Mal Warwick on Books: Insightful Reviews and Recommendations

Anthony Horowitz possesses one of the crime genre’s most original minds. He’s proved it over and over again in scores of novels and several long-running television series. But nowhere is his cunning intelligence more in evidence than in The Word is Murder. It’s the first of what are to date six mystery novels about the odd couple of Hawthorne and Horowitz. Yes, t...

Some of us, schooled in idealized portraits of ancient civilizations such as Rome and Greece and China, jump to conclusions about how history is repeating itself when we see superficial similarities to what we think took place thousands of years ago. Of course, we do know that history doesn’t repeat. But perhaps Mark Twain was wise to observe that it often rhymes, reveali...

Milo Sturgis is not your cookie-cutter homicide detective. He’s gay, for one thing. But there’s more. A lieutenant with the LAPD’s highest close rate, he’s claimed a privileged existence largely insulated from demands by his superiors. Except that this time around an assistant chief is insisting that he take on a 36-year-old cold case because someone influential has gotte...

Obviously, I’m some kind of masochist. To date I’ve read and reviewed 25 books about Donald Trump. I’d sworn off subjecting myself to any others until Maggie Haberman’s account of Trump’s first year back in office. She’s been on point on Donald Trump for the New York Times for more than a decade. Her reporting has made headlines again and again. And so has that o...

A decade ago Anglo-Indian author Abir Mukherjee broke into a second career as a crime novelist after 20 years working as an accountant. His first effort, A Rising Man, appeared in 2016. An historical detective novel featuring a pair of Calcutta cops shortly after World War I, it won a coveted literary award soon after its publication. And it launched the now-six-...