If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
I’ll say this much for If We Were Villains: I finished it. Might sound simple but in this moment, that’s not easy to do. I’m not finishing much these days. If it doesn’t grab me off the bat, I’m probably going to sulk with it for a while. And it took me three full tries to get into this one. But it kept me going to the end (an end I hated but hey! I finished it!). I will give credit where credit is due: M.L. […]
At End of Day by George V. Higgins
Been reading a lot of Boston crime novels lately so it made sense for me to finally circle back to George V. Higgins’ final work. My journey with Higgins is an interesting one. I first read The Friends of Eddie Coyle ten years ago and while I thought it was good, I really had no idea how to appreciate. Its dialogue-heavy approach with a large heap of verisimilitude made me feel like I was reading transcripts of a conversation between gangsters and cops rather than a typical […]
The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion by Eliot Brown, Maureen Farrell
The Terra-Cotta Dog by Andrea Cammalleri
Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson
Tina, Mafia Soldier by Maria Rosa Cutrufelli
The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz
An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President's Murder by Susan Wels
Every Man a King by Walter Mosley
The Triumph of the Spider Monkey by Joyce Carol Oates
Robert B. Parker's Lullaby by Ace Atkins
The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker
Play the Fool by Lina Chern
Man, that month went fast The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion**** I might have a lot more to say about this one had I finished it weeks ago but I’ll be honest, I’m starting to hit my limit on books about tech geniuses that the public discovers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be only after they’re handed billions of dollars. Theranos, Uber and now WeWork all run by self-glorifying con artists. This book is as well done as the […]
Rogues' Gallery by John Oller
I was jonesing for a New York City gangster tale last week. I finally started Herbert Asbury’s Gangs of New York but quit when I realize that the book is less glorious embellishment and more fan fiction. Frustrated, I looked for a substitute and then remembered I purchased John Oller’s Rogues’ Gallery on a lark. It aspires to be a corrective to Asbury’s highly fictionalized accounting which was held as a historical standard for years. Oller is more scholarly than smooth but this might scratch the itch if you’re […]
Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
“Will anything save me from this months-long reading slump I’m in?” so I cried. Deepti Kapoor’s Age of Vice came close but I think that was largely due to the fact that I haven’t read many stories set in India so I didn’t know the familiar tips and tricks Stateside writers do. Aside from that one, I’ve read a lot of good stuff this year but I’ve also quit a lot because…well I don’t know the “because.” Have my standards gotten higher? Am I just tired of […]
Watch the Girls by Jennifer Wolfe
Whew. This book is something. Don’t know if I loved it or hated it but I know I won’t forget it! I almost quit it five times and yet I couldn’t put it down. I can usually handle bleak, depressing crime fiction but oh man, this one is bleak!* It mostly works until it doesn’t…but the ending kind of comes together but it doesn’t? I really need more people to read this so I can parse it out. A few more points… -Loved: Jennifer Wolfe […]
