover image of "Recursion," a disappointing new novel.

Spoiler alert: If you want to read this book, skip this review

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes In Groundhog Day, Harold Ramis's 1993 hit film, Bill Murray is caught in a time loop and repeatedly relives the same day over and over again. Blake Crouch's disappointing new novel, Recursion, is a lot like that. But Dr. Helena Smith and Barry Sutton are forced to...
The Cuckoo's Calling is the first book in the Cormoran Strike detective series.

J. K. Rowling’s thrilling Cormoran Strike detective series

Her name is Joanne Rowling, but she writes under the names J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith. The seven books of the Harry Potter series have sold a total to date of more than 500 million copies, making Rowling one of the world's bestselling and wealthiest authors. Six years after the publication...
Cover image of a novel that explores the human toll of social change.

The human toll of social change

In exploring "the hidden inner cogs and wheels of the lives of others," the Indian novelist Neel Mukherjee has written a book about the human toll of social change at its most extreme -- and won himself the Man Booker Prize for 2014 in the process. "What could be more interesting than other...
Cover image of "Machines of Loving Grace," a book about robots

Will robots seize the day?

In 1967, Richard Brautigan, the patron saint of hippiedom, published a poem in a collection under a title copied for this book. In the poem's final stanza, he envisioned a world run by robots that to so many readers then must have seemed entirely fanciful: I like to think(it has to...
The Night Watchman dramatizes Indian cultural genocide.

Louise Erdrich on Indian cultural genocide

Set in 1953 and 1954, The Night Watchman is the fictionalized story of Erdrich’s grandfather, an Indian tribal leader, who led the resistance to the cultural genocide promoted by the Federal government.

Cover image of "The Drop," a short crime novel

A short crime novel about Boston’s lowlife by a master of the genre

The Drop is peopled with the lowlife who used to be called "the criminal element" in Boston, Dennis Lehane's favorite stomping ground. Bob, a bartender; his boss "Cousin Marv"; Eric, a brutal ex-con; Nadia, a woman with a suspicious scar on her neck; a long-dead...
Cover image of "What Strange Paradise," a novel about the refugee experience

The refugee experience through children’s eyes

Sixty thousand years ago our species began migrating out of Africa, and we've been on the move ever since. Today, war, climate change, criminal gangs, and rising expectations of a good life drive ever-larger numbers of people from their homelands—usually in the hot countries of the Global South—to...

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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