needs more demons?

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Entries Tagged as 'd-author'

Doug Dorst: Alive in Necropolis

15 Nov 2008 · No Comments

The book jacket description and a handful of pull quotes (from writers with ties to the McSweeney’s camp, mostly) were enough to get me to read Alive in Necropolis, but the novel exceeded the expectations I had of it. It sounds perhaps a bit silly in capsule form: emotionally fragile rookie cop Michael Mercer rescues […]

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Tags: a-title · suspense · mystery · fantasy · d-author

Lindsey Davis: The Iron Hand of Mars

07 Dec 2007 · No Comments

Don’t worry, I’m not going to write about every single volume of Davis’ Marcus Didius Falco series. But this one is interesting because it both is and isn’t a major departure from the preceding 3 novels.
The basic ingredients are the same: historical fiction, hardboiled whodunnit, comedy of manners, political intrigue, and romance. But the proportions […]

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Tags: historical · mystery · i-title · d-author

Lindsey Davis; Venus in Copper

30 Nov 2007 · No Comments

With this, the third novel in Davis’ series of mysteries set in the Roman empire and featuring professional “informer” Marcus Didius Falco, I became an unabashed fan. A library request for the next volume was delayed by the long holiday weekend, and as my impatience grew, I cleaned Kate’s Mystery Books out of their entire […]

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Tags: v-title · historical · mystery · d-author

Peter Dickinson: The Seventh Raven

02 Jan 2007 · No Comments

An illustration of the power of context:
Lately I’ve been writing quite a bit about fantasy novels marketed to young adult audiences (probably to the dismay of many readers, but that’s beside the point for now). I was on the Amazon website perusing lists of people’s favorite young adult novels, and in a list with a […]

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Tags: young adult · s-title · d-author

Lindsey Davis; Silver Pigs

03 Dec 2006 · No Comments

Silver Pigs is a hard-boiled historical mystery set in ancient Rome, specifically, in the reign of Vespasian, just after the turbulence that followed Nero’s death.
I’ve frequently enjoyed historical mysteries, but they rarely succeed for me on both levels — either the period detail is compelling and the mystery is a bit slight, or the […]

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Tags: historical · s-title · mystery · d-author