The Literate Kitty

It might be hard to believe, but there   was   life before self-driving cars were an option. Before AI and the internet gave us split-second access to  all  manner of information.  Before cell phones were practically glued to our hands. So let’s go back to one such “before”—specifically, the early 1990s—for a few minutes.  Grunge was taking over the music scene, and the number of channels on cable TV was exploding. And although we  knew  serial killers existed... for the most part, it was still in a “ stuff-that-only-happens-somewhere-else ” kind of way. Thriller master Alex Finlay leads us into that world—a quite ordinary one... until a serial killer starts terrorizing everyone—with his latest,  The Anniversary .   It could’ve been just another day in a small Nebraska town... except on this one day of the year—May 1, 1992—folks are a little jittery. You see, terrible things have been happening on this particular day for a while, now. Yo...

I’ve never been one of those people who say they can’t wait to “grow old”. I couldn’t wait to grow up , but  old ? No way. And yet, as I suspect most of my fellow Gen Xers—and probably  all  Boomers, out there—have gradually come to realize, doing so sure beats the alternative. So maybe it’s time to reframe how we look at aging. If we do our best to maintain our health, stay as fit as possible, keep our brains active, and hang onto our friends, then getting old... er ... doesn’t sound like such a scary and dreadful future, right ? Not convinced? (I ’m still trying to convince myself, here; this is a work in progress. 🙃 )  Anyway, just do yourself a solid and pick up a copy of Fergus Craig’s delightful  I’m Not the Only Murderer in My Retirement Home , and see if reading it doesn’t put your mind at ease a bit.     After spending too many decades in prison, just-released ex-serial killer Carol feels like she’s suddenly landed in the middle of a dream, g...

Imagine, if you will, a post-pandemic office sitch. Employees given the all-clear, report-back-to-base instructions... meaning, anyone still wishing to be gainfully-employed should showing up at the big office building, posthaste, to do... well, Very Important Things.   Which Dolores de la Cruz—striking, enigmatic, and fearsome—does, in her oh-so-elite, can’t-touch-this way.   And that's all fine... until she happens into the same elevator at work as Jake Ripper... almost ridiculously-handsome, in his winsome, Clark Kent sorta way—and suddenly, both their worlds are turned upside-down (and quite possibly, inside-out).   Because whereas Dolores is the scarily-beautiful (and untouchable, lest we forget), powerful unknown... Jake is the younger, eager-to-please, temp-agency hire—just there for a brief time, filling in for someone-or-other—with no real skin in any particular game.   Except.   Dolores senses in Jake an “otherness”, with his stranger-danger leather gl...

One of my college jobs was salesgirl at a shoe store.   My manager—smart, sweet, attractive, and never-behind-bars ( that’ll be relevant in a second )—was great to work with.     But, I  seriously  questioned her choice in movies.   Her favorite genre was a mashup of female empowerment and vigilante fantasies—women in jail, enduring horrible things, only to  finally  exact graphic, brutal revenge on the men that had hurt them.    Back then, I didn’t understand the appeal... but after finishing Emma C. Wells’ debut novel,  This Girl’s a Killer , I think—at long last—I’m starting to.     Cordelia Black has—from the outside—one of those enviable lives. She’s attractive. Put-together. Healthy. Independent. Self-sufficient, with a well-paying job—Big Pharma rep—that easily funds her love of very nice things (Manolo Blahnik and Louboutin stilettos, and a collection of Louis Vuitton handbags).    She’s beloved by h...

When you hear the word “honeymoon”, chances are, you picture a happy couple walking into a posh hotel suite (complete with artfully-folded towel swans surrounded by a heart made of rose petals, laid out on the bed). Holding hands as they stroll along a sandy beach, pausing for long kisses as the sun sets in glorious technicolor behind them. Clinking glasses of bubbly together while lounging in a hot tub, all heart-eyes between them.  [Basically, what every wedding and travel brochure catering to the newly-hitched advertises in beautifully-printed, vivid colors.] So, there’s a honeymoon in Simone St. James’ latest novel, too… but darlin’, this ain’t remotely that kind of honeymoon. In fact, you might say that the after-ceremony vacay in Murder Road would more aptly be called a “ bloodymoon ”…  _______________ It’s 1995, and Eddie and April—the brand-spanking-new Mr. and Mrs. Carter—are cruising along a deserted Michigan road (bizarrely named Atticus Line) late at night, ...

A single mom gets a call early in the morning, necessitating the unceremonious hustling of her so- not -a-boyfriend out of the apartment, followed by making a slapdash school lunch for her little girl, so that she can drop off said small human at said school, then rush off to work to put out whatever fire apparently needs her urgent attention. In this case, though, it isn’t an unhappy client or an impending deadline (or any of the other “normal” work crises most people have to deal with. Naia Thulin is a Copenhagen police detective (although she really, really wants to transfer to IT, so she can actually spend some time with her child), and her boss (who clearly has no plans whatsoever to let her go) wants her at the scene of a newly-discovered murder, now.  In addition, he’s saddling her with a temporary placement, one Mark Hess—someone who normally travels internationally working on high-profile cases, but who’s been ordered home for a spell (after royally pissing someone of...

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 ...

There are a lot of different writing styles out there—and obviously, a multitude of genres in which those styles can be employed—but in the end, one’s enjoyment of anything written is an individual thing; some things just click with us, while others leave us feeling indifferent. For me, B.D. Smith’s The Ice Maiden falls into the latter category (and with a big thud).  The thing is, it really seemed, at first glance, like a sure bet: a serial killer operating in a small community somewhere in Maine (which, by dint of having read very few stories set in that distant state, made it immediately interesting), who acts out tortures from the Spanish Inquisition (ooh, cool historical undertones, anyone)? How intriguing! Add a wintry scene for the cover plus the title itself (“ice”)—hey, I’m nothing if not magnetically drawn to things set in cold, snowy climes—and again, I thought it would be a slam dunk.  The problem, unfortunately, is Smith’s writing style… which, to ...