reviews

Pyscho Killers on Snow: The Repeat Version Author: Robert C. Wilson  It opens with a Jack the Ripper-esque stalking sequence of a woman walking rain slicked streets all the while in the eye of a secret, very patient, very crazed killer. Then we jump to the cold recesses of Scales Psychiatric Facility, a home for the criminally insane, set against the isolated backdrop of an ice patched island near the freezing hulk of Lake Superior. Here we rejoin the serial murder, one Reuker Stilkes, in which the fires of an all-consuming madness desiring the purification of ritual slaughter still burns, [...]

Introspection, Theology, and Mother Russia Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky The classics kick continues with full immersion into the heady and essentially depressing existentialism of classic Russian novels. I chose one of the smaller Russian novels, The Brothers Karamazov (a mere 700 odd pages as opposed to Dostoevsky’s other famous opus, the 1,700 page plus Crime and Punishment). The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky’s final novel, written as he himself came face to face with mortality and death, is the story of three brothers who are left to deal with the aftermath of their depraved father’s life and violent death as a murder investigation slowly implicates their complicit [...]

Murders wasted... Author:  Lawrence Millman It checked so many boxes.   First, it’s a true story about murder, one of my favorite guilty reading pleasures.  Second, the murders take place in the Canadian Arctic, a great backdrop for drama of any variety.  Lastly, it’s written by an acclaimed author who’s an accomplished lichenologist.  I love lichen!!  So it was with considerable enthusiasm that I started reading.  Unfortunately, despite all its promise, almost everything about Lawrence Millman’s At the End of the World goes terribly wrong.  I can’t wait to tell you why. But first, I’ll start with telling you what the [...]