Saturday, February 14, 2026
Bookblog of the Bristol Library: Reacher: The Stories Behind the Stories by Lee Child
Bookblog of the Bristol Library: Reacher: The Stories Behind the Stories by Lee Child: Reacher: The Stories Behind the Stories by Lee Child Reviewed by Jeanne Back a few years ago, Otto Penzler managed to talk his friend ...
Scott's Take: Bug Wars Book One: Lost in the Yard by Jason Aaron, Mahmud Asrar (Illustrator), Matt Wilson (Colorist), and Becca Carey (Designer)
Bug Wars Book
One: Lost in the Yard by Jason Aaron, Mahmud Asrar (Illustrator), Matt
Wilson (Colorist), and Becca Carey (Designer) is a weird book. I am not sure who the
intended audience is. It’s sort of Game of Thrones-ish, sort of Conan-is,
sort of a lot of fantasy adventure deals. No matter what you try and compare it
to, the deal is told from a kid’s perspective of life among the bugs with bug
worldbuilding pages by his dad. It is weird.
A kid and his
family are forced to move to his deceased dad’s place. Slade has inherited his
father’s love of bugs. Sydney, his brother, has an intense hatred of them and blames them
for the death of their father. During an argument between the two, Slade is
shrunk to the size of a bug and winds up outside the home. He is now stuck in
bug world. A word that is remarkably like his own normal world. He now seeks to
survive, get back to normal size, and return home. He also wants to uncover why
his father died and protect his brother from the bugs vengeance.
There is nudity,
bestiality, violence, cussing, torture, slavery, and way more. This is a very
adult book that, for some reason, stars a child protagonist. It is not ever
clear if he is a pre teen or a little older. The read also comes across to this
reader as two different books stuck together. Some aspects of it seems forced.
The art is
excellent, even though most of the humanoid insects end up looking basically
human except for some minor changes. The world building is interesting, even if
the bug facts were disgusting and made me hate bugs even more. There is a
larger world built up.
Major Spoiler---the
book synopsis claims Slade will uncover the truth about his father’s death.
That does not happen at all. Maybe the sequel will explain. The book raises
more questions than answers.
There will be a
second book and a one shot about the witch spiders released at some point. How
it will be collected has yet to be announced. The title of the second story arc
is The Fellowship of The Fucked-Up. Clearly a play on the Lord
of The Rings series.
Amazon Associate
Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4taWpRB
My paperback
reading copy came from the Vickery Park Branch of the Dallas Public Library System.
Scott A. Tipple ©2026
Friday, February 13, 2026
Jerry's House of Everything: A FORGOTTEN BOOK TWOFER
Jerry's House of Everything: A FORGOTTEN BOOK TWOFER: Mike Mars Flies the X-15 by Donald A. Wollheim (1961) Air Force! by Frank Harvey (1959) Two books celebrating the early years of the s...
In Reference to Murder: Mystery Melange
In Reference to Murder: Mystery Melange: The 2026 Pulp Factory Awards finalists have been announced, voted on by members of Pulp Factory, a professional association of pulp writers,...
Thursday, February 12, 2026
Beneath the Stains of Time: The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Hybrid Mysteries
Beneath the Stains of Time: The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Hybrid Mysteries: In 2021, John Pugmire's Locked Room International published Masahiro Imamura's Shijinso no satsujin ( Death Among the Undead , 201...
Thursday Treats: 2/12/2026
Welcome back to “Thursday Treats.” Viewership dropped significantly again, week to week, so maybe this was not the bright idea I thought it was when I started it.
Michael Bracken recently announced that
his short story, Takes the Cake, appears at the “Micromance Magazine Substack.”
You can read it here for free. By
the way, he also announced that the Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir
annual anthology series will continue. He has a new publisher (no word if the
previous volumes will also be republished) and that once he has release dates
for the sixth and seventh books with the new folks, he will put the call out at
his website. http://www.CrimeFictionWriter.com
Authors John M. Floyd, Steve Liskow, Nick
Guthrie and several others appear in Black Cat Weekly #232. This is a weekly
publication featuring short stories and novellas in multiple genres. You can
buy individual issues or one of the far better subscription deals at blackcatweekly.com.
Nick Guthrie also announced that his
short story, The Youth of Today, appears online at the Urban Pigs Press. You
can read it for free here.
Fellow SMFS list member by Justin L. Murphy announced on the list that his true crime book, Ruth Snyder: The Real-Life Murderess Inspiring The Modern Femme Fatale. Available at Amazon in digital form, the book details the 1927 Ruth Snyder case. This is the fourth book in his True Crime series.
Author Kris Bock reached out recently to
me recently to let me know she had another book in her The Accidental
Detective Mystery Series about to come out. Something Prowling in
Paradise Park: A Kate Tessler Amateur Sleuth Mystery comes out on March
2nd in digital format from Thule Publishing. You can preorder it now
on Amazon and other vendors. Make sure you
come to the blog this Sunday as she is contributing a guest post featuring an excerpt
from the new book. Just as she has done for previous book in this series and
her other reads.
Author Tom Milani announced his short
story, Someday You Will, appears at The Yard: Crime Blog. You can read the tale
for free here.
The March/April issue of Alfred
Hitchock’s Mystery Magazine is now out. Authors Kevin Egan, R. T. Lawton,
and others, are in the new issue. Learn more at the website.
So, if AHMM is out, you already
know that the new issue for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine is out. It
is and includes short stories by Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier, David Dean, John M.
Floyd, Robert Lopresti, Josh Pachter, Marilyn Todd, and others. Learn more at
the website.
Author Lois Winston announced that her
latest novel, Embroidered Lies and Alibis, is now out. This is
the 15th book in her long running Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery
Series. You can learn more about the mystery on her website or just go
straight to Amazon and get it in
various formats.
Until next time….
Kevin R. Tipple ©2026
Wednesday, February 11, 2026
Mystery Fanfare: VALENTINE'S DAY MYSTERIES. //VALENTINE'S DAY CRIME FICTION
Mystery Fanfare: VALENTINE'S DAY MYSTERIES. //VALENTINE'S DAY CRIME...: Although Valentine's Day is all about love, but love and hate are often quite close emotions. Valentine's Day is perfect fo...
Bitter Tea and Mystery: Short Story Wednesday: More Short Stories by the Lockridges
Bitter Tea and Mystery: Short Story Wednesday: More Short Stories by the L...: I read the first few stories in Flair for Murder by Francis & Richard Lockridge in January 2025. Now, over a year later, I have finis...
Jerry's House of Everything: SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: NOBODY LIVES THERE NOW, NOTHING HAPPENS
Jerry's House of Everything: SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: NOBODY LIVES THERE NOW, NO...: "Nobody Lives There Now, Nothing Happens" by Casrol Orlock (from Women of Darkness , edited by Kathryn Ptacek (1988) This short, ...
Jim Nesbitt's Guest Post Review: The Poison Dart by Geri Dreiling
Please welcome back author Jim Nesbitt back to the blog today with his latest guest post review …
The
main character in Geri Dreiling's second mystery novel, The Poison Dart,
isn't a cop or a shamus so she doesn't carry a badge or a gun.
But
Debbie Bradley, an investigative reporter, uses some of the same sly, dogged,
bold, deceitful and sometimes illegal tricks a detective routinely pulls out of
their hat.
Her
lies are smooth and sweet. Her trespassing skills are stealthy and cat-burglar
quick. Her stake-out chops are tenacious and iron-bottom sound. And she's a
master at chasing the social media breadcrumbs that show the connects between
the subjects of her stories.
Best
of all, she takes the reader on a fast-paced ride-along as she shuffles through
her tradecraft tricks to discover the next tendril of an ever-more-dangerous
web of rich-kid heroin addicts, sleazy roadside deadbeats, redneck money mules,
cartel killers and a Mexican family shackled to a network of ruthless drug
traffickers.
Bradley,
known as Crime Beat Girl for her underworld stories in a slick city magazine
and the accompanying podcast that gives her a certain measure of fame, also
takes readers on a tour d'horizon of St. Louis and its satellite towns.
It's
a place where the top two questions everybody asks a stranger are: Where did
you go to high school? And, which parish do you belong to? Yeah, it's a
clannish town more than it is a city, very much focused on its storied past
rather than its threadbare present, and the author takes the perfect snapshots
that show its insular folkways.
There's
a great riff on a St. Louis institution, the Wednesday lunch at St. Raymond's,
the Maronite church just south of downtown that serves as the spiritual home
for the city's Lebanese and Syrian immigrants. It's still a place where deals
are made and pols, cops, mobsters and just plain folks rub elbows.
One
of Bradley's regular podcast guests is a retired cop still known as Captain
Jack Flannery, a renown raconteur who gives listeners -- and readers -- a fast,
colorful summary of the mob wars of the early 1980s between the Mafia, the
Syrian faction and a crew with connections to The Outfit in Chicago. More than
a few tit-for-tat car bombings.
But
this is a sideshow to the book's main event -- Bradley's initial intent to do a
story about rich kids hooked on heroin, centering on the overdose death of a
teen named Caleb Webb, the son of prominent real estate developers and twin
brother to Connor.
This
leads Bradley to Macie Holloway, Caleb's semi-girlfriend who blames herself for
his death because she believes the source of his last heroin hit was someone
she touted. Macie has the gaunt, doom-struck look of heroin addict deeply
depressed about Caleb's death and his constant, spectral presence as a ghost
whispering in her ear.
While
Bradley is worming her way into Macie's confidence, a big drugs-and-money raid takes
place out in the boonies west of St. Louis. At first, this seems like an event
only tangentially related to Caleb's death.
But
as Bradley pulls at the tendrils of this web, it becomes apparent that there's
a direct connection between Caleb's death and the cartel that got stung by the
raid and the murderous boss who runs it, El Duro.
Every
tendril is another step in harm's way. But Bradley is relentless, locked on the
trail of a suddenly far bigger story, refusing to back down, jazzed by the
thrill of the hunt. After all, she's the Crime Beat Girl, a nickname she lives
up to in this terrific novel by Geri Dreiling.
Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4akwzSn
Jim
Nesbitt ©2026
Jim Nesbitt is the award-winning author of five hard-boiled Texas crime thrillers that feature battered but dogged Dallas PI Ed Earl Burch. The fifth Ed Earl Burch novel, THE FATAL SAVING GRACE, has just been released. Nesbitt was a journalist for more than 30 years, serving as a reporter, editor and roving national correspondent for newspapers and wire services in Alabama, Florida, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Washington, D.C. He now lives in Athens, Alabama, where he is writing his sixth Ed Earl Burch novel, THE PERFECT TRAIN WRECK.
Tuesday, February 10, 2026
Bookblog of the Bristol Library: Ossman and Steel’s Classic Household Guide to Appalachian Folk Healing
Bookblog of the Bristol Library: Ossman and Steel’s Classic Household Guide to Appa...: Reviewed by Jeanne The subtitle is A Collection of Old-Time Remedies, Charms, and Spells which comes closer to describing the content...
Mystery Fanfare: Murder at the Olympics: Crime Fiction set at the Olympics
Mystery Fanfare: Murder at the Olympics: Crime Fiction set at the O...: I hope you're enjoying the Winter Olympics. I am. If you're a mystery reader, it should come as no surprise that the Olym...
Publication Day Review: Robert B. Parker’s Big Shot: A Jesse Stone Novel by Christopher Farnsworth
Paradise Police Chief Jesse Stone is on the night
shift as Robert B. Parker’s Big Shot: A Jesse Stone Novel begins
and he likes it. He really likes it. It is something he does from time to time
as they are an eleven member police department. There Is plenty of money in
Paradise, Massachusetts, so the sight of the McLaren sports car on its own is
not surprising. At the same time, summer is over and that means the summer
people are gone. So, it is something to look at as it is just parked at the
side of the road.
When Jesse looks closer he realizes the driver is passed
out in the car. Woken up by Jesse, he comes out of the car belligerent and very
intoxicated. Not only does he refuse to cooperate, he takes a swing at Jesse.
Before long, he is in cuffs and on his way to the jail.
It isn’t until late in the morning of the next day
that Molly informs him that he arrested and jailed a notorious celebrity. The
man is Ramsey Devlin. The same Ramsey Devlin that beat the federal fraud case,
moved out of NYC, and into a newly constructed mansion monstrosity in the area.
The same house that many of the neighbors complained to the police about as the
eyesore was being constructed even though the situation had nothing to do with
the police.
Like his client, his attorney, Gordon Wilkes, is
arrogant and aggressive. The attorney claims that the arrest is nothing more
than police harassment at the behest of the federal government. Neither he nor
his client see that Devlin was out of line. Instead, they plan to sue the
department into oblivion.
Unfortunately, that first incident is not the last.
All too soon, Jesse is accused of murder and gets another lesson regarding
actual friends.
Robert B. Parker’s Big Shot: A Jesse
Stone Novel by Christopher Farnsworth is a mighty
good read. As author Reed Farrel Coleman did with the series years ago across several
books, and as Mr. Farnsworth did in the last novel, Buried Secrets, he again
captures the voice and spirit of the series as written by Robert B. Parker. The
book comes alive for the reader. It only takes a handful of pages before that
the tale is from somebody other than the original author. He has every aspect
of those reads down and this new tale just flows for the reader.
Strongly Recommended.
Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/48ZTwtx
My digital ARC came by way of the publisher, G.P. Putnam's Sons, through NetGalley, and with no expectation of a positive review.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2026
Monday, February 09, 2026
In Reference to Murder: Media Murder for Monday
In Reference to Murder: Media Murder for Monday: It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news: THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES In a comp...
Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Best Offer Wins: A Novel by Marisa Kashino
Best Offer
Wins (Celadon Books, November 2025) by Marisa Kashino is Kashino’s debut
novel. She covered the Washington DC real estate market for the Washington
Post and the Washingtonian, and she knows what she’s talking about.
Margo Miyake
and her husband Ian have been house hunting in the Washington DC, suburbs for
18 months. No matter how much they offer, they lose to the well-heeled buyers
who can offer all cash and more of it than Margo and Ian can possibly hope to
finance. They have lost 11 listings in the DC real estate market war zone and
Margo is beginning to despair of ever leaving the cramped apartment they took
after they sold their DC row house. She wants desperately to start a family; at
the age of 37 her biological clock is ticking more loudly every day. But she
must have a home first in which to raise a family, so the house has become an
urgent priority.
When she hears
about a residence in an upscale Bethesda area before it goes on the market, she
and Ian go look at it, ostensibly just to check out the neighborhood. But Margo
can’t resist walking around the house to examine the back yard and to look in
the kitchen windows and she gets caught by one of the owners. She pretends that
she’s lost. Ian has driven away rather than be mortified by his wife who is
unashamedly trespassing.
Margo can’t
stop scheming how to convince the owners of the house to accept their offer
before they list the house on the MLS, despite the huge event her PR firm is
hosting in just a few days. Margo is responsible for a large part of the
details that will make the event stand out. If successful, their client will
put the firm on retainer, a giant PR plum. But she is busy plotting her next
real estate maneuver while she should be listening in meetings and taking
notes. Margo has a laserlike focus that guided missiles would envy.
Her next move
is to stalk the owner she met. She finds out where his yoga class is and “accidentally”
joins his class. Not just joins the class but sits next to him. Nothing subtle
about Margo. She goes from one embarrassing attempt to another without batting
an eye or paying the least bit of attention to her job. Or her husband. Her
ability to lie to her manager, her husband, and to her real estate agent is
awe-inspiring.
It is not
possible to say much more without giving away the entire story line. Suffice it
to say, this book is cringe-inducing, hilarious, and scary. It will strike fear
into the hearts of buyer’s agents everywhere. I can’t wait to see what Marisa
Kashino writes next.
·
Publisher: Celadon Books
·
Publication date: November 25, 2025
·
Language: English
·
Print length: 288 pages
·
ISBN-10: 1250400546
·
ISBN-13: 978-1250400543
Amazon
Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3ZpuDDd
Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2026
Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.
Sunday, February 08, 2026
Little Big Crimes: The Summer Tournament, by Jason Starr
Little Big Crimes: The Summer Tournament, by Jason Starr: "The Summer Tournament," by Jason Starr, in Tennis Noir, edited by John Shepphird, Level Best Books, 2026. Ah, the first antholo...
Beneath the Stains of Time: Death Below the Dam (1936) by Esther Fonseca
Beneath the Stains of Time: Death Below the Dam (1936) by Esther Fonseca: Not much is known today of Esther Haven Fonseca, except for scraps and pieces of bio-and bibliographical information, but, what can be said ...
Review: A Study in Secrets: A Redacted Man Mystery by Jeffrey Siger
As A Study in Secrets: A Redacted Man Mystery
by Jeffrey Siger begins, Michael likes to sit in his penthouse window and
imagine the lives of the people he sees that pass by his home. The wealthy
recluse has a good perch as his townhouse faces an entrance to the neighborhood
park directly across the street. A former intelligence operative who gave a lot
to this country, physically, emotionally, and every other way possible, lives a
life of quiet isolation. He rarely goes out and has very limited social
contact. If it wasn’t for his housekeeper, Mrs. Baker, he might not speak to
another person for days.
He has many people to people watch from his perch as
he envisions their imaginary lives. He does not know their names, their
occupations, or anything else real about them. He watches them, the strays and
the regulars, and creates stories in his head of them and how they are going
about their day. That includes a regular, a young woman in her gray coat, who daily
sits on one of the park benches at the entrance to the park. She arrives
shortly before dawn each day, and once the sun is up, walks deeper inside the
park and becomes lost to his view.
While he imagines her life one way, her actual
reality is far different. She has a routine that she must follow, with no
exceptions. Her boss made that very clear on her first day. The same boss who
is soon very dead on the floor of the apartment she shares with two other
women.
Thanks to her boss being shot in the head, she now has
no job. She can’t stay there. She can’t go to the cops. She certainly can’t
tell anyone about her job. How much the roommates know about what she does, she
has no idea, but they can’t be trusted either. She has no money, no resources,
and no option other than to sleep on the bench at the edge of the park. It is
dangerous, but that park bench is the one place that she feels any safety at
all.
Fortunately, for her, Michael is awake and watching when
she goes to the bench and lies down to sleep. He has always been intrigued by
her. Haunted by those he failed to save, the elderly man is not going to let
her sleep there unprotected. He certainly can’t just walk over and bring her
home. With no other choice, as he sees it, he calls a person he has not spoken
to in decades to ask for help for her.
That action by Michael starts a domino chain of events
as the figure on the bench needs a lot of help. That help will come in many
different ways as the threat to her life evolves again and again.
Beyond the obvious references to the legendary
Sherlock Holmes, what struck my me most was how much this setup reminded me of
the original The Equalizer TV show. During the last half of the 80s, CBS
aired the drama. Edward Woodward was the dashing and sophisticated Robert
McCall. He was a former intelligence operative and a man of considerable means.
He was also your way out if you had no one else to help. All you had to do was
call him by way of his newspaper ad. Back then, it was must see viewing for my late
wife and me. It was also far and away superior to the rebooted version that CBS
came up with in recent years.
That premise seems to be at work here, as I read the
novel. Elderly man with a cane and plenty of money, a recluse who retired after
a long career in the intelligence services, disengaged from the world, is
pushed into a situation where he is compelled to help a very vulnerable young
woman. That push to help begins to break him free of the protective shell he
has created around himself. He gradually reengages with the world and the
people around him, one slow step at a time.
That decision to contact somebody he has not spoken
to in decades to get her help as she laid on the bench that cold night, starts
a chain that changes everything for quite a few people in this very enjoyable first
book of the new series. A solidly good read that gradually builds the tempo to
a very satisfying conclusion. A Study in Secrets: A Redacted Man Mystery
by Jeffrey Siger is well your time and attention.
For another perspective on the book, make sure you
read Lesa Holstine’s recent review here.
Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3LPgXhO
My digital ARC came by way of the publisher, Severen
House, through NetGalley, with no expectation of a positive review.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2026
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