The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani
I am really getting into these English translations. As with The First Prehistoric Serial Killer by Teresa Solana, The Perfect Nanny was originally written in another language. In this case, French rather than Spanish. The author is Moroccan born but Parisian living, Leila Slimani. She won France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Goncourt for this…
Interview with Elka Ray
Elka Ray is a Canadian/UK author, editor, and illustrator. For adults, Elka writes crime, and is the author of three novels – the upcoming romantic mystery Divorce is Murder, due out with Seventh Street/Prometheus in June 2019; Saigon Dark (2016), a noir thriller; a lighter mystery, Hanoi Jane (2011); and a collection of short crime…
Snap By Belinda Bauer
There are a lot of scary stories told from the perspective of children these days. Whether it is the resurrection of Stephen King’s IT or the mass popularity of Stranger Things, young people are at the forefront of bad things happening. I think it is a result of people getting tired of the “terrified woman”…
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…
Interview with Erika Rummel
Bio Erika Rummel has taught history at the University of Toronto and Wilfrid Laurier U. She divides her time between Toronto and Los Angeles and has lived in villages in Argentina, Rumania, and Bulgaria. With more than a dozen published books on social and intellectual history, she is also the author of five thrilling fiction…
The Woman in the Window By A.J. Finn
Okay, I said I wasn’t going to pick up any more novels with “woman” or “girl” in the title this year, but a friend gave this to me to read and I am not one to look a gift-book in the mouth. It is also not a book by a woman author. But I thought…
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…
Book Review: Quick Sand by Malin Persson Giolito
This is the second book I have read this month about how relationships with the wrong man can get you into some serious trouble. In this case, it is a boy, rather than a man, but I hear they grow into men eventually, although I am still waiting on some of you. Eighteen-year-old Maja Norberg…
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…
