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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

Those lady detectives in Botswana save baby elephants

Why, I keep asking myself, do I continue to read these books about two ladies who operate as private detectives in Gaborone, Botswana? After all, they're not really detectives. They don't investigate crime and almost never encounter the police. They "help solve people's...

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NONFICTION

He ran the morgue on 9/11. The job took years.

He ran the morgue on 9/11. The job took years.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Shiya Ribowsky walked to work. It was a beautiful day, and he was in no hurry. As director of identifications at New York City’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME), he knew death keeps its own schedule. Then the first plane struck...

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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.

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

Happy reading!

 

Cover image of "The Twelfth Department," a novel by William Ryan

From William Ryan, an intimate look at Stalin’s terror

Several English-language authors have written widely about crime in the old Soviet Union. Martin Cruz Smith's terrific Arkady Renko series is the best known of the lot, but John Le Carre, Joseph Kanon, and others have notably entered the genre. One of the best is a relative newcomer, William Ryan,...
Cover image of "The Ratcatcher of Berlin,"

US Special Forces and the CIA collide in Cold War Berlin

Veterans of intelligence agencies and the special forces crowd the ranks of spy novelists. Some have rightfully been hailed as masters of the craft—John le Carré, for example. Or, more recently, David McCloskey. Others have written worthy and suspenseful novels that illuminate the world of...
Cover image of "A Rage in Harlem," a classic Harlem detective novel

The famous Harlem Detectives enter a comic scene

So, here's Jackson, handing over a stack of money. "Hank was going to turn Jackson’s hundred and fifty ten-dollar bills into a hundred and fifty hundred-dollar bills." He was "the only man in the world who possessed the chemically treated paper that was capable of raising the denomination of...
Cover image of "Metropolis,"

How cities have built civilization and shaped human history

When I was born in 1941, about six months before the United States entered World War II, the world's three largest cities were New York, Tokyo, and London (which had been #2 before the Blitz). None of the three housed even close to 10 million people. As of 2025, the three largest are Jakarta,...
Experts make sense: The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver

How experts make sense of the world (or don’t) with statistics

A review of The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — But Some Don’t, by Nate Silver. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). Explores the ins and outs of predicting outcomes not just in politics, poker, and sports (baseball and basketball) as well as the stock market, the economy, and the 2008 financial meltdown, weather forecasting, earthquakes, epidemic disease, chess, climate change, and terrorism.

The Spellman Files is about a family of private eyes.

A family of private eyes stars in this debut of a funny detective series

In The Spellman Files, the debut of a series of detective novels of the same name, we meet Isabel (Izzy) Spellman. Izzy is a bit of a nutcase, and several other members of her family aren't much saner. Their antics are often hilarious, and their interaction is outrageous. But author Lisa Lutz has...
Cover image of "The Fifties,"

They fought for change in the 1950s

We look upon the 1950s as a decade of conformity when little of consequence happened in the United States. But sweeping generalizations about any period in history are misleading at best, and none more so than about the Fifties. Because the period from the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950...
The Monkey's Raincoat introduces Elvis Cole and Joe Pike.

Introducing Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, odd-couple private eyes

So, here we've got two guys, Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. They're partners in an odd-couple sort of way in a detective agency. Both are Vietnam vets, and they're both as tough as they come. Yet there's little else they have in common. Pike, an ex-marine, owns and runs a gun store in Culver City and...
Cover image of "The Blood Telegram," one of the good recent books about American foreign policy.

Good recent books about American foreign policy

In recent years I’ve read and reviewed 15 good recent books books about aspects of American foreign policy. I’m listing them here, in alphabetical order by the authors’ last names. Each title is linked to my longer review. This post was updated on October 11, 2023. The Blood Telegram: Nixon,...
The Harbor

A Nordic crime novel that’s not about a serial killer

Are you bored, as I am, with all those Scandinavian thrillers about serial killers? A fact check reveals the problem. In Denmark, for example, records show a grand total of five serial killers. Ever. For Sweden, the number is four, Norway, three, and Iceland, one—in the 16th century. (By...

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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