Mystery & Crime

Mystery writer Donald Westlake has written 70 novels and screenplays (including "The Grifters" and "The Stepfather"). He is known for his novels which combine laughs with thrills, and which show equally incompetent criminals and law enforcement. His recurring characters include a bungling burglar named John Dortmunder, and a gun-for-hire named Parker. Westlake has also written novels that parody the world of publishing and supermarket tabloids. His latest novel is a crime novel about downsizing, "The Ax" (Mysterious Press/Warner Books)

Book Critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the new novel “Deception on His Mind” by Elizabeth George.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan gives her summer reading round-up (part one): "Neanderthal," by John Darnton (Random House); "Firestorm," by Nevada Barr (Putnam); "The World at Night," by Alan Furst (Random House); "Ruined By Reading," by Lynne Sharon Schwartz (Beacon).

Maureen Corrigan review Atticus by Ron Hansen.

Veteran crime novelist Lawrence Block. He's written 11 novels featuring Manhattan private eye Matt Scudder. His novels have followed Scudder through alcoholism and into recovery through an Alcoholics Anonymous program. His newest Scudder novel, A Long Line of Dead Men will be published in February

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Morality Play, the new novel by British writer Barry Unsworth.
Description (Program)

Novelist Elmore Leonard. He's 70 years old and has been called "the greatest living writer of crime fiction" (New York Times). Though he'd been writing for decades, critics didn't take notice of him until the 1980s. Now his work is known for it tight prose, "ear-perfect" dialogue and depiction of lower class life. Leonard's written thirty-two novels, including the bestsellers Pronto, Maximum Bob, and Get Shorty which has been made into a film, starring John Travolta and Gene Hackman.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Panama by Eric Zencey and The Alienist by Caleb Carr.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Intersection of Law and Desire, (Norton) which debuts the feminist lesbian private investigator, Micky Knight by J.M. Redmann. And a collection of lesbian pulp romances, The Beebo Brinker Chronicles (Quality Paperback Book Club) by Ann Bannon which has just been republished.

Mystery Writer R.D. Zimmerman (real name Robert Alexander). He is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, and has written mystery jigsaw puzzles as well as short mysteries that appeared on the backs of 15 million boxes of Total Cereal. His new book Red Trance (Morrow), is a Russian mystery of hypnotic detection. Zimmerman also talks about his business dealings in Russia, and the corruption he faced as a result.

Book Critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Charles Willeford's book High Priest of California, and Wild Wives (Search). It has been republished.

A broadcast of a panel held at New York University in April called "Cops and Writers: Crime and Punishment in Literature and Real Life." The panel, sponsored by the PEN American Center and The New York Review of Books, features police officials and writers, including crime writer Walter Mosley and author Joyce Carol Oates. The panel focuses on the fine line between crime fiction and crime reality. The writers talk about the fact that crime novelists generally draw on real criminals and real crimes to create their characters and plot.

Commentator Maureen Corrigan reviews "Criminal Convictions" by Nicholas Freeling and "Skin" by Dorothy Allison. Corrigan says that, with their vastly different perspectives, reading them together was "exhilarating."

Commentator Maureen Corrigan reviews E.L. Doctorow's new novel, "The Waterworks."

Commentator Maureen Corrigan on the legacy of Dashiell Hammett, who was born one hundred years ago today.

Mystery writer Walter Mosley. He's written a new book in his series about gumshoe hero Easy Rawlins. It's called "Black Betty" (Norton). Betty's a shark of a woman who leaves dead men in her wake. Like the other books in the series, "Black Betty" has Easy in post-War, but pre-present South Central L.A.--this time the year is 1961. Mosley gained public attention when then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton said that Mosley was his favorite mystery writer.

Journalist and mystery writer Jon Katz. Katz is a media critic, . formerly for Rolling Stone and now for New York Magazine. First in Katz's "Death by Station Wagon" (Bantam) and now in his newly released "The Family Stalker" (Doubleday), soft boiled detective hero Kit Deleeuw cruises the streets of a fictional suburban community on crime-solving forays in his Volvo station wagon. Deleeuw lost his Wall Street job in the 80's.

Commentator Maureen Corrgian reviews "The Alienist" a new suspense novel by Caleb Carr. (Random House)

Film critic Stephen Schiff reviews "The Pelican Brief", another film made from the works of John Grisham.

Detective novelist James Crumley. It's been ten years since his last book. In Crumley's fourth novel, "The Mexican Tree Duck" (Mysterious Press), redneck detective C.W. Sughrue (pronounced Shoog-rue) returns. Crumley gets a lot of materials for his novels hanging out in bars in his hometown of Missoula, Montana. Crumley has written three other detective novels.