How Many Of Amazon's "100 Mysteries & Thrillers To Read In A Lifetime" Have You Read?

Vi-An Nguyen at Parade magazine offers a piece on Amazon's list of mysteries and thrillers to be read in a lifetime.

Mystery fans, it’s time to tally up! The book editors at Amazon.com have compiled a list of the “100 Mysteries and Thrillers to Read in a Lifetime”—a bucket list of noir reads.

The list includes blockbuster hits like Gillian Flynn‘s Gone Girl and Dan Brown‘s The Da Vinci Code, as well as classics like the fifth James Bond novel, From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming, and The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://parade.condenast.com/286291/viannguyen/how-many-of-amazons-100-mysteries-thrillers-to-read-in-a-lifetime-have-you-finished/

NoirCon 2012 Convention In Philadelphia Proves It's Always Dark Enough

 

Tirdad Derkhshani at the Philadelphia Inquirer reports on the NoirCon convention in Philadelphia this week.

Noir, the dark literary genre populated by desperate killers, depressive, guilt-ridden cops, and down-and-out losers, thrived in the 1940s and 1950s.
 

James M. Cain, Jim Thompson, Mickey Spillane, and that greatest of all urban anthropologists, Philadelphia's David Goodis, produced a mini-explosion of crime novels and movies.

Half a century later, noir still thrives, says critic, editor, publisher, and crime fiction bookstore owner Otto Penzler. "There is more noir being written today than any time in history," says Penzler, who will speak at Philadelphia NoirCon, a four-day celebration of noir in books, art, music, film, and TV, Thursday through Sunday at various Center City locations.

The biannual event will feature more than 30 writers, critics, and musicians, including Robert Polito, DJ Morbita, Megan Abbott, Robert Olen Butler, and Philadelphia singer and novelist Wesley Stace, who is known to music fans as John Wesley Harding.

You can read the rest of the story via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20121108_NoirCon.html 

Three New Novels From Long Gone Crime Writers

Steve Stephens at the Columbus Dispatch wrote a piece on the new novels from three deceased crime writers.

Famous crime-fiction scribbler James M. Cain, dead for 35 years, has a new book out, as do two other stiffs you might have heard of: Dashiell Hammett and Mickey Spillane.

It’s no mystery why publishers would want stories from guys who, although their bodies are as cold as yesterday’s cheese sandwich, still have reputations as hot as the troubled dame who always seems to enter the picture.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/life_and_entertainment/2012/09/02/new-titles-from-dead-dont-dig-own-graves.html

Note: I have all three crime novels  - Dashiell Hammett's Return of the Thin Man,  James M. Cain's The Cocktail Waitress, and Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collin's Lady, Go Die - on a table in my basement office and I look forward to reading them and reviewing them here in the near future.