Missive #660 Published 14 February 2026

Awesome first-fiction venture that immediately thrusts the author into P.D. James' dark orbit—with a peel-the-layers-off tale of utter emotional devastation, relieved only by the deep sensitivity and kindnesses of the detective hero, Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley.
Lynley, handsome, wealthy, and brilliant, is "so damnably charming" that pugfaced, ill-tempered probational partner Det. Sgt. Barbara Havers "couldn't understand why every criminal in the city simply didn't surrender to accommodate him." Now, Lynley must resolve a beheading already confessed to by the victim's obesely bloated daughter Roberta, who was found next to William Teys' body dressed in her Sunday best.

Missive #658 Published 12 February 2026

Lord Gilbert Talbot must provide soldiers for Prince Edward's battle in France. He wishes his surgeon--Hugh de Singleton--to travel with the war party to tend any injuries. Among those on the road is Sir Simon Trillowe, Hugh's old nemesis, who had once torched Hugh's house.
Finding himself in the same war party, Hugh resolves to watch his back in the presence of the knight, who is still holding a grudge. But it is Sir Simon who should not have turned his back....
When Trillowe's body is found, many suspect Hugh has wreaked revenge on his adversary. To clear his name, Hugh must once again riddle a reason for murder.

Missive #657 Published 9 February 2026

Coming up with a judgment on Something Happened (you'll wait a while for that something to happen — nothing does until the shattering clincher) should be the hottest game of Russian roulette in town this fall. There's probably more riding on this book than any other in terms of author anticipation and publisher expectation. It runs close to 600 pages and is full of repetition which can be one of those suicidal assets ("call the repetition perseveration" — that's Heller) in what amounts to a story without a story sans the pseudo of those now dated anti-novels. Heller's novel, Heller's tour de verbal force, Heller's stomp then, is a representation of the underachieved contemporary man booby trapped all the way from his harassment at home to the office where he's making his way up over someone else's body.I read Catch 22 many years ago and plan on rereading it but thought I would read the authors second book first.
I liked this book more than the Kirkus reviewer did from what he says. It is long but I did nor find it to be repetitious to the point that it was bothersome. Made me think back a lot about my life which was probably good. Read it, you might experience the same thing I did.

Missive #654 Published 2 February 2026

Every day I clean the Winchesters' beautiful house top to bottom. I collect their daughter from school. And I cook a delicious meal for the whole family before heading up to eat alone in my tiny room on the top floor.
I try to ignore how Nina makes a mess just to watch me clean it up. How she tells strange lies about her own daughter. And how her husband Andrew seems more broken every day. But as I look into Andrew's handsome brown eyes, so full of pain, it's hard not to imagine what it would be like to live Nina's life. The walk-in closet, the fancy car, the perfect husband.

Missive #652 Published 31 January 2026

Joe and Ruth Austin, sixtyish, retire, withdraw, in California after their son, an existentialist with whom Joe could never sympathize, dies. On the one hand, on his property, he is confronted with a reproachful reminder of his boy, a bearded graduate student who squats on his property and does a Tar-Zen bit in a treehouse. Nearby the Catlins move in, a young couple, and Joe is particularly susceptible to Marian, frail, loving, and fiercely defensive of "all the little live things" and a belief that there are no evil forces in nature. Even though she is being rapidly destroyed by cancer and her race against death is being run against the birth of a child. All of this then refutes resignation with involvement, equates life in terms of its loss, even though it fails to mediate any of the other problems between the mature citizens and the coffeehouse kooks. "Why does the older generation feel as it does about what is happening in the world today?" (the publishers). Probably for the same reason that that same generation feels as it does about what is happening in the novel today—and this book will be a very compatible compromise.