Neil Nyren

“You Can Go Home Now,” Plus Michael Elias on His Fascinating Stage and Screen Career

How far would you go to avenge a crime? Nina Karim is about to find out. In Michael Elias’s You Can Go Home Now (Harper), Karim is a homicide detective investigating the deaths of several men connected to victims in a battered women’s shelter in Queens. Going undercover, she encounters a…

Neil NyrenMay 22, 2020

Author Spotlight Thrillers

Debra Bokur on Probing the Dark Side of Paradise in “The Fire Thief”

“When it’s serene, there’s no place more peaceful; when it’s storm season or the volcano is erupting, the landscape is steeped in a primitive kind of violence. These factors influence the people who live within this environment, for good or ill. There seems to be a general and often naïve…

Neil NyrenApril 27, 2020

Author Spotlight

Sara Sligar on Art and Illness in “Take Me Apart”

Photography is violent. When we capture a subject in a photo, we steal that person out of time and flatten them. We reduce them so we can preserve them forever. You have to acknowledge that violence. Rejoice in it. I think that’s why I do so many self-portraits. All my…

Neil NyrenApril 3, 2020

Thrillers

Dark, Twisted Mother-Daughter Relationship Drives Suspense in “Darling Rose Gold”

“It’s Rose Gold’s fault I went to prison, but she’s not the only one to blame. If we’re pointing fingers, mine are aimed at the prosecutor and his overactive imagination, the gullible jury, and the bloodthirsty reporters.” These first lines of Stephanie Wrobel’s Darling Rose Gold (Berkley) are spoken by…

Neil NyrenFebruary 26, 2020

Thrillers

Multiple Voices Tell a Story of Darkness and Obsession in “Saint X”

In Alexis Schaitkin’s debut novel Saint X (Celadon Books), Claire Thomas is only seven, vacationing with her family on the Caribbean island of Saint X, when on the last day before they are to return home, the unthinkable happens: her 18-year-old sister, Alison, disappears. No one believes it at first —…

Neil NyrenJanuary 28, 2020

Book Club Network Thrillers

In “Long Bright River,” Two Sisters Take Distinctly Different Paths

The narrator of Long Bright River (Penguin) is Mickey Fitzpatrick, a young but already veteran street cop in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, and the call is a familiar one for her. Philadelphia is in the middle of an opioid crisis: “Sometimes their family finds them first. Sometimes their children.…

Neil NyrenDecember 30, 2019

Thrillers

“All That’s Bright and Gone” on the Hunt for a Killer

A bit more than confused, though. When we first meet Aoife Scott, age six, in All That’s Bright and Gone (Crooked Lane Books), she’s waiting to see a child therapist, because her mother’s just had a public breakdown, and now they’re keeping Mama someplace and won’t let her come home. Aoife doesn’t know…

Neil NyrenNovember 27, 2019

Thrillers

“Impossible Causes:” If You Chase the Devil, You Just Might Catch Him

This is the radio ad that catches Deborah Kendrick’s attention at the beginning of Julie Mayhew’s Impossible Causes (Bloomsbury). She and her teenage daughter Viola have been desperately trying to recover from deep personal tragedy, but nothing has worked, and maybe this is the answer. Someplace isolated, away from the…

Neil NyrenOctober 30, 2019

Thrillers

Welcome to “The House of Brides,” a Modern Gothic

“There” is Barnsley House, a rambling estate turned into a hotel in the West Country of England, and the subject of an enormously bestselling book called The House of Brides. It chronicles the generations of women who married into the infamous Summer family. From crime novelist Gertrude, who threw herself…

Neil NyrenSeptember 25, 2019

Fiction

“Passing” and “American History X” Collide in John Vercher’s Debut

Last December, Polis Books announced that it was launching Agora Books, an imprint devoted to finding new, diverse voices in crime and noir fiction. “Having been to more conventions and readings and events than I can count,” said Polis founder Jason Pinter, “it began to feel like the books being…

Neil NyrenAugust 27, 2019

Thrillers

The Boy in the Floor, the Whisper at the Window

One of the quotes for Alex North’s The Whisper Man (Celadon) calls it a “seamless blend of Harlan Coben, Stephen King, and Thomas Harris.” I’d say that’s just about right. Novelist Tom Kennedy and his seven-year-old son Jake are both still grieving the death of the boy’s mother, Rebecca. Everything…

Neil NyrenJuly 29, 2019

Thrillers

Blood on the Page: Chanelle Benz’s “The Gone Dead”

In Chanelle Benz’s The Gone Dead (Ecco), the dead aren’t really gone. Billie James has returned to the dilapidated house in Greendale, Mississippi, where her father, a renowned black poet, lived. She hasn’t seen it in thirty years. “She had forgotten about the house, figured it’d been knocked down forever…

Neil NyrenJune 24, 2019

Thrillers

War, Criminality, and “The Right Sort of Man”

“Did your hunch prove correct?” asked Gwen. “It did,” replied Iris, as she began typing her notes of the interview. “What was it about?” “Her stockings.” “Were her seams not straight?” “The seams were straight,” said Iris. “The girl is crooked.” It is June 1946 in London. The war is…

Neil NyrenMay 31, 2019

Fiction

Why is the Servant Covered in Their Blood?

From the prisoners’ hold, they take me through the gallery, down the stairs and past the table crawling with barristers and clerks. Around me a river of faces in flood, their mutters rising, blending with the lawyers’ whispers. A noise that hums with all the spite of bees in a…

Neil NyrenApril 29, 2019

Thrillers

Guilt and Innocence on Death Row in David Dow Thriller

For Rafael Zhettah, the chef and owner of an up-and-coming Houston restaurant, that day was when the police told him his wife of only two years had been murdered in their own home. The next worst day was when he found out he was the prime suspect. He had motive,…

Neil NyrenMarch 27, 2019

Thrillers

Twisted Plots, Twisted Characters in “My Lovely Wife”

This is the story of an extraordinary woman – and of the three women behind her. The first an author who wrote twelve books in twenty years and never submitted any of them, followed by an assistant editor just seven months on the job and finally an agent willing to…

Neil NyrenFebruary 21, 2019

Neil Nyren

“You Can Go Home Now,” Plus Michael Elias on His Fascinating Stage and Screen Career

Debra Bokur on Probing the Dark Side of Paradise in “The Fire Thief”

Sara Sligar on Art and Illness in “Take Me Apart”

Dark, Twisted Mother-Daughter Relationship Drives Suspense in “Darling Rose Gold”

Multiple Voices Tell a Story of Darkness and Obsession in “Saint X”

In “Long Bright River,” Two Sisters Take Distinctly Different Paths

“All That’s Bright and Gone” on the Hunt for a Killer

“Impossible Causes:” If You Chase the Devil, You Just Might Catch Him

Welcome to “The House of Brides,” a Modern Gothic

“Passing” and “American History X” Collide in John Vercher’s Debut

The Boy in the Floor, the Whisper at the Window

Blood on the Page: Chanelle Benz’s “The Gone Dead”

War, Criminality, and “The Right Sort of Man”

Why is the Servant Covered in Their Blood?

Guilt and Innocence on Death Row in David Dow Thriller

Twisted Plots, Twisted Characters in “My Lovely Wife”

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