Fourth Time Around : Alex Segura – “Blackout” (Pete Fernandez #4)

New York sounds like the perfect place to set up a fledgling detective agency, and that's where we are at the beginning of Alex Segura's "Blackout," the fourth Pete Fernandez mystery. Pete has escaped from the Miami of "Dangerous Ends," and is getting ready for a  bright future. But what was that whole Faulkner thing about the …

Machete Kills! : Alex Segura – “Dangerous Ends”

"Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends" - William Shakespeare, "Henry VI, Part I" When I last left Miami P.I. Pete Fernandez, he was venturing "Down the Darkest Street." Some time has passed and now I find him up to "Dangerous Ends." His best friend Kathy Bentley has published not one but TWO best-selling true crime books based on his …

To Kill a Famous Reclusive Author : Stephen King – “Finders Keepers”

"Finders Keepers" is second in Stephen King's new genre-shifting trilogy, after "Mr. Mercedes," and it's another very successful action thriller even if you can see King straining to keep up with publishing trends. (Is a YA supernatural romance far behind? Or does "Carrie" already sort of cover that territory?) I mentioned the first novel had a certain "Michael Connelly" smell to it, …

The Metaphysics of Murder : John Connolly – “Every Dead Thing”

"For I am every dead thing; I am begot Of  absence, darknesse, death; Things which are not." - John Donne, "A Nocturnal Upon S. Lucies Day" John Donne's musings on mortality serve as an unlikely reference point in John Connolly's "Every Dead Thing," the first book in the Charlie "Bird" Parker mystery series. I don't find …

Vehicular Manslaughter : Stephen King – “Mr. Mercedes”

I wrote a rather lengthy Stephen King review not too long ago, and the literary world's hardest-working retiree is coming out with another novel in, like, a MONTH. So I won't go too much into "Mr. Mercedes." It involves one of its author's favoritest, most re-used tropes: THE HAUNTINGLY SIGNIFICANT KILLER VEHICLE. Retired Detective Bill Hodges …