Passport to Espionage: All the Old Knives
Labyrinthine plots are expected in spy novels. For many authors and readers there is the mentality that the more intricate the narrative, the better. In All the Old Knives, author Olen Steinhauer...
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Passport To Espionage: The Courier
This installment of the Passage to Espionage column is a tad different: a look at a spy film based on real events and people. The Courier (2020) stars the brilliant Benedict Cumberbatch as Greville...
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Book Review: Ramsey Campbell, Certainly
In the interest of full disclosure, I obtained my trade paper edition of Ramsey Campbell, Certainly as a runners-up prize in a contest conducted by PS Publishing. To commemorate Ramsey Campbell’s 75th...
View ArticleNothing But Blackened Teeth (Book Review)
It’s impossible for horror fiction to lay to rest the ghost of Shirley Jackson. In The Haunting of Hill House (1959) she erected a standard for haunted house tales involving psychic investigations....
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Spooky Suburbia
Southern California. A place of dreamers and the demented. A locale that combines the balmy with the barmy. Its suburbs reflect an insular attitude; sometimes the streets turn abruptly into...
View ArticleThe Last House on Needless Street (Book Review)
Horror has a tell-tale heart. The device of the unreliable narrator is a genre staple. With The Last House on Needless Street, author Catriona Ward ups the ante. If one unreliable narrator perturbs,...
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The Haunting Season (Book Review)
What better way to indulge my Anglophilia than by immersing myself in the British tradition of seasonal ghost stories? The Haunting Season, published by Pegasus Books, contains eight wintry tales that...
View ArticleDead Silence (Book Review)
Becoming jaded is a hazard for book reviewers. Blurbs and publicists’ plot distillations become a montage of repetition. So, when I saw that Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes was being touted as a brilliant...
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Ellen Datlow’s Body Shocks (Anthology): Book Review
Body Horror. The most intense and graphic of subgenres. It gnaws at our vulnerabilities and devours the pretense that we are safe if we take certain prescribed precautions. Our bodies can betray us in...
View ArticlePassport to Espionage: All the Old Knives (film, 2022)
In a previous installment of the Passport to Espionage column (included below), I delved into the novel All the Old Knives and touched upon the fact that it was being made into a film. Since I’m a fan...
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