BOOK DROP by Rob Lopresti So, a while back my family went to a music camp. Picture almost two hundred people spending a long cold winter weekend in a kid’s summer camp, playing old time music, dancing, and trying to stay warm. The main building is a long hall with twenty dining tables at one […]

POPCORN PROVERBS by Rob Lopresti With John’s kind permission I have decided to slip into his territory (a Floydian slip? Rimshot…) with a column featuring quotations from fifty of my favorite crime movies. They are arranged in order by the title of the flick. Answers begin next week. Enjoy. 1. –You hear that Gina? Your […]

ODD SOCKS 9 by Rob Lopresti I just spent some time on Vashon Island, a lovely little zone nestled in the midst of Puget Sound, not all that far from Seattle. That reminded me to tell you about this tidbit. The obituary you see above appeared in the Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber. In case you don’t […]

TOP OF THE POPS by Rob Lopresti For the second year in a row I am providing you lucky people with a list of the best short mysteries of the last 12-months, as determined by me using the highly objective, scientifically accurate, ILTB System.1 Before we get into the details let me point out there […]

IT’S A GIFT by Rob Lopresti ’Twas the week before Christmas and my wife and I were wandering around the bookstore where she works, looking for gifts. The interesting part is, we had no idea who we were shopping for. I don’t know if every independent bookstore does this, but I doubt that it is […]

A VISIT FROM SAINT VASILIS by Rob Lopresti In honor of the season I am going to steal a page from my friend Peter Berryman. In this case I have taken the most famous poem about Christmas and run it through the Babelfish Translation service..Each verse went through one language, which is indicated, and then […]

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK by Rob Lopresti Okay, this week’s rambling has nothing to do with mysteries. However, we have had fun with discussions of interesting titles before (see here and here and here), and I realized I was sitting on a gold mine of them. So it is time to share. As I […]