Fifty-six

Another post in my ongoing series of Cold War Europe: It’s only about 130 miles from Vienna to Budapest, but during the years I lived in the Austrian capital, during the Cold War, Budapest, part of the Soviet East Bloc, was in many ways located in another time and world. You can take a hydrofoil [...]

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Murder, Mayhem, and Music: The Cremona Novels of Paul Adam

Paul Adam is the author of eleven can’t-put-them-down thrillers for adults (in addition to three earlier crime novels, featuring investigative journalist Mike McLean) that cover topics from people smuggling, to genetically modified crops, cigarette smuggling in the European Union, Chinese oppression in Tibet, corruption within the Vatican, and the 21st Century surveillance society in which [...]

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“Tales of Tragedy, Death and Dislocation”: The Kamil Pasha Novels of Jenny White

Kirkus Reviews praised her “intelligent, sensuous writing.” The Washington Post said she “adroitly tosses in period detail as well as romance, political intrigue and brutal battle scenes.” Booklist declared that “the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire, in the throes of political upheaval, … provides the vividly realized background” of her novels. Welcome to the world of Jenny [...]

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A Forensic Map of Cleveland: The Novels of Lisa Black

Author Lisa Black makes no bones about it. On her home page she declares that she “spent the happiest five years of my life in a morgue.” Fed up with a secretarial career, she re-tooled at Cleveland State University and got a job as a forensic scientist at the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office, where she [...]

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Mahler in Vienna

Another offering of scene in my own fiction: Gustav Mahler’s name has long been associated with Vienna. Most know the story of his turbulent years as director of the Court Opera from 1897 to 1907. Indeed, the early years of his directorship are, in part, the subject of my novel, Requiem in Vienna. Court intrigues, [...]

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Tales of the Caribbean: Bob Morris’s “Zack Chasteen” Novels

Bob Morris is the author of the Caribbean-themed mysteries featuring Zack Chasteen, former Miami Dolphins linebacker and ex-con (wrongly convicted), who becomes an unwilling detective to save his own skin in the series opener, Bahamarama. An “edgy debut novel,” is how Publishers Weekly described that book. Booklist was also impressed, noting that “Morris knows how [...]

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Mid-Ocean Madness

A confession: As a young man I was a physical coward. Well, let me rephrase that. As a young man certain situations scared me enough that I would go to elaborate lengths to avoid said situations. Sitting in a cramped seat eight miles high, breathing stale, recycled air, with just a couple inches of steel [...]

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