HUMORESQUE by James Lincoln Warren When I worked for Barnes & Noble several years ago, I had a young friend in the store, twenty years my junior, who was an aspiring author hard at work on a novel. To protect the innocent, by which I mean me since I’m about to be a bit critical […]

STYLIN’ by James Lincoln Warren I frequently have the opportunity, or perhaps I should say obligation, of wearing evening dress. Recently I entered into a polite dispute with regard to how one should wear a black bow tie with a wing-collared shirt. Should the tie be worn outside the wings, or inside? I took one […]

MULTI-TAXING by James Lincoln Warren Although the term wasn’t coined until 1966, and then in the context of computers, multi-tasking (more recently spelled without the hyphen, I note, a sure indication that the word has become thoroughly domesticated) has been with us all along. I think the first reference I ever heard to the phenomenon […]

BRAIN WAVES by James Lincoln Warren I was privileged to be personally acquainted with the late Dennis Lynds, who was perhaps the most important writer of detective fiction of his generation. Certainly he was one of the most important writers of short crime fiction. Den was the man who really introduced the concept of social […]

FRAGMENTS AND FOLLIES by James Lincoln Warren While casting my net this week hoping to catch a topic for today’s column, I took at look at what is generally considered the first American short story, Charles Brockden Brown’s Gothic story of murder and insanity, “Somnambulism: A Fragment”. And that word struck a chord: Fragment. My […]

PLEDGE DRIVE by James Lincoln Warren About a week and a half ago, Rob wrote about reading tie-in books related to television series. An auspicious topic, for without the advent of the tie-in novel1, a great organization would never have come into being. You might think that I am referring to the International Association of […]

MONDAY SCHOOL by James Lincoln Warren It’s interesting, the tidbits you pick up when you’re engaged in research. My primary detective series takes place in the latter 18th century, and during a recent foray into source material, I encountered the following passage: “Some of the clergy in different parts of this county, bent upon attempting […]