The Literate Kitty

Those chance encounters. Most of the time, they’re mere blips on the radar of our lives… memorable ones, perhaps, but tiny hiccups in otherwise ordinary days, by and large. Every once in awhile, though… such encounters turn out to be something more, something with the power to snap us fully out of our norm and change us. Andrew Diamond’s Gate 76 is the story of one such encounter… and all that follows.  ____________________________________ Freddy Ferguson is a good guy. Oh, he may look a little sketchy—a big man with a would-be ordinary-enough face that’s been pummeled a few too many times in the ring to ever rack up adjectives like “good-looking” or “trustworthy”—but it’s the troubled life he’s had which led first to his boxing career, then made him well-suited for his current gig as a private investigator. That already-seen-the-worst-in-people attitude, the instant suspicion, and a sense of hyper-awareness serve him well when observing others. So, whenever he not...

It is, without doubt, a ballsy move to craft any sort of mystery (or psychological thriller) wherein the big question of “whodunit?” is revealed in the first few pages… yet that’s precisely the tack Liz Nugent takes in her wickedly-twisty (and twisted) new page turner, Lying in Wait . As you may have guessed, though, there’s a brilliant method to her madness, because the pages which follow concern a far-more intriguing question: the “whydunit”, if you will. To wit, any idea why a respected, middle-aged judge would kill a wrong-side-of-the-tracks young woman—with his to-the-manor-born wife’s assistance, no less—then drive the body to their own home and proceed to bury it in the back garden on their posh estate? Of course, there’s more to murder than just the act—especially for seemingly “normal” folks, like you or me. There’s the memory of it (and trying to live with same). There’s guilt (for the murderers here are anything but your typical cold, hardened killers). There’s a...

I can’t really say that I’ve done many (any?) bad—like, seriously bad —things. Most of us probably can’t, if we’re honest. Plenty of stuff we’re not too proud of, sure. Things we’d take back, not do, or do differently, you bet. But really, truly, awful bad?  But… what if you had —or, since I don’t know everyone out there who’ll stumble across this, what if you’re the rare beast who has —done something undeniably horrible, that’s been buried deep for however long? What would your life be like, every day, knowing that… whatever … was there, had happened? It’s a scary thought, and a far-scarier reality, in Jennifer Hillier’s brilliant Jar of Hearts . ____________________________ Teenagers are notoriously stupid… in the sense that they process things differently, often act (or act out) very impulsively, and make some incredibly-poor decisions (of the sort that down the road, as adults, they’d never, ever make). Fourteen years ago—under the combined (bad) influences ...

Harlan Coben is one of those authors whose books I’ve been reading for a coon’s age (however long that is), because he consistently delivers deliciously-twisty tales peopled with complex characters. Recently, he’s also gotten into film productions, so as soon as I saw he had a new TV series out on Netflix— Safe , following 2016’s The Five and 2015’s No Second Chance —it was an easy choice as to what I’d be streaming next. Short verdict? Wow. (No, really. Wow .) Yeah, okay, I can do better than that. (And totally spoiler-free, natch.) Set in a suburban area somewhere in England, Safe mostly takes place within the walls of a gated community. (Picturing beautiful large houses on ample lots, with wide, well-manicured lanes gently wending their way through the well-heeled neighborhood? Cool, then you’re in the right ballpark.) Dr. Tom Delaney (Michael C. Hall, of “Dexter” and “Six Feet Under” fame) has been trying to make a life for himself and his two teenage daughte...

Some things make no sense. Take me, and cold weather. There isn’t much extra “fluff” on my frame, which means I’ll probably shiver if the smallest breeze picks up. My extremities have less-than-robust circulation, so my fingertips and toes have this annoying little habit of going numb and turning a creepy shade of death whenever it’s chilly outside. And don’t get me started on the thought of jumping into any (unheated) body of water unless the day is over 90 degrees F. By all rights, then, I should have an aversion to all that is snowy or cold… yet that isn’t the case, at all. Maybe I just revel in being perverse (entirely possible), or proving how tough I am (also believable), but I actually really like that stuff, including reading about and watching it.  So, when Christopher Greyson’s Jack Frost came across my radar, I thought, “A P.I. takes a case on the down-low for a client who produces a popular survivalist reality TV show, and the current season, set high up ...

Sneaky Pete Okay, so I love a good con job. There’s just something about being able to outwit, outmaneuver, and outmatch another person (a group, a company, whatever)—by using your brain , rather than relying on manpower, weaponry, or whatever, that really appeals to me. But, while there’ve been plenty of good movies about con men (and women, obviously, but no one ever says “con women”)—“ The Sting ” or “ Oceans Eleven ” (et al), for instance—televised examples of the genre have been pretty sparse. With the arrival of “ Sneaky Pete ” last year—and the follow-up second season, which debuted earlier this spring—that’s all changed, though, because “ Pete ” is, most assuredly, the real deal. So, a little background from the first season (non-spoilery, as per my usual, so no worries). A con man (one Marius Josipovic) gets out of prison and, after learning that a lot of really bad dudes from New York are hot on his tail, decides to borrow the identity of his former cellmate (...

Whenever I’m rehabbing an injury or working on my daily step total, I tend to spend a fair amount of time using cardio equipment. The downside—as anyone who’s ever stepped foot on a treadmill, exercise bike, or elliptical machine will probably agree—is that working out on them can be deadly dull.  My life-hack to curing the monotony? I multi-task, distracting myself from the repetitive boringness by streaming things I want to see. Coming up over the next few days, then, a little look at some things I streamed (all while on gym equipment!) over the past month… all in their second (or fourth, in one case) seasons. Bosch I’ve been a Michael Connelly fan—including his long-running Harry Bosch police detective series (now twenty books in)—forever. So, the Amazon show which he exec-produces—based on those same characters, and simply called, “ Bosch” —has been a welcome addition to Connelly’s oeuvre, and the recently-released Season 4 is, for me, the best one, yet.  ...