Karen Novak’s creepy suspense novel Innocence impressed me on several levels. It has some vividly drawn characters, and a twisty plot that managed to surprise me more than once. It has an unusual structure, employing shifts of narrative perspective and chronology to build dramatic tension. And Novak’s prose evinces both an eye for interesting detail [...]
Entries Tagged as 'i-title'
Karen Novak: Innocence
23 Feb 2010 · No Comments
Tags: i-title · n-author · suspense
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 [...]
Tags: d-author · historical · i-title · mystery
Crystal Zevon: I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead
11 Oct 2007 · No Comments
Crystal Zevon’s biography of perennially misunderstood and mis-marketed songwriter Warren Zevon takes a holographic approach to the musician’s life (and death). Crystal Zevon (a former wife) provides chunks of bridging text, but the book consists mostly of brief chronologically-arranged snippets from an impressive array of Zevon’s family, friends, lovers, collaborators, and (most importantly) excerpts from [...]
Tags: biography · i-title · rock · z-author
Glen Matlock: I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol
11 Oct 2007 · 1 Comment
I’ve whined recently about how the London punk scene of ‘76-77 gets such a disproportionate share of media attention. So why’d I pick up Matlock’s book? Because his is one of the first-person perspectives I haven’t seen. Lydon’s and McLaren’s versions are amply documented. But Matlock’s part in the Pistols actually ends when Sid Vicious [...]
Tags: autobiography · i-title · m-author · punk
Michael Shea: The Incompleat Nifft
05 Mar 2006 · No Comments
Once upon a time (in the 1940s), Mssrs deCamp and Pratt teamed up to write a series of short novels about the magical misadventures of one Harold Shea. The tales had a proto-post-modern spin to them: Shea would get transported into myths and pre-copyright stories like Spenser’s Faerie Queene. The Shea stories have an absurdly [...]
Tags: fantasy · i-title · s-author
Jen Banbury: Like a Hole in the Head
01 Dec 2005 · No Comments
I’m not a big fan of movies that rely on “twist” endings. I think the value of surprise as an artistic technique is easily overrated. If it’s not a good movie if you know the ending, it’s just not a good movie, period.
But on the other hand, it can be really rewarding to see a [...]