By Miriam R. Kramer How to describe the highly talented author Paraic O’Donnell’s complex mysteries starring an energetic detective, his sergeant, and a then-termed “lady journalist” with tenacity to spare? In the novels The House on Vesper Sands and follow-up The Naming of The Birds, O’Donnell weaves his memorable characters together with occasional supernatural touches and a need for substantial resolutions. He has a Dickensian gift for creating a brutal and sometimes poignant atmosphere in lower-class settings, along with a moral weight to the relationships he sees between the powerful and the powerless. As his investigators put together their puzzle pieces, they endear themselves to us while evoking echoes of other classic British mysteries. The aptly named Inspector Cutter uses his sardonic and sharp-tongued sense on the people around him, adding humor that leavens tensions throughout the novels. With a blistering stride he leads his team towards justice down ethereal paths through an 1890s London fog. Secretive, he barks at his underling, the hapless, gentle Sergeant Bliss, to teach the former divinity student turned police sergeant how to write down the facts and observe them from another angle. Their acquaintance, the lively journalist and faux socialite Octavia Hillingdon, assists them by uncovering secrets with the tenacity of a dachshund disappearing down a badger hole. In The House on Vesper Sands, lower-class young women who possess an uncanny brightness of soul have begun to disappear. The supernatural element, involving the “Spiriters” and the energy they harvest, comes into focus gradually, giving the story a shimmering, otherworldly quality without sacrificing emotional realism. O’Donnell seeds his clues throughout the story with care, entwining the sergeant’s search for a missing female friend, Octavia’s investigation of worthy targets, and Cutter’s dogged and energetic pursuit of the truth. As they come together to follow a narrowing…
By Miriam R. Kramer “I-I missed something once before, I won’t…. I can’t let that happen again.” — Carrie Mathison, Homeland, Season 1: Pilot, speaking of September 11, 2001. As political espionage thrillers go, the series Homeland cannot be beaten. It debuted on Showtime in October 2011 only to end in February 2020 after eight seasons. In November it came to Netflix, immediately gaining a fervid new audience. I recently viewed it again to see if its mixture of the nerve-wracking crosshairs of espionage and national political imperatives stood up, or if the series even represented any of the USA’s deliriously worsening domestic and foreign political landscapes. It prefigures them. All hail Homeland’s writing, directing, and the terrific acting from Clair Danes as CIA agent Carrie Mathison and Mandy Patinkin in CIA and security roles. Their chemistry and energy fuel Homeland’s greatness. This show pulses to the neurotic, workaholic beat thrumming through foreign policy in Washington, DC’s government institutions. An imbalanced, brilliant CIA agent and improbable heroine, Carrie Mathison works with her equally passionate boss, Saul Berenson. Each will sacrifice almost anything to complete their missions. Berenson is a CIA higher-up, a man obsessed with his job. He successfully uses his status as an outsider to maintain a clearer view of his surroundings. As a Jew, he grew up in a small, WASP, Indiana town without much religious identity. Carrie and Saul are symbiotic, a team in which each sees the other as family. Neither can easily maintain an outside romantic relationship, and both mostly eschew the idea of children—they are married to the games they play for organizations protecting the United States. They expect much from each other. In the pilot episode Carrie sneaks into a Middle Eastern prison to bargain for information with a prisoner about to die. He provides her with…
By Miriam R. Kramer January can be dreary—the beginning of a slog towards spring. I have always looked at it as a time for enthralling, escapist fare. When I heard about Sebastian Junger’s In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face With the Idea of an Afterlife, however, I sidestepped into a fascinating memoir about his near-death experience (NDE). Then I dove into From Here to Eternity by L.A. mortician and amateur anthropologist Caitlin Doughty, which looks at the way humans handle death around the world, particularly in a non-Western context. In The Year of Magical Thinking, the brilliant Joan Didion writes about coming to terms with her husband dying. These three remarkable works approach difficult terrain from strikingly different angles. They also are all, ironically, reassuring in their clear-eyed approach to the one event none of us can avoid. What unites them is their honesty, their curiosity, and their ability to illuminate the emotional, cultural, and existential dimensions of mortality. Read together, they form a kind of triptych: the near‑death experience, the cultural encounter with death, and the intimate aftermath of loss. Each book stands powerfully on its own, but in conversation with one another, they offer a surprisingly hopeful and deeply human exploration of what it means to live with the knowledge of death. Sebastian Junger’s In My Time of Dying is the most immediate of the three, a gripping account of his own brush with death after a ruptured aneurysm. Junger has long been known for his immersive, clear-eyed journalism, but here he turns his clinical eye inward. What makes this work so compelling is not just the emergency, though he describes it with vivid clarity, but the philosophical questions it forces him to confront. Having grown up with his father’s atheism, he begins…
By Miriam R. Kramer Who is writing fantasy accessibly and well these days for those of us wishing to immerse ourselves? If you are taking vacation or skipping holiday parties, this is a fun time to delve into the work of V.E. Schwab. About ten years ago she began the Shades of Magic trilogy, comprising A Darker Shade of Magic, A Gathering of Shadows, and A Conjuring of Light. She eventually created the first book in a sequel trilogy. The Fragile Threads of Power triumphantly fulfills the promise of the first series seven years into the future. At the heart of the Shades of Magic trilogy lies an ingenious concept: four parallel London’s—Red, Grey, White, and Black—each existing in its own dimension and distinguished by its relationship to magic. Red London pulses with life and magical energy, a city where magic is woven seamlessly into everyday life. In this kingdom magicians wield air, earth, wind, water, and bone magic. Grey London, reminiscent of historical London during the reign of George III, is mundane and devoid of sorcery. White London is cold, brutal, and fading, its people fighting desperately for control of dwindling magical resources. Black London, once vibrant, has been consumed by its own unchecked magic into ashes and dangerous magical remnants. Schwab’s plotting is consistently gripping. A Darker Shade of Magic introduces us to a sharp, adventurous tale of smuggling, sorcery, and political intrigue. By the time we reach A Gathering of Shadows, the narrative embraces a lavish magical tournament that crackles with tension and character growth. A Conjuring of Light—epic, emotional, and relentless—delivers one of the most satisfying fantasy conclusions in recent memory as the Antari magicians battle magic that has developed a personality and lust for ultimate domination. With The Fragile Threads of Power, innovations build upon…
By Miriam R. Kramer This column from May 2018 reveals the accurate warning signs former FBI Director James Comey saw in his dealings with President Trump during his first administration. Comey was indicted last month on charges of making false statements to Congress, the result of President Trump’s pressure to punish him for his refusal to play by Trump’s rules. Comey’s lawyers argued that President Trump had been pressuring the Justice Department for years to exact retribution again him, going against all legal and presidential norms while violating Comey’s right to freedom of speech. He pleaded not guilty in October 2025 to one count of false statements and one count of obstruction of a congressional proceeding in relation to his 2020 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Perhaps in light of today’s surreal atmosphere of eroding democracy, the column below seems quaint in Comey’s wish to live up to his ideals. I hope it is not. I hope that as the president’s urge to smash constitutional rights continues, a good portion of the American public will stand up for those norms and rights that belong to the democracy we live in, and unify in seeking to retain them. [Article below edited for length.] In his fascinating memoir and treatise on leadership, A Higher Loyalty, former FBI Director James Comey discusses his trajectory in government service up until he unwillingly became a political lightning rod during and after the most bitterly contested and partisan presidential election in modern American politics. Comey became one of the best-known names in America before the 2016 elections, when he announced in late October that the FBI was re-opening an investigation into Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server for classified documents. Incurring the wrath of Democrats for potentially swinging the election towards President…
By Miriam R. Kramer Writing as Robert Galbraith, J.K. Rowling recently birthed a new chapter of her Cormoran Strike mystery series, The Hallmarked Man. The relentless P.I. partners, Cormoran Strike and his partner, Robin Ellacott, gradually lay out puzzle pieces of a central criminal case with their usual kaleidoscopic backdrop of frustrations and spurs to action: thinly disguised enemies, desperate and hostile upper-class clients, underworld contacts, dodgy contractors, lovers, family, and other personal crises to sort out. By book eight in the series, the plot may take the foreground, but Cormoran and Robin’s relationship with the people in their lives and each other has stealthily taken the focus. It seems that Rowling has become too big a star to succumb to much editing. She desperately needs someone to rein her in and squash a less interesting subplot or five in the interests of appropriate pacing. Rowling could have binned the entire Strike novel The Ink Black Heart. It was over a thousand pages long, and mostly tedious pages at that. Reading it was like wearing a dirty, knotty sweater with eighteen arms. Yet Rowling’s focus on loss and what replaces it has finally started to balance out such indulgences, even as Cormoran and Robin methodically solve the blood-splashed mystery she throws at their feet. With Robin sick, Cormoran meets alone with Decima Mullins, an anxious woman who is sister to a socialite and daughter to a posh private club owner. Clutching her new baby, she insists that the father, her missing boyfriend, Rupert Fleetwood, must be the dismembered corpse that was found after the weekend in the vault of a silver shop next to Freemasons’ Hall in London—one that sells silver pieces bearing Freemason symbols and hallmarks. The body, decapitated and missing hands and feet, has been brutally hallmarked also….
By Miriam R. Kramer Former journalist Carl Hiaasen is crazed enough and experienced as a Floridian to understand and gleefully play with the “Florida Man and Woman” characters he skewers in his novels. Yet underneath he weaves his plots as methodically and skillfully as any spider, bringing together personalities from all levels of society who clash and interact in hilarious ways. His newest satire, Fever Beach, proves to be no exception to his usual verbal machinations. He presents imbeciles who reflect not only Florida but also the country, along with the exasperated and inexorable forces opposing them. If you want more laughs, take a look at Florida Man, an anonymous collection of Floridian antics that are just as surreal as Hiaasen’s work. First appears Dale Figgo, a grotesque embodiment of right-wing buffoonery. Dale has been expelled from the Proud Boys not for ideology but incompetence. During the January 6th insurrection, Figgo smeared his feces mistakenly on the statue of a Confederate rather than a Union hero. His stunning level of stupidity keeps even the Oath Keepers from taking him seriously. Figgo responds by establishing his own fringe group, the humorously-named Strokers for Liberty, composed of similarly feeble-minded extremists. Hiaasen’s fury at MAGA insurrectionist idiots is palpable as his gleeful but ferocious comedy renders Dale both appalling and inadvertently hilarious. Enter Viva Morales, an attractive, resourceful newcomer to Florida. Recently swindled by her ex-husband, she scrapes together enough to rent a room in Figgo’s eyesore of a dwelling and takes a job at the Mink Foundation—a philanthropic front operated by the plastic-surgery-addicted and MAGA-supporting Claude and Electra Mink. Headed back to Florida on a plane, she meets Twilly Spree, an eco-vigilante and fan favorite who appears in some of Hiaasen’s other books. The hot-tempered, wealthy environmentalist is driven by rage against…
By Miriam R. Kramer I was immediately attracted to the title of Bonnie Tsui’s charming new book, Why We Swim. In the summer, we glide through the pool or jump through waves, taking advantage of the water only then unless we regularly swim laps or do water aerobics at a local pool. Tsui’s memories echo my own, and her research about swimming combines with her contemplation of activity that can raise our adrenaline because of its dangers or put us in a meditative state because of its rhythmic nature. As Tsui notes, swimming is our second favorite casual exercise after walking. Swimming seems simple on the face of it: get in the water, pick up your feet, and move forward, sideways, or backward, but it is many things to many people. It can be an act of daring. When she swims in the cold deep waters of the San Francisco Bay as part of a club, she joins others who prove to themselves that they can brave a situation in which they are not the apex of the food chain. She finally ditches her wet suit so she can experience a freezing swim in which she starts to feel intensely alive, only to truly experience the dangers from the cold after she gets out of the water. Although swimming can be a solitary activity, she experiences both her own solitude and the camaraderie of her club. It is one of the few activities where you can be alone and together at the same time. Her views of the water are more philosophical than scientific, which suited my tastes. A large, elegant swimming pool belonging to one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces in Baghdad ironically became an egalitarian place where everyone from various Embassy staff members to migrant workers came to…
By Miriam R. Kramer With record-breaking temperatures sweeping the country at large, take a vacation where you can read near a pool, the beach, or any other cooling body of water. Or you can plant yourself in an armchair in the A/C anywhere and pick up a recent thriller such as King of Ashes, by S.A. Cosby; or The Doorman, by Chris Pavone. S.A. Cosby’s King of Ashes plunges readers into a world of familial loyalty, dangerous debts, and the dark underbelly of seemingly ordinary lives. While undeniably fast-paced and brimming with a visceral energy that evokes classic gangster epics, the novel ultimately struggles under the weight of its own sensationalism, leaving a deflated impression despite its narrative drive. The story centers on Roman Carruthers, a brilliant money manager whose quiet life is upended when his ne’er-do-well brother, Dante, racks up significant drug-dealing debts with local gangsters. When these thugs deliberately cause a car accident that puts his father into a coma, Carruthers comes home from Atlanta to the town of Jefferson Runs near Richmond, VA, to help solve Dante’s problems and protect his family. The looming threat isn’t just to Dante, but to the entire Carruthers family, including his sister Neveah, who diligently runs their family crematorium—a business that unexpectedly becomes entangled in the criminal underworld. Roman is compelled to step out of his carefully constructed, upperly mobile world to protect his loved ones, drawn into a conflict far more brutal and unforgiving than he could have imagined. At the same time, Roman and his family are plagued with memories of their mother, a nurse who mysteriously disappeared when the siblings were in their teens, setting up a family malaise that has affected all of them. While her brothers sort out Dante’s terrible mistake, Neveah finally takes up the…
By Miriam R. Kramer As summer arrives, we could all use a physical and mental break. So why not sit on a covered porch or under a beach umbrella and take a trip to Sweden? Try out The Sandhamn Murders, this series of ten murder mysteries set on Sandhamn, a beautiful island near Stockholm where tourists vacation during the short summer months. Viveca Sten has written a clutch of books that make for perfect beach, lake, or pool reading, especially for travelers looking to escape to someplace with sun and cool summer breezes. Her novels have been televised as a popular Swedish crime series as well. The Sandhamn Murders features two primary protagonists: Nora Linde, a lawyer, and Thomas Andreasson, a police detective with the Nacka police division in Stockholm. Having known each other since they were children, they love each other as if they were siblings. Nora owns a home on Sandhamn that she has visited for mini-breaks and vacations since she was a child. At the beginning of the series, she arrives there with her two young sons and a handsome doctor husband. Thomas, who has lost his wife when his child died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), also has a small summer home on a nearby island, Harö. Nora and Thomas face diverse crime schemes and murders that take place not only in Sandhamn, but also in the archipelago of small islands with summer cabins that exist east of Stockholm. They exchange information to help each other solve homicides. Instead of being a safe haven for hordes of tourists looking for a weekend getaway from the city, along with celebrating the popular Swedish holiday of Midsommar (Midsummer), murders taint the festivities and the cherished atmosphere on the islands. Amid their own uncertain family circumstances, they trust…
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