novel
The Many Ways to Be a Scoundrel in Early America
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In the summer of 1787, as the Constitutional Convention took place in Philadelphia, General James Wilkinson journeyed to New Orleans to visit Spanish Governor Esteban Mirรณ, ostensibly about obtaining…
Sinking Into the Gothic Gloom: My Favourite Worksย
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Iโve always struggled with some of the prevailing definitions of โgothicโ fiction. Tradition dictates there should be elements of fear, threat, woe, that hauntings should occur and vile things…
The Mystery of Real Estate Porn
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Itโs a game in New York and we all play. Everyone talks real estate, how the condo marketโs soft, how the rental marketโs skyrocketing, how Manhattanโs suddenly affordable but…
Crime and the City: Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight
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Portsmouth โ known to the locals as โPompeyโ โ is, and has been for centuries, Englandโs largest Royal Navy base, 75 miles south of London in the country of…
The Mysterious Mr. Badman Is A Masterpiece of Macabre Humor
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The Mysterious Mr. Badman is a long-forgotten but entertaining crime novel, its light-heartedness all the more unexpected given the authorโs reputation as a master of the macabre. The teasing…
Troubled Teens in Crime Fiction
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Teenagers donโt have it easy. On top of navigating a microculture rife with veiled rules and unspoken expectationsโalso known as high schoolโthey often get a bad rap. Adults tend…
Getting Ready to Say Goodbye to Fargo
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This November, FX released the fifth and possibly final season of the popular anthology series Fargo. Based on the 1996 film by Joel and Ethan Coen, and set in…
Tis the Season to be (Fictionally) Murdered
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Iโve never been one for a beach read at the beach. Recently in Ventura and Monterey, I read a New-Jersey-set legal thriller (Robyn Giglโs Survivor Guilt), a desert-set horror…
All the (Crime) Worldโs a Stage: The Irresistible Pairing of Mysteries and the Theater
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Crime writers utilize an extraordinarily wide range of back-grounds for their stories, but the stage is one of the most popular of them all. Stories set inโor connected withโthe…