Episode 245: Iris Yamashita

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There is a decided “down the rabbit hole” sensation to City Under One Roof, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Iris Yamashita’s debut crime fiction novel. When body parts wash up on the shore adjacent to the city-in-one-building, three female narrators—with varying degrees of unreliability—escort us over, under, sideways and down through the Davidson Condominiums, the one-stop shop,… Read more »

Episode 237: Scott Blackburn

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The last thing Hudson Miller, the protagonist in It Dies with You, Scott Blackburn’s debut crime fiction novel, wants to do is return to his hometown of Flint Creek, North Carolina. But when his father is shot and killed, it’s the first thing he has to do     Photo of Scott Blackburn ©Ross Fletcher… Read more »

Episode 226: Amanda Jayatissa

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From the outside looking in, Paloma’s life in My Sweet Girl—Amanda Jayatissa’s debut thriller—seems charmed. Adopted from a Sri Lankan orphanage at age twelve, Paloma has grown up with loving parents surrounded by affluence in San Francisco. Now, at 30, Paloma is grappling with events from her past and dealing with ghosts, some more real than… Read more »

Episode 202: James R. Benn

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In The Red Horse, Captain Billy Boyle—the inimitable protagonist of James R. Benn’s remarkable series of mysteries set in World War Two Europe—is sent to a secret hospital in the English countryside where he can recover from a psychotic break brought on by an overdose of amphetamines. If only recovery was his only task, because… Read more »

Episode 200: Denise Mina

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In The Less Dead, Denise Mina’s new crime fiction novel, after the death of the mother who adopted her, Dr. Margo Dunlop wants to find out about her birth mother. It’s possible Margo finds out more than she might want to know. After all, families—either by blood or by choice—are complicated…     Photo of… Read more »

Episode 193: Andrew Mayne

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Sloan McPherson, the protagonist of Andrew Mayne’s The Girl Beneath the Sea, just wants to live her life as an evidence-recovery diver for Lauderdale Shores PD, a mom to her daughter and a supportive member of her problematic family. But the discovery of a recently murdered young woman during a dive in a canal leads… Read more »

Episode 177: Paddy Hirsch

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The year is 1803 and in Hudson’s Kill, the second in Paddy Hirsch’s series about early New York City, all the usually warring factions, Protestant Nativists—those born in the U.S.—Irish Catholics and African Americans find themselves with a common enemy: Muslim immigrants     The argot of the time lends rhythm and color to the… Read more »

Episode 165: Randy Overbeck

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Darrell Henshaw, the protagonist of Blood on the Chesapeake, can’t help it if ghosts seek him out. But that doesn’t mean he has to welcome the otherworldly intrusions, either. The ghost reaching out to Darrell as he starts a new teaching and coaching position at a high school in Maryland, though, needs his help. And… Read more »

Episode 161: Jess Montgomery

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Jess Montgomery touches on many of the cross-currents buffeting the United States in the mid-1920’s in The Widows, the first novel in a new series featuring Lily Ross, the first woman sheriff in Ohio: women’s voting rights, Prohibition, the struggle to unionize at the mines, organized crime, child labor and educational inequality      … Read more »