Hell on Wheels by Sue Ann Jaffarian is the 9th cozy mystery in the Odelia Grey series, and this time a game of quadriplegic rugby takes a turn towards murder (available November 8, 2014). Plus size paralegal Odelia Grey has always been an unusual cozy heroine. Rather than a small town and a super close…
The Year I Died Seven Times by Eric Beetner is a 7-part serialized novel about Ridley Allen, who'll be punished by stubborn love, gnawing curiosity, and a perverse knack for survival after his Japanese girlfriend disappears (Book #7, the final installment, is available November 4, 2014). Being a fan of short fiction as I am,…
Publicity makes for strange bedfellows. So does crime. So does religion, for that matter. Add publicity, crime, and religion together, and you get the fascinating story of how the Reverend Billy Graham set out to save the soul of the most notorious gangster in the history of Los Angeles: crime lord Mickey Cohen. Billy Graham…
The Coen Brother’s 1998 comedy The Big Lebowski has many cultural touchstones—the sixties, hippies, Vietnam, CCR, weed, Busby Berkley musicals—but the underlying structure of the movie goes back further to the days of 40s film noir. In a movie full of touches of genius (full disclosure: I’m a Lebowskiphile from way back), the initiating act…
Beware Beware by Steph Cha is the 2nd Juniper Song mystery, and this time the P.I. apprentice finds herself tracking a screenwriter turned murder suspect (available August 12, 2014). Working as an apprentice at a P.I. firm, Juniper Song finds herself nose deep in a Hollywood murder scandal where the lies may be more glamorous…
In the new trailer for the upcoming film Nightcrawler, Jake Gyllenhaal plays Lou Bloom, an aspiring journalist who speeds around the the streets of Los Angeles in the middle of the night looking to get to the scene of the crime before anyone else. Gyllenhaal conveys an intensity in this voice-overed trailer, but it's not…
Land of Shadows by Rachel Howzell Hall is a procedural mystery featuring homicide detective Elouise “Lou” Norton as she delves deep into a teenage murder on the outskirts of L.A. (available June 10, 2014). Along the ever-changing border of gentrifying Los Angeles, seventeen-year-old Monique Darson is found dead at a condominium construction site, hanging in…
Are you a fan of Michael Connelly's Hieronymous “Harry” Bosch? Well get ready for more! After testing the waters earlier this year with a pilot episode, Amazon Prime has ordered 10 more episodes of the series, which follows the LAPD homicide detective as he solves one murder, while facing charges of his own. Did you…
The Amazing Harvey by Don Passman introduces Harvey Kendall, a wisecracking, struggling stage magician in L.A., whose sleuthing is inspired by the inexplicable presence of his own DNA at a crime scene (available February 25, 2014). It seems our man Harvey just can’t get a break. A low level stage magician, with his eyes on…
You may know the classics of the heist genre—John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle, Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing, Jules Dassin’s Rififi, etc.(for an overview of the essentials, check out Jake Hinkson’s entries in “The Art of the Steal”). But there are plenty of other excellent heist films you may have missed. Take a look at five…
