The Literate Kitty

There may be a worse combination than sudden fame and all the trappings of mega-success for a group of young lads, but you’ll have to work to come up with one. Or, you can just dive headfirst into Tie Die , Max Tomlinson’s delicious new thriller, to see just how bad “worse” could be… _______________ Stevie Cook was the lead singer of an up-and-coming band—The Lost Chords—living the high life with his bandmates and rubbing elbows with the likes of the Stones in London. All of eighteen years old, he’d been swept from a normal life, to a crazy whirlwind of swinging 1960s excess, with all the booze, drugs, fancy clothes and gear, and female companionship he could lay his hands on.  Until one morning, that is, when he woke up, hung-over after a big show, with a naked young girl stone-cold dead in the bed next to him… and everything changed, again. Only this time, for the so-much-worse. Stevie fled Great Britain, fearing arrest, and vanished, and The Lost Chords disband...

"They say it’s always darkest before the dawn. If so--and if you happen to find yourself in a tunnel--you’d better damn well hope there’s a glimmer of light shining down at the end of it."     Cormoran Strike is stuck in one of those abominable cycles—the kind where nothing goes right.  After losing part of his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, he returned home to heal and figure out what to do next... which turned out to be putting the skills learned in the military police to practical use by setting up shop as a private investigator.  It’s something he happens to be really good at; problem is, business has been scarce, and is now down to a single client... which doesn’t come close to paying the bills (not even for his tiny, very modest London work digs).  But that’s not the end of his troubles; the icing on Strike’s unhappiness cake is that he’s just broken up with his longtime girlfriend... effectively leaving him homeless, forced to sleep in ...

Anyone who’s ever been in the market for a house--and almost certainly balked at the exorbitant asking prices--has doubtless been treated to the same tired bit of “wisdom” from his or her desperately-earnest realtor: “Well, yes... but what you’re really paying for is the neighborhood! ” (as if that somehow makes x-ridiculous-amount more feasible, more doable). In reality, what the homeowner or renter usually finds is something rather different--that there’s no such thing as a problem-free property, regardless of the neighborhood. (Whether it’s an HVAC or plumbing issue, an appliance on the blink, a leaky roof, a flooded basement, termites or other pesky bugs, obnoxious neighbors, or whatever, there’s always something going wrong or otherwise making life in one’s domicile less-than-peachy-keen.) That being the case, it may not seem that following a cross-segment of ordinary people, going about their everyday lives, could be so fascinating... yet in crime fiction and suspe...

After reading a goodly smattering of Steampunk, it seems to me there are two basic approaches to the genre. The first is full-on fantasy (set in the Victorian era), with little technical and scientific elements providing an interesting spark to the proceedings. The second is straight-up sci-fi, with fantastical bits and bobs adding a delightful touch of whimsy. Both styles are enjoyable, and the fact that each caters to a different mood—one, sort of dreamy and otherworldly, and the other, more grounded in reality (albeit an alternate one)—is cool.  But, even better is when something unexpected is thrown into the standard mix, beyond just the de rigueur steam-powered this and mechanized that. Things tend to get really interesting when that happens... as in the case of Nathan L. Yocum’s Steampunk/detective mystery/action yarn, Automatic Woman .                                ❖ ~ ❖ ~ ❖ ~ ❖ ~ ❖...

A year has come and gone since the infamous butcher who terrorized all of London last committed any of his atrocities against the city’s prostitute community-- then simply vanished --but the effects of Jack the Ripper’s murderous spree can still be felt.  Daily life has resumed, with the masses still struggling to eke out their meager existences in the squalid, teeming metropolis, while the more-privileged attempt to shield themselves from such ugliness, but the prevalent attitude among all of London’s residents toward the police force remains, to put it mildly, less than favorable. Five women murdered and horribly mutilated... and the murderer still on the loose? Such gross incompetence! No one feels that failure more keenly than do the dozen members of the Metropolitan Police’s recently-formed Murder Squad--the undermanned, overworked (and underpaid) group of men tasked with solving not only the Ripper murders but every other murder in and around London, as well. Tha...