The Day She Died by S.M. Freedman
I like novels that tell a story in both the present and the past. After all, so much of what we become is tied up in where we have been. When an author uses this shifting perspective it’s like getting two mysteries for the price of one. In any old book you can read to…
The Less Dead by Denise Mina
My mother used to work as a social worker, reuniting adult adoptive children with their natural parents. She’d be the first to tell you that those reunions can be wonderfully rewarding. They can also be a complete flippin’ disaster. That’s the thing with birth families, just like Forest Gump’s iconic box of chocolates, “you never…
Interview with Erin Ruddy
BIO ERIN RUDDY is a writer, editor, and award-winning journalist. She is currently the executive editor at MediaEdge Communications. She lives in Toronto. Q&A Your debut novel, Tell Me My Name, is a nail-biting, domestic noir set in cottage country. What inspired you to write a story in this genre and this setting? The idea…
River of Lies By R.M. Greenaway
The dead bodies are dropping fast and furious in this latest novel in the B.C. Blues Crime series by the talented R.M. Greenaway. If you are looking for dull moments, pick up another book. In the first few pages of River of Lies, a young woman is murdered in a parking lot on her way…
I Choose You by Gayle Curtis
“Mental illness is sickness of the mind caused by the constant overwhelming battle one has with one’s essence, beliefs and purpose.” (I Choose You, p. 235) If this is the definition of mental illness, then the only sane person in the novel, I Choose You, is the serial killer (ironically the one responsible for this…
Last Request by Liz Mistry
Liz Mistry has a new fan. I was already a hard-core devotee of Tartan Noir via Denise Mina (interviewed here at She Kills Lit), but after reading Liz Mistry’s Last Request set in West Yorkshire, I have a whole new geographic subgenre to savour. I’m going to call it Tweed Noir, crime fiction guaranteed to…
The Starr Sting Scale – Official Book Trailer
It’s book trailer time! Hard to believe that the first book in the Candace Starr series is due out in only a few months. One of my favourite reviews so far calls it “Witty, irreverent, nasty, unrelenting dark crime fiction… At six foot three, Candace Starr is more woman than most men can handle.” I…
Darlington by Tripsy South
“Sometimes it was just best to shut the f*** up and let the wisdom flow over you.” – (p. 217) Such was the approach I attempted to take while reading Darlington. This novel is a sort of Kerouac-like stream of consciousness that follows a few months in the life of Tommy Darlington – a part-time…
Bunny by Mona Awad
It is tough to nail down the genre of Bunny, A Novel by Mona Awad. Is it noir? Horror? Crime fiction? Is it an acid flashback from that tab you dropped stupidly in college? Or maybe we will just call it Literary, the great catch-all for all exceptionally well-written works that often defy description. Whatever…
