Review: ‘Dragonfish’ by Vu Tran
The expression, "It's a Vietnamese thing" is uttered more than once in "Dragonfish," Vu Tran's odd, transfixing existential thriller. Robert Ruen, an Oakland cop, has spent several years and a...
Home > Reviews
All Stories
Review: ‘Brush Back’ by Sara Paretsky
There frequently comes a time in a V.I. Warshawski novel when you have absorbed so much new information about Chicago and its neighborhoods and the people who live in and...
Watching the detective: Interactive map of V.I. Warshawski’s Chicago
Sara Paretsky in 2012. Also shown is the cover of her new book. (Alex Garcia, baiduhai) Sara Paretsky sends V.I. Warshawski back to her South Side roots in her...
Crime roundup: ‘The Cartel’ by Don Winslow, more
The Cartel by Don Winslow, Knopf, 623 pages, $27.95 This is the big one from California writer Don Winslow, the El Niño, tsunami and San Andreas Fault shaker of drug...
Review: ‘Pirate Hunters’ by Robert Kurson
At a pivotal juncture in his search for a legendary sunken pirate ship, one of the subjects of Chicago writer Robert Kurson's "Pirate Hunters" has a revelation: "This isn't about...
Review: ‘Charlie Martz and Other Stories’ by Elmore Leonard
"Novelist Discovered After 23 Books" read the headline on a 1983 New York Times feature on Elmore Leonard. At a time when it's possible for a fiction writer to be...
Crime fiction Roundup: ‘The Governor’s Wife,’ more
The Governor's Wife by Michael Harvey, Knopf, 245 pages, $24.95 Two years ago, moments after being sentenced to 37 years in federal prison for racketeering, Illinois Gov. Ray Perry pulled...
Crime fiction roundup: ‘Reykjavik Nights’ and others
Reykjavik Nights by Arnaldur Indridason, translated by Victoria Cribb, Minotaur, 294 pages, $25.99 Since childhood, when he and his brother were lost in a blizzard in the mountains where he...
Review: ‘The Whites’ by Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt
When Richard Price adopted the pen name Harry Brandt for his new novel, "The Whites," this practitioner of hard-edged literary fiction ("Clockers," "Freedomland") did so thinking it would help ease...
Review: ‘World Gone By’ by Dennis Lehane
"I ... love being a gangster!" says Rico, one of the lower-level crime bosses in Dennis Lehane's terrific "World Gone By." Now, there's something you never hear the gloomy dons...