Get Frosty
John Grisham, the creator of straight-shooting legal thrillers, is carrying on the thrilling work of Ayn Rand, and he has outdone the master of “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” by taking the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Victoria’s Hero
Editor’s note: Sir Harry Flashman, VC, was asked to comment on the publication of Flashman and the Mountain of Light, the ninth volume of his spurious memoirs. Flashman is the completely fictional...
View ArticleClik here to view.
False advertising
Prison has been the incubator of great literature. Small wonder, it’s ideal for writers. You’re tucked away from the world and all its cares, you have plenty of free time to ruminate, and the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Return of the pulp heroes
In the 1930s, the heyday of the pulp era, magazines like “Thrilling Detective,” “Amazing Stories” and the like kicked ass, took names, and shaped the morals of millions of American readers. The writers...
View ArticleAnonymous Asshole
The rapid growth of the Internet usage in the last decade has spread to the world of fiction, from love stories built around e-mails and instant messages to thrillers that rely on the hero riffing...
View ArticleShrink Rapped
For a month in 1909, Sigmund Freud paid his only visit to the United States, the guest of Clark University in Massachusetts. But first, he spent a week in New York City, accompanied by his friends,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Carl Hiaasen’s “Nature Girl”
Carl Hiassen has reinvented the screwball comedy for the 21st century, stocking it with a collection of misfits, idiots, sexed-up women (some with a few screws loose as well), Indians who live with and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Pinkerton in Love
Allan Pinkerton embodied a number of American traits. He was a revolutionary, fleeing his native Scotland with his wife ahead of arrest for being a Chartist; he reinvented himself in boomtown Chicago...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Diabolical game
On the surface, Wille Thompson’s debut comic novel “Scratch Golfer” has several handicaps against it. It’s about golf, the devil, temptation and selling your soul to hit par, which sounds like a movie...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Time Waits For No One: The Woman Who Died A Lot by Jasper Fforde
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a world-weary hero preparing for the climactic battle must say something like, “I’m too old for this shit.” And while I’m complaining, why don’t American...
View Article
