“Black Pulp” tackles the problem of lacking black charakters head-on — appropriately enough — and with an admirable lack of subtlety, giving us a dozen unabashed adventure stories with black protagonists.
Schlagwort-Archive: Los Angeles Review of Books
Beitrag: A Scandal in Paradise: On “Top of the Lake”
After the first episodes of Jane Campion’s crime drama resist any typical whodunit structure, the third slackens the rope. What makes “Top of the Lake” different? For starters, the object of obsession is a young Thai girl named Tui, not a blonde prom queen.
Rezension: Alisa Stratman & Brie Tate: “Restless Souls”
Rachel Monroe has read the tragic tale of young Sharon Tate’s untimely and bloody death written by Brie Tate and Alisa Stratman. “Restless Souls” narrates:The War on Murder: Sharon Tate and the Victims’ Rights Movement.
Rezension: Jame Lasdun: “Give Me Everything You Have”
The kind of stalking described in James Lasdun’s meditative new memoir, “Give Me Everything You Have”, is new in history. His stalker never presents herself in person , which lends a sinister twist to the story.
Beitrag: Joanne K. Rowling: “The Casual Vacancy”
The most powerful myth surrounding Rowling is how the author created “Harry Potter.” The myth is so irresistible that any single mother with limited means writing a book will hear someone at some point say to her in a spirit of encouragement: “Look at J.K. Rowling.”
Rezension: Tricia Jenkins: “The CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film and Television”
Jenkins examines the history of “Hollywood confidential” in “The CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film and Television”. Short and dry, her book raises serious ethical and legal questions about the relationship between the CIA and Hollywood. .
Rezensionen: Pronzini, Muller, Kelly, Elliott, Chaze
2013 marks the 45th anniversary of one of crime fiction’s most enduring and hardest working PIs: Bill Pronzini’s Nameless Detective. Nameless has appeared in 36 novels and more than 40 short stories.
Rezension: Richard Lingeman: “The Noir Forties”
“Detour” is an ultra-low-budget 1946 film noir that packs an undeniable punch. “He went searching for love,” the “Detour” poster said, “but fate forced a detour” — to accidental murder. The film is one of Richard Lingeman’s touchstones in his new book.
Rezension: Marek Krajewski: “Death in Breslau”
Despite the critical superlatives heaped upon Marek Krajewski’s “Death in Breslau,” the first of the Polish author’s Inspector Eberhard Mock Investigations series released in the U.S., the novel fails to ignite fully as a thriller.
Essay: Nothing More American: On James M. Cain
With its artlessly perfekt first sentence — “They threw me off the hay truck about noon” — James M. Cain’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice” drew a line in the sand as defiant as any in literature since “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”.
Rezensionen: Bardsley, Piccirilli, Woods
“Noir is, by its very nature, funny stuff.” Cullen Gallagher on Greg Bardsley: “Cash Out”, about an ex-reporter who sold out his moralistic ambition for a hefty paycheck, and on “The Last Kind Words” by Tom Piccirilli and “Death in Mexico” by Jonathan Woods.
Interview: Ken Bruen
Sly, profan, charming, alcoholic, sensitive, lonely, handsome, addicted to drugs, darkly humorous, vulnerable, cunning, insecure, emotionally damaged, bookstore lover. Jack Taylor or Ken Bruen?
Rezension: Gina Apostol: “Gun Dealers’ Daughter”
In her brilliant new novel and American debut, “Gun Dealers’ Daughter”,Gina Apostol creates one of the most compelling characters in recent fiction, Soledad Soliman, daughter of a wealthy arms merchant during the Marcos years, useful fool and maybe worse.
Rezension: Anthony Burgess: “A Clockwork Orange” und “The Wanting Seed”
Burgess’s “A Clockwork Orange” and “The Wanting Seed” — two dystopian novels written almost concurrently and published in 1962 — have been rereleased to celebrate their fiftieth anniversaries.
Rezension: Ian McEwan: “Sweet Tooth”
Ever since he evolved out of producing what he describes as ‘staring-at-the-wall’ fiction, Ian McEwan has become England’s premier documentarian, the chief recorder of her near past in novelistic form.
Rezension: Sophie Calle: “The Address Book”
In a 2008 conversation between artists Sophie Calle and Jill Magid, Calle noted that “L’Homme au carnet” (aka “The Address Book”, 1983) was her only work to date where she “went too far.” “I think that for the guy it was very cruel,” she observed.
Rezension: Megan Abbott: “Dare Me”
Abbott’s heroines are a brilliant if unlikely pick for the genre; a pack of gum-snapping, finger-popping, boy-destroying teenage girls with pom-poms in hand. If varsity cheerleaders don’t already give you the chills, they will by the final pages of “Dare Me”.
Interview: Paul M. Barrett
In terms of business, “Glock” is a fascinating story about a foreign upstart overtaking a domestic heavyweight, à la Toyota upending Ford in the 1980s. The book is also a microcosm of the gun debate in the United States.
Rezension: James M. Cain: “The Cocktail Waitress”
Along with Hammett, Cain was the preeminent practitioner of the American “hardboiled” school. These “poets of the tabloid murder,” as Edmund Wilson memorably christened them, present, certain unpleasant realities otherwise ignored in American literature.
Interview: James Lee Burke
David Masciotra spoke with James Lee Burke on the phone shortly after the release of his new book, “Creole Belle”. The latest in the Dave Robicheaux series is a funereal tribute to the vanishing Edenic landscape of America.