Noir, crime, and mystery short stories, scholarship, and so much more
BOOK REVIEW: “The Bloody Spur is hardboiled noir, and pulpish, yet it is not quite pulp. It is a smart, artfully crafted book that contains salacious and sordid aspects of pulp which make it something of a curio….”
Read More “Hold the Presses: The Bloody Spur/While the City Sleeps (1953)” by William BlickRETROSPECTIVE: “Systemic evolution is a theme Mann explores not only in the historical Public Enemies, but in his prior crime drama Miami Vice (2006), where present-day detectives track drug cartels on a fast moving, transnational scale, and in his subsequent work Blackhat (2015), a cyber-crime thriller where crime has moved beyond the physical and into the digital realm of computer hackers and the global infrastructures they target.”
Read More “Michael Mann’s Systemic Evolution: Public Enemies” by Anees ArefNOVEL EXCERPT: “As I ducked my head below the roofline, the driver, Chuy Muro, pulled a cut-down 12-gauge from a clip under the dash, launching butterflies in my stomach the size of fruit bats. When he laid the shotgun down on the passenger seat, I let out my breath, hoping I was off the hook….”
Read More “‘Lots of Secrets’: from The Killing of Chuy Muro” by Lance MasonBOOK REVIEW: “Mystery Writers Grandmaster Max Allan Collins Publishes a Sequel with Hard Case Crime, while Field Notes Offers a Replica of the 1943 Enlisted Issue of Hammett….”
Read More “The Maltese Falcon Returns, as a Sequel and a Replica of the 1943 Enlisted Edition” by William BlickBLOGS: Channel Academic features the book series Crime Classics, shorter monographs on single titles featuring the theme in film, television, fiction, and other media, with a close study of the work’s importance to genre and the history of its media form…Debut title: Kiss Me Deadly by Woody Haut….
Read More Channel Academic Publishing Launches as a Scholarly Imprint of BearManor Media, Featuring Crime Classics SeriesBOOK REVIEW: “Profound, obscure, and a thorough delight to read for its thought-provoking allusions. And if you think you are lost in the language, pay heed to his gentle reminder….”
Read More “‘A Scream Pulled Me from Sleep’: Eric Pankey’s The History of the Siege” by Charles RammelkampBOOK REVIEW: “Not a biography but a thorough analysis of the evolution of an influential and enigmatic figure of film history and noir cinema….”
Read More “The Girl in the Portrait – Gene Tierney: Star of Hollywood’s Home Front” by William BlickREVIEW: “The silence, however, is theirs alone — something neither the camera nor the system could ever claim….”
Read More “Dead Man’s Wire: The Justice of the Spectacle” by Efe TeksoyPOETRY: “Richie died before she got out, / but he’d have been proud, five years / after Beldini went to prison….”
Read More “Hope Diamond” by Charles RammelkampPOETRY: “at first, raw dreams…tragic if / he can no longer see them….”
Read More “Pi AI” by Matthew Sorrento
