Few writers know a given territory as well as John le Carré knows the world of covert missions, encrypted phones and distrustful professional unions. It’s as if he sleeps with this stuff, brushes his teeth with it, never has a quiet moment apart from it.
Schlagwort-Archive: The Washington Post
Rezension: Peter Lovesey: “The Tooth Tattoo”
String quartet aficionados should hasten to read Lovesey’s fascinating “The Tooth Tattoo.” Strictly speaking, the novel is a police procedural, but the kicker is that the prime suspects in three murders are the members of a world-class string quartet called Staccati.
Rezension: Peggy Hesketh: “Telling the Bees”
Some have compared Hesketh’s first, stately and beautiful novel to “The Remains of the Day,” but to it also compares to the best of Elmore Leonard. There are murders here but much more than that: a series of glimpses into an entirely different and closed place.
Rezension: T. Jefferson Parker: “The Famous and the Dead”
This is the sixth and last of his novels about the Los Angeles County lawman Charlie Hood. In the first book, “L.A. Outlaws,” Charlie fell in love with a gorgeous schoolteacher who had a secret life as a latter-day Robin Hood.
Rezension: Kevin Cullen, Shelley Murphy: “Whitey Bulger”
What do Johnny Depp, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Peter Facinelli (he of “Twilight” fame) have in common? They’re all involved with plans to put the story of Boston’s most notorious mobster on the movie screen.
Rezension: Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips: “The Sleeper Omnibus”
“Sleeper” ist a spy thriller with an ingenious premise and a tone of pitch-black satire. It’s set in a world of superheroes and villains, in which the secret kings of nations and industry meet at Imperial Grove and “decide what will happen in the world.”
Rezension: Hallie Ephron: “There was an old woman”
Location: The most basic element of any New York story is its address. Hallie Ephron’s “There was an old woman” is a New York suspense story set in an extraordinary outer-borough neighborhood that will stay with readers long after other plot details fade away.
Rezension: Crawford Power: “The Encounter”
Power’s only published work, “The Encounter”, is set in what seems to be the 1930s, a world as distant, culturally and spiritually, from ours as that of the Middle Ages. It is the story of a Catholic priest and his struggle with his own ascetic, humanity-abhorring soul.
Rezension: Mark Mazzetti: “The Way of the Knife”
On May 1, 2011, CIA Director Leon Panetta was in command of the single most important U.S. military operation since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001: the Navy SEAL Team 6 assault on a mysterious compound, where Osama bin Laden was suspected to be hiding.
Rezension: Kate Atkinson: “Life after Life”
The first of Kate Atkinson’s books to feature her private investigator Jackson Brodie, “Case Histories” (2004), concerns three separate murders taking place in three different years, subtly braided together by a plot that Brodie must unravel.
Rezension: Harlan Coben: “Six Years”
Harlan Coben’s readers know him as the master of this type of story: a life suddenly unraveling, the past summoned back into a swiftly shifting present, secrets peeling back to reveal more secrets. With “Six Years,” the author shows once more how it’s done.
Rezension: Becky Masterman: “Rage Against the Dying”
There’s a lot to admire in Becky Materman’s first novel, starting with her heroine: petite, white-haired, 59-year-old FBI agent Brigid Quinn. Although retired, Brigid uses her friendshipswith local law enforcement officer to elbow her way into investigations.
Rezension: Kate Rhodes: “Crossbones Yard”
“Crossbones Yard,” a first novel by the British poet Kate Rhodes, is a fast-moving, entertaining mix of sex, suspense and serial killings. It’s billed as the start of a series built around 32-year-old psychologist Alice Quentin.
Rezension: Jonathan Kellerman: “Guilt”
Infants cherished and infants destroyed are at the center — or at what can genuinely be called the heart — of Jonathan Kellerman’s “Guilt,” the solid latest installment in the prolific author’s series of thrillers featuring psychologist-sleuth Alex Delaware.
Rezension: Gerald Seymour: “A Deniable Death”
An extraordinary thriller about the makeshift bombs that were used against American soldiers in Iraq. The veteran British spy novelist Gerald Seymour has written an extraordinary work of fiction with these cruel weapons at its center.
Rezension: Max Boot: “Invisible Armies. An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare”
A common misconception among great powers is that guerrilla warfare is unusual, thus explaining the woeful lack of preparation for it. Boot, however, shows that the guerrilla is as old as warfare itself.
Rezension: Daniel Stashower: “The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War”
Stashower’s book revolves around the efforts of Allan Pinkerton, a legendary private detective who claimed to have uncovered a plot to kill Lincoln during his train tour’s last stop in Baltimore, a.k.a. “Mobtown.”
Rezension: Frank Lentricchia: “The Accidental Pallbearer”
Accomplished novelist and crotchety literary critic Frank Lentricchia’s new mystery series features a PI who’s part Mike Hammer and part William S. Burroughs. He’s an interesting mix of violent moralism and lit-major depravity, and it all sort of works.
Rezension: Ian Rankin: “Standing in Another Man’s Grave”
It’s been 20 years since Rankin’s first novel about Edinburgh detective John Rebus reached these shores, and during those two decades Rebus has become one of the great modern cops.
Rezension: Dave Barry: “Insane City”
If you fell in the camp that liked Zach Galifianakis “Hangover” movies then by all means avail yourself of Dave Barry’s new novel, “Inmsane City” which replicates the comic franchise’s set-up, step by lurching step.