needs more demons?

I read The Immorality Engine even though I didn’t think much of the first two novels in Mann’s “Newbury and Hobbes Investigations” series, of which this is the third. Somewhat to my surprise, I liked it better than the other two.
I still found the prose a bit repetitive and the plot low on surprises, but [...]

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The Inquisitor’s Apprentice is set in a vividly rendered alternate late-19th-century New York city. Magic exists in this world, but — officially, at least — it is controlled by wealthy industrialists like “J. P. Morgaunt,” a character inspired by J. P. Morgan (some more sympathetically rendered historical figures appear under their real names) . Thirteen [...]

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Not long ago I was struck by just how unprecedentedly dependent I am on Google technologies: they power my phone and my e-book reader; they support the bulk of my browsing and email. My wife and I used Google docs and maps extensively in buying our home and planning our wedding. I use Google’s calendar [...]

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I found reading I Love Galesburg in the Springtime an odd, almost dislocating experience. The well-worn Newton library copy that I borrowed was a first printing — nearly fifty years old. But the thematic thread of nostalgia runs through many of these ten stories, perhaps most bluntly stated in “The Love Letter,” in which the [...]

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Given that at one point I was consciously trying to read all the Newbery award winning books and that I have always considered prominent feline presences in literature a draw, I’m really not sure how I missed reading It’s Like This, Cat until now, but’s an omission I’m happy to have rectified.
Neville doesn’t compromise the [...]

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I had to read this book because of Klausner’s back-cover crack about “guys in their thirties who’ve never been married, ride their bikes to work, and really like Death Cab for Cutie,”* since that acurately described me when my fiancée and I started dating. (I’ve since given up on my thirties and on DCfC (I [...]

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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 [...]

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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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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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