The Word

Here’s another from Cold War Vienna. This is a reprise from a guest gig I did at the blog of writer Jim Thompson, Jimland. In case you missed it there: In the beginning was the word. Well, one cent a word, to be exact. Or sometimes twenty-five cents for a column-inch of them. And we [...]

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Gotham’s Shadow: Stefanie Pintoff’s New York 1900

Scene of the Crime is happy to have Edgar Award-winning author Stefanie Pintoff with us today. Stefanie is the author of a historical mystery series featuring Detective Simon Ziele where early criminal science meets the dark side of old New York.  Her debut novel, In the Shadow of Gotham, won the coveted Edgar for best [...]

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The Fourth Man

I loved that t-shirt. Little Nemo fallen out of bed, covers rumpled about him, hair a dandelion fuzz, and rubbing at his sleepy eyes. I wore it until it was more holes than fabric. But maybe I shouldn’t have worn it that day. Mid-July, hot and humid and stinking of horse dung, the city was [...]

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Murder Most Foul–In Saskatoon?: Anthony Bidulka’s Crime Novels

Today’s guest at Scene of the Crime is Canadian author Anthony Bidulka, creator of the Russell Quant series set in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, as well as various locales around the world. As New York’s Mystery Scene Magazine noted, “Quant makes for a riveting hero…the kind you want to have–unless you’re a killer.” Bidulka is the winner [...]

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Celtic Crime: Declan Burke’s Sligo

Scene of the Crime has thus far been remiss in not including an Irish author into the mix. This post redresses that oversight. Declan Burke is most verifiably an Irish author of crime fiction whose work has been compared to Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake. Fellow Irish writer Ken Bruen calls Burke “the future of [...]

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Crime Tales of Shanghai: Qiu Xiaolong’s Inspector Chen Novels

China-born author, Qiu Xiaolong, is the Anthony Award-winning creator of the Inspector Chen series, set in 1990s Shanghai. The series, which started in 2000 with Death of a Red Heroine, now has six installments with the 2009 addition The Mao Case, and has been translated into twenty languages. The Wall Street Journal called Xiaolong’s first [...]

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Vienna in the Moose Lodge Stage and Beyond

In honor of the Fourth of July, and my son’s birthday, I offer a bit of personal information. I have written a dozen books and hundreds of articles for newspapers, magazines, and encyclopedias. A full half of my published travel books, historical narratives, biographies, thrillers, and mysteries deal with or are set in Vienna, Austria. [...]

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