The seventh book in the Lenny Moss mystery series features the intrepid Philadelphia hospital shop steward tracking down a murderer even as hospital staff and patients face down a virulent Zika virus attack.
On the 25th anniversary of her first crime novel, the Commissario Brunetti author reveals how she is responding to dark times "I'm interested in why people do things. Crime in itself isn't interesting, it's just horrible. The convolutions of greed are more interesting intellectually than passion, because with passion the name is the answer. What happens once you open the door to temptation and to possibility, that's what fascinates me - how people worsen."
Frederic Jameson writes that for Raymond Chandler, a detective novel may reveal patterns that underlie the workings of our society. Reviewer Angela Woodward agrees, crediting Chandler's novels with brilliantly illuminating the grimy microcosm, played out "in the heart of the darkness of a local world without the benefit of the federal Constitution, as in a world without God." She finds that Jameson makes every strand of Chandler's oeuvre glisten with significance.
Diagnosed with cancer in 2014, he was a leading figure in Nordic noir, and a social activist, best known for crime novels made into the TV hit, Wallender. Last year he wrote: it is possible to live with cancer. It is possible to fight against it. Nothing is ever too late. Everything is still possible. My stance is to do ultimately with what cancer has not taken away from me. It has not robbed me of my joy at being alive, or my curiosity about what tomorrow has in store.
Reader Comments - Towards a Socialist America; War on the Islamic State; Ferguson New Voter Registration; Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism; Economy - Still Failing; People's Climate March; War and Climate Change; Berkeley Free Speech Movement; Crime Fiction; Work, Leisure, & Consumption; Israel 'Blacklist'; An Israel Equal for All; Importance of Brazil's Elections;
Announcements - Race, Policing & Civil Rights-Oct 14; Paint the Town Red-Oct 22-both Brooklyn
The sixth in Timothy Sheard's well-established series of Lenny Moss mysteries. In it, hero Moss, a tireless, working-class college dropout, articulates a solid message about worker solidarity and union militancy that is both refreshing and inspiring.
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