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Manifesto

I’m a writer. I don’t review books, I recommend them.

LIKE A SISTER

@blacklionking tweeted the praises @Kellyekelll’s #LIKEASISTER, so I gave it a taste. Worthy AF, gentle reader, worthy AF.

BACKWARDS & FORWARDS

David Ball’s BACKWARDS & FORWARDS: A Technical Manual For Reading Plays, is one of the best books on writing and analyzing drama that I’ve ever read. It’s certainly my favorite.

The WHEELMAN

It’s difficult to describe Duane Swierczynski’s THE WHEELMAN without giving too much away–and saying as much, I’ve probably given too much away.. McKenna at MURDER BY THE BOOK recommended THE WHEELMAN, and for whatever reason, I allowed it to sit on my shelf for a decade before cracking it open. I ought to have had […]

THE BOYS V.1

Garth Ennis’s The Boys is about the eponymous motley crew of borderline psychotics working for the CIA to take down power-mad super heroes who hide behind their capes and corporate sponsorship to commit daily atrocities. Ennis writes with deadpan irony and delivers a wildly violent world loaded with sardonic humor and blood ejaculating across every […]

DARK HORSE

It seems Gregg Hurwitz takes pains not to write the same novel over and over again. He also allows his serialized characters and relationships to evolve and change. It is thus that Evan Smoak, also known as Orphan X, stands out in the modern landscape of preternaturally capable hard-boiled heroes. Much like John D. MacDonald’s […]

MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW

The second best thing about discovering a new author is discovering that they’re not. Author of over twenty-seven novels, Stephen Graham Jones is one such. And I’m giddy at the thought of working my way through his catalogue of twenty-sevenish novels. Yes, giddy. After eyeing the provocative cover of THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS for months, […]

I WROTE a POISON PEN LETTER TO ROLLING STONE

When I read that it’s now possible to pay $2000 to get published in Rolling Stone, I just knew that it was fake news. It wasn’t.

THE HOLDOUT

If you’ve never read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie, hold off before reading The Holdout, by Graham Moore. Ten years ago, Maya was the lone not guilty vote who eventually swayed the other jurors to acquit an accused child-murderer. Now, someone has targeted the members of the jury and seems dead-set on […]

Dreyer’s English

When my wife caught me listening to this book on English grammar and style, cackling with delight here and there, she sighed and said, “You’re such a nerd.” A difficult point to contradict. If you’re hip to the tongue-in-cheek irony of the subtitle, “An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style,” there is every chance […]