Dying for Christmas By Tammy Cohen
I wanted to review a book with a holiday theme for the season, and thus selected the talented Tammy Cohen’s Dying for Christmas for my Yuletide noir read. I thought I’d get a hokey and tame mystery, perhaps the murder of a vicar at midnight mass, or a Boxing Day stabbing death with a sharp…
Black Water Rising By Attica Locke
Jay Porter wants to give his heavily pregnant wife, Bernie a decent birthday present. So, he arranges for a “moonlight cruise” on the bayou. He should have stuck with jewelry. The boat is basically a barge strung with mismatched Christmas lights and the bayou is a narrow strip of muddy water thirty metres below Houston’s…
Interview with Mary Lou Dickinson
Mary Lou Dickinson has published four books, One Day it Happens, a collection of short stories, and three novels, Ile D’Or, Would I lie to You, and most recently The White Ribbon Man, a murder mystery set in downtown Toronto at a 171-year-old church hidden behind the Eaton Centre. Her short stories have appeared in numerous literary periodicals over the…
Review: Field of Blood – Denise Mina
I love Denise Mina. Nobody does down and dirty Glasgow like she does. She makes Scotland into this wildly dangerous and exotic playground for criminals that barely manages to control itself enough for the trains to run. I am travelling there on holidays this fall and fully expect to be stabbed with the blowstick of…
How could you Mrs. Dick?
A very dear friend of mine asked if I would look into the story of Evelyn Dick because she had such fond childhood memories of the schoolyard chant: You cut off his legs … You cut off his arms … You cut off his head … How could you Mrs. Dick? How could you Mrs.…
Lizzie Borden took an Axe
Lizzie Borden took an axe And gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, She gave her father forty-one. Ah, everyone loves Lizzie Borden and her notorious whacks. She was young, pretty and loaded, a combination that has always been catnip to the American public. Without it, the Kardashians would…