In The Third Lynx, Zahn again puts agent Frank Compton (from Night Train to Rigel) through some of the classic noir detective paces in his unusual near-future setting, which prominently features interstellar trains. (One of several tropes Zahn explores this time around is the detective who finds himself unexpectedly a murder suspect; there are also [...]
Entries Tagged as 'mystery'
Timothy Zahn: The Third Lynx
10 Mar 2010 · No Comments
Tags: alphabetical-author · mystery · science fiction · t-title · z-author
Timothy Zahn: Night Train to Rigel
03 Feb 2010 · No Comments
Night Train to Rigel’s unusual premise sounds a little jokey, but Zahn plays it (mostly) straight: interstellar travel is accomplished with trains that travel along a sort of hyperspace railway. Frank Compton is an ex-intelligence agent who finds himself embroiled in one of those mysteries that’s bigger than it first appears, and which ultimately affords [...]
Tags: mystery · n-title · science fiction · z-author
Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection
13 Oct 2009 · No Comments
I loved this book despite a few quibbles. It relates what happens to Charles Unwin when he is unexpectedly promoted from clerk to detective of a mysterious agency, and finds himself rather unwillingly investigating the disappearance of Travis T. Sivart, the operative for whom he served as the clerk. In typical noir fashion, it’s [...]
Tags: b-author · fantasy · m-title · mystery
Robert Sheckley: The Alternative Detective
24 Jun 2009 · No Comments
I saw it opined in several places that the third of Sheckley’s mysteries featuring Hob Draconian was so good it would make me want to go back and read the first two — and since I’m a “save the best for last” kinda person, I opted to read them in chronological order. I found The [...]
Tags: a-title · mystery · s-author
Lee Irby: The Up and Up
09 Jun 2009 · No Comments
Small-time hood Frank Hearn makes it out of Irby’s previous Prohibition-era caper novel 7,000 Clams with his skin fundamentally intact and the love of a really terrific dame, but (no spoiler, really) without enough scratch to give her the kind of life he wants to. So in this sequel he goes straight and tries to [...]
Tags: historical · i-author · mystery · suspense · u-title
Lee Irby: 7,000 Clams
24 May 2009 · No Comments
I think the worst thing about becoming a baseball fan for me is getting infested by the magical thinking associated with the sport. This intricately-plotted, noirish crime novel features Babe Ruth (as a Yankee, in the 1925 offseason) and I found myself vaguely worried that reading it was somehow disloyal to my team.
But there’s [...]
Tags: #-title · historical · i-author · mystery · suspense
Carrie Bebris: North by Northanger
09 Apr 2009 · No Comments
I probably wouldn’t write about Bebris again so soon if I hadn’t had somewhat harsh things to say about Suspense and Sensibility, the preceding volume of this series of sequels to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in which Lord and Lady Darcy encounter characters from other Austen novels (and/or their descendants) in a mystery/suspense context.
North [...]
Tags: b-author · historical · mystery · n-title
Charlaine Harris: Dead Until Dark
20 Feb 2009 · No Comments
I’m embarassed about it, but over the past few years I’ve read several books in the burgeoning “paranormal romance” sub-genre (and returned several more to the library when I decided they really weren’t worth my time). I’m perversely intrigued by the extent to which the genre has calcifyied around a single template, Laurell Hamilton’s “Anita [...]
Tags: d-title · fantasy · h-author · mystery
Carrie Bebris: Pride and Prescience
05 Feb 2009 · No Comments
Pride and Prescience has an audacious conceit: not only is it a sequel to Austen’s immortal Pride and Prejudice, it re-imagines Lord and Mrs. Darcy (née Bennet) as amateur sleuths. An interesting kernel underlies this (and perhaps lessens its outrageousness) — both Austen’s novels and traditional English “village” mysteries deliberately limit the scope of [...]
Tags: b-author · historical · mystery · p-title
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 [...]