It was the original British country-estate murder case. It was investigated by one of the eight detectives who started Scotland Yard. It captured the imagination of Charles Dickens and directly inspired Wilkie Collins. And it all took place at Road Hill in 1860, with the discovery of the throat-slit body of a 3-year-old boy.
Haven’t heard of the case? Good. Because not knowing how it ended will make Kate Summerscale’s account of it – THE SUSPICIONS OF MR. WHICHER: A SHOCKING MURDER AND THE UNDOING OF A GREAT VICTORIAN DETECTIVE – as suspenseful as any fictional mystery you’re apt to read this year.
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Throw up the devil horns, readers, and crank up WAR PIGS. It’s time to worship at the altar of evil, as Anton LaVey has picked out three books for us to read. All right, not really, but they all have a common bond: the devil and his minions.
KISSES FROM SATAN by George B. Mair – Another in the long run of spies who came out of the cold and into focus after James Bond, Dr. David Grant works against the evils of an organization called SATAN in this 1966 paperback. For you laymen, that stands for Society for Activation of Terror Anarchy and Nihilism.
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Our monthly depressing look at the search terms that bring pervs to BOOKGASM!
This is nothing against Del Rey, but certainly there had to be a better title for THE DEL REY BOOK OF SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY: SIXTEEN ORIGINAL WORKS BY SPECULATIVE FICTION’S FINEST VOICES. That wordy, generic moniker suggests the Ellen Datlow-edited anthology is generic and assembly-line, when quite the opposite is true: This is a standout collection deserving of a more standout title.
Its subtitle contains the most telling phrase – SPECULATIVE FICTION – as, admirably, the stories within don’t fall neatly into either the standard sci-fi or fantasy genres. In other words, don’t go looking for spaceships or elves. Instead, expect the unexpected.
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Warren Murphy and James Mullaney’s THE NEW DESTROYER: DEAD RECKONING represents the third entry in the reboot of The Destroyer series, and this one goes all the way back to the start of the whole franchise, with its sights set squarely on certain public figures that have been in the news. It might upset some readers, but most people going into a Destroyer novel understand its leanings.
We are introduced to Mustafa Mohammed, the “20th hijacker” on that fateful day of Sept. 11, 2001. Mustafa’s problem is that he overslept and is now sitting in a jail cell with only his family Koran as company. We learn of Mustafa’s family history of never becoming sick, no matter the disease that plagued the area. This led the whole family to be rounded up by Saddam’s scientists to be tested with all sorts of chemicals and other forms of pain.
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