Barry will be with us for another few weeks. We are delighted to have him! READING THE CORNERSTONES by Barry T. Zeman Last installment time I promised to outline some of the H-Q titles that are underappreciated books you will definitely want to read. They do not have the notoriety or popularity of the literary […]

THE CORNERSTONES OF CRIME (Part 3) by Barry T. and Angela Zeman Our last installment reviewed many of the best and most famous books on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list. Now we will look at some books that were key to the development of detective/mystery fiction, but perhaps little known to the general reader not familiar […]

THE CORNERSTONES OF CRIME (Part 2) by Barry T. and Angela Zeman Before continuing the Haycraft-Queen discussion, we would be remiss by not taking a few moments to mark the untimely passing of Ira Levin, a great writer, multiple Edgar winner and MWA Grandmaster. He was also an unpretentious guy with a constantly fresh sense […]

DEAR READERS, With great regret, I must confirm that the cliché “biology is destiny” actually contains some truth. Doctors insist I stop doing a select list of physical chores—including writing. Spines need disks, and several of mine seem to have forgotten their purpose. Thus, after some struggles to resist, I unhappily withdraw from the Criminal […]

SEE YOU IN THE FUNNY PAPERS by Angela Zeman My grandfather (never an articulate man) used that phrase a lot, and usually tweaked my nose at the same time. Imagine how bewildered he would’ve been to learn that a comic book (Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale) would someday win a Pulitzer Prize. A review […]

ED MCBAIN’S NOVELLA SERIES by Angela Zeman 1 Evan Hunter, aka Ed McBain, was a bestselling MWA Grandmaster and author of a massive body of work that included the famous 87th Precinct series and the striking, somewhat autobiographical novel, Blackboard Jungle. A few years ago Evan put together a collection of new novellas by ten […]

AS SEEN ON CNN by Angela Zeman In Pittsburgh on Tuesday, October 16th, according to a CNN report entitled, SPY CAUGHT UNDER SUV, a woman spying on her husband crawled beneath his Suburban which he’d parked in front of his girlfriend’s home. A friendly neighborhood cat accompanied her. The detective business not being the exciting […]