Where is your nonfiction section please.
Book review: Incendiary, by Michael Cannell (Amazon / Book Depository) In 1956 there was no such thing as criminal profiling; nobody could recall an instance when the police had consulted a psychiatrist. It was a collaboration fabricated in detective novels, but never found in real life. Every one of today’s profilers, real or televised, traces his... Continue Reading →
Book review: Black Dahlia, Red Rose, by Piu Eatwell (Amazon / Book Depository) More compelling still is the woman at the center of it all. The woman about whom there is so much speculation, but whom nobody really knows. We know that she was young, beautiful, complex, elusive, contradictory. That in her real life she... Continue Reading →
Book review: Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso, by Kali Nicole Gross (Amazon / Book Depository) In 1887, in a pond just outside of Philadelphia, the dismembered torso of a man was discovered, triggering a search that eventually led to Hannah Mary Tabbs, a Maryland native and seemingly very unpleasant lady, according to many... Continue Reading →
Book review: Death in the Air, by Kate Winkler Dawson (Amazon / Book Depository) In 1952, two killers stalked postwar London. One was a serial killer: an average-looking, mostly unremarkable, middle-aged invoice clerk operating out of a grungy, now-notorious apartment building; the other was far more insidious and claimed many more victims: a suffocating, polluting smog that killed around 12,000 people.... Continue Reading →
Book review: Mary Jane's Ghost, by Ted Gregory Histories - call them stories if you like - never really end. It's more like they continue to unfold, but we've left them; they've ceased to resonate. Chicago Tribune general assignment reporter Ted Gregory gets roped into the investigation and conspiracies of a fifty-year-old cold case while ruminating... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Man From the Train, by Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James (Amazon / Book Depository) "He was a tiny man who cast a huge and terrible shadow, and he knew that, and in his mind he was the size of his shadow." Between 1898 and 1912, an unbelievably large number of families... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Truth About Belle Gunness, by Lillian de la Torre On a spring day in 1908, police were called to the scene of a fire in a farmhouse in La Porte, Indiana. In the ruins of the house, they discovered four bodies: three children and a headless adult believed to be the farm's proprietress,... Continue Reading →
Book review: Murder in Matera, by Helene Stapinski Author and journalist Helene Stapinski comes from a long family line of thieves and crooks, as detailed in her popular history of crime and theft in Jersey City (especially her family's participation in it), Five Finger Discount. In her new memoir, Murder in Matera, Stapinski travels to the Basilicata region of... Continue Reading →
Book review: City of Light, City of Poison, by Holly Tucker (Amazon / Book Depository) In the late 1600s during the reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King, a network of witches, fortune tellers, apothecaries, priests, charlatans and magic and medicine people operated in the shadows of Paris. They provided desperate customers with the medicinal powders and... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Axeman of New Orleans, by Miriam C. Davis Book Depository New Orleans is a city that incomparably fascinates. It holds such a strong allure - consistently drawing masses of tourists, both at Mardi Gras time and outside of it, to see what makes this lakefront city so special. Even following devastating natural... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Midnight Assassin, by Skip Hollingsworth (Amazon / Book Depository) Journalist Skip Hollingsworth asks near the beginning of The Midnight Assassin: "Why is it that certain sensational events in history are remembered and others, just as dramatic, are completely forgotten?" Jack the Ripper committed his notorious murders in London's East End a mere three... Continue Reading →
What's Nonfiction? 