Articles

It was reported on June 28, 2016 that Cormac McCarthy had died of a stroke. The story was a deliberate hoax, a lie that spread halfway around the world before it was quashed like the bug it was. I received the news of McCarthy’s actual death on June 13, 2023, in a terse email delivered late in the afternoon on the day he passed. The report came from a lifelong friend who I had blessed and cursed decades ago by suggesting that he read McCarthy’s BLOOD MERIDIAN, one of those rare books that takes up permanent residency in the reader’s mind.

For those who may not be aware, the author known as Charles Todd has always been a collaborative effort between Caroline Todd and her son, Charles. Their books, set during the WWI era, feature Inspector Ian Rutledge and army nurse Bess Crawford. What has consistently stood out for me is how human they have been able to make their characters. Each novel is complex, impeccably plotted and handles heavy moral dilemmas with ease and class.

John le Carré catapulted to fame in 1963 following the publication of THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, which was promptly turned into a hit movie starring one of Hollywood’s leading actors, Richard Burton, as British spy Alec Leamas. 

Mary Higgins Clark was the first suspense writer whose work I fell in love with. I don’t remember quite how I found her books, but it was somewhere around age 10 or 11. Certainly, I’d known her name for a while; the “Queen of Suspense” was an icon of every bookstore, supermarket mass-market paperback section, and library front table.

In a speech to the Mills College class of 1983, Ursula K. Le Guin set out to talk “like a woman.” She said, “It’s going to sound terrible” --- because instead of deluging the graduates with golden promises of success, she spoke to them of children, failure and dark places. So I decided, in remembering Le Guin, to “sound terrible,” too: to talk like a woman, despite the warning voices in my head that it’s too personal, too egotistical, not intellectual enough. Panegyrists, those voices assure me, should be world-historical, big-picture, profound. But I’m simply trying to get at what she meant to me.

I first discovered Sue Grafton’s Alphabet series while volunteering at the local library in the seventh grade. I overheard a patron come up to the librarian with a copy of Q IS FOR QUARRY and asked her if she had the unreleased R yet. The idea that there was a series of books that was released in alphabetical order delighted my OCD. I went over to the mystery shelf, picked up an omnibus of A through C, and devoured it in two weeks.

In a deeply felt blow to the American contemporary canon, one of the champion authors of 20th-century Southern literature has passed away. Pat Conroy, author of the seminal THE PRINCE OF TIDES and THE GREAT SANTINI, was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Early Saturday morning, his Facebook page notified us that he “left this world Friday, March 4, 2016...surrounded by his family and friends in his Beaufort home overlooking the marshes he so loved.”

Professor Robert J. Norrell has held the Bernadotte Schmitt Chair of Excellence since 1998. He writes mainly about American race relations, including his most recent biography, ALEX HALEY: And the Books That Changed the Nation, which focuses on the rise to national celebrity and great literary influence of Haley. In this piece written exclusively for Bookreporter.com, Professor Norrell discusses the roots of autobiographical storytelling in African American culture --- it was one of the very first genres embraced --- and the earlier works that he believes had the greatest impact on Haley’s writing and his struggle to tell his own story.

This is exciting news for mystery fans, along with fans of the prolific writer Max Allan Collins. The five early Quarry novels by Collins will be re-released with gorgeous Robert McGinnis pulp covers between now and March by Hard Case Crime.

Shane White is the Challis Professor of History and an Australian Professorial Fellow in the History Department at the University of Sydney specializing in African American history. He has authored or co-authored five books and collaborated in the construction of the website Digital Harlem. In his latest book, PRINCE OF DARKNESS: The Untold Story of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, Wall Street's First Black Millionaire, the eminent historian reveals the larger-than-life story of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, an African American man who wheeled and dealed in the lily white business world and defied every convention of his time. Here, White talks about the shocking headline that initially drew him to Hamilton’s story, and how Hamilton defied the odds to become one of the most successful African American men of his time.