Noir/Hardboiled
Shane’s Lot: How a 1949 Gun-Toting Loner Still Rides Through American Literature
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A stranger comes to town. He is stern, quiet, with a whiff of criminality, seductive to women and men alike, his life like an arrow shooting him onward. He…
Chris McGinley on Appalachian Literature and Noir
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The beauty of being asked to interview Chris McGinley about his new book Once These Hills was I knew I was going to read it anyway and knew I…
Was ‘The Leopard Man’ Hollywood’s First Slasher Film?
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Cornell Woolrich published Black Alibi in 1942. His tenth book overall, it was the third in his series of “Black” novels. The Bride Wore Black (1940), later adapted into…
The Queen of Grit Lit has a New Novel
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What I told her was this: “Read Once Upon a River.” Let me explain. I was at an event promoting my own new novel, Once These Hills, when a…
Alexis Soloski on Theater, Criticism, and the Mystery of Performance
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Vivian Parry, the main character of Alexis Soloski’s Here in the Dark, is a perceptive theater critic for a New York magazine. She’s tough on hammy actors, but even…
The Discovery of ‘Wind Sprints,’ the Lost Ralph Dennis Novel
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Nearly a decade ago, I fell in love with the twelve, out-of-print, Hardman crime novels by the late Ralph Dennis… an obsession that led me to acquire the copyright…
Remembering Tim Dorsey and His Wild Florida Stories
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I am sad to report that we lost author Tim Dorsey at the end of November. He died at his home in Islamorada in the Florida Keys at age…
Memory, Place, and Hauntings: On Toronto’s Seedy Seventies-Era “Sin Strip”
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In the late 70s my family emigrated to Toronto and stayed for two years. In those days, downtown was notorious for its Sin Strip. Four blocks concentrated on Yonge…
Troubled Teens in Crime Fiction
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Teenagers don’t have it easy. On top of navigating a microculture rife with veiled rules and unspoken expectations—also known as high school—they often get a bad rap. Adults tend…