Crime fiction

I don't know about other people, but nothing stresses me out like having too much work on my plate and too little time to do it. At any given time, I have papers to grade, classes to prepare for, dissertations to read, documents to review for upcoming meetings, emails to respond to, letters of recommendation to write. The list goes on and on-and every single one of them has a deadline.  Read more

I felt my bag being yanked from my shoulder before I saw that the person attacking me from behind was practically a child. As soon as I realized what was happening-that I was being robbed-I let go of my purse. The kid, who couldn't have been more than twelve or thirteen, and looked as scared as I felt, had full possession of my bag when he kicked me squarely in the knee.  Read more

"The soft-boiled genre is embedded firmly between the cozy and the hard-boiled, like middle-aged and elder women ensconced between siren and senior."

Every reader goes through phases with their selection habits. Last year, for example, I wanted as little to do with the modern world as possible, for reasons I'm sure you can understand. I didn't want to read anything set in the last decade and I certainly didn't feel like reading any dystopian novels written to reflect an ominous future.  Read more

There's the New York we see. The streets and neighborhoods, townhouses and office buildings, stoops and bodegas. That's a damn good city, electric and irrepressible, but there's another place just beyond that surface and it's populated by our ambitions. A city of nighthawks and hustlers. Around every corner, a new scheme.  Read more