Before I started reading golden-age mysteries, I thought “meta” storytelling (stories that reference the fact that they are stories, or that they exist in a
As the inventor of “Harry Potter” with riches flowing in for life, J.K. Rowling could do whatever she wanted. Luckily for fans of great detective
Hercule Poirot uses his knowledge of human psychology to solve crimes almost as much as he uses physical evidence. In her Christie estate-commissioned Poirot novels,
In “Night Film” (2013), Marisha Pessl blends the economical prose of old-school hardboiled mysteries with poetic bursts of insight into the human condition. The novel
Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child deliver a chiller suitable for curling up against the autumn chill in “Dead Mountain” (August, hardcover). A comfortingly familiar novel
On Oct. 6, the “Exorcist” franchise will return in a big way for the 50th anniversary legacy sequel “The Exorcist: Believer.” It comes from the
Elle Cosimano takes “Write what you know” to a meta level in “Finlay Donovan Is Killing It” (2021), the debut adult novel from the YA
Janet Morgan’s “Agatha Christie: A Biography” (1984) is the estate-approved life story of the author, and still stands as the most definitive. I’d recommend reading
After the “Omen” trilogy capper “The Final Conflict” (1981), the franchise sat in that middle ground between popular and unpopular that meant the story would
Nearly a century after Agatha Christie invented Hercule Poirot, another writer was given the go-ahead to put words in his mouth for the first time,