The Literate Kitty

As much as I love crafting ( and imbibing, just so we’re clear, here ) a delightfully-complex cocktail, there’s also much to be said for the beautiful simplicity of something like a G&T, which creates its own magic with just three meager ingredients. The same holds true—for me, anyway—with storytelling; while I’m all for becoming completely ensnared by a labyrinthine tale [when done well , mind you—I enjoy crappy stories no more than I do crappy drinks], there’s an undeniable power to a simpler story, when told really, really well… which is exactly what Camilla Sten manages to do in her unputdownable new suspense, The Lost Village . _______________ Alice Lindstedt has had two passions for as long as she can remember: making movies (hence her film school degree), and trying to solve a fifty-plus-year-old family mystery (the inexplicable disappearance of an entire Swedish village—including her grandmother’s whole family—back in 1959).  When—by chance, as much as anything—s...

Snow… a wall of white, as far as the eye can see. A small mining colony at the very top of the world (far northeastern Quebec, so near enough the “top”, at any rate)—the imposing end of which is built to look like nothing so much as one massive, continuous wall (though whether to keep those northern winds and more snow out , or to keep its inhabitants within , would be hard to say). All the usual gossip, grievances, and carrying on between those who live there (willingly or not, as the case may be) year-round, and the “fly-in-fly-outs” who stay for couple-month work stints, then return to wherever it is from which they came, are on full display.   Oh, and a murder… something which never happens in a town that can’t even boast of having any elderly people within its walls (so also, virtually no deaths ). Thus begins La Faille , or—as you may have already sussed— The Wall , in English. _______________ When her boss tells her she’s headed to the middle of nowhere to take over a...

Have you ever seen a preview for a show (trailer for a movie, etc.) that really hooked you… but when you tuned in to watch it, found yourself not enjoying it so much as wandering about in the middle of an already long-running series, hopelessly lost?   Yeah, that. That’s what happened to me for much of February [insert the crying-buckets-face emoji here], as I struggled with (then put down, then picked up again, and rinse, repeat… multiple times) David Putnam’s The Ruthless … which I only found out afterward was book number eight ( yep, EIGHT! ) in an ongoing series. Oy. So, I’ll be breaking this experience down for you a bit differently than my norm. _______________ Bruno Johnson is a Sheriff’s Deputy with the Los Angeles Police Department, and has been, for… well, a reasonable amount of time, I’m guessing.  But… some utter shit has (apparently) gone down in Bruno’s life shortly before The Ruthless begins: namely, the abduction (and assumed— by Bruno —murder) of o...