Booked (and Printed): September 2025

 

Booked (and Printed) September 2025   It was a difficult month at Casa Boulden. You’ve probably noticed me whining regularly about my eyes and everything finally came to a head last month. But a little backstory first. All the way back in June my left eye went wonky when a cloud appeared at the top of my vision and bursts of black dots began floating like so many bugs. I went to my GP, who referred me to an ophthalmologist, who diagnosed the ailment as a cataract. In late August, the vision in my left eye began going dark; there were inky shadows and faded, splotchy light—without many (any, really) details. As it turned out, the eye doc’s diagnosis was wrong and my retina had detached. So I went to another ophthalmologist, this one specializing in the retina, who performed surgery to save my eye. So far, the surgery has been successful. The retina is reattached and the shadows have receded, which is wonderful. But my vision will never be as it was. In fact, the best I can hope for is 20-70 with corrective lenses and honestly, I’m a long, long way from there now. This prologue is something of an explanation as to why the blog has been so quiet in recent weeks and why my September reading was so damn lame. I finished one lousy novel, Brian Freeman’s PHOTOGRAPH (2025)—which is a damn terrific thriller with a supernatural element and enough suspense to fill any two ordinary thrillers. And yeah, there are a handful of genuine surprises and a likable heroine. You can read my detailed review here.

But that was it. There were no short stories, no novelettes, or novellas— Unless you count a solitary audio book, MARKED MAN, by Archer Mayor (2021), I listened to during those long days of my recovery. It is Vermont Bureau of Investigation detective, Joe Gunther’s 32nd outing and a whale of an entertaining mystery. Nathan Lyon built his dream in an old mill in Brattleboro, Vermont—with enough room for his children and grand children to live and space enough for their businesses, too. But the old man died a year earlier of what everyone thought were natural causes and when Gunther and his team begin sniffing around, they find everything about Nathan Lyon is a lie. Even his name, which (until he moved to Vermont) was Nick Bianchi. There are crazy and conniving relatives, low-grade mobsters, and enough paternal hatred to make the story interesting from beginning to end. There are a couple surprises, too. Marked Man’s narrator, Tom Taylorson, nails Gunther’s gritty voice and showed a real flair for hitting all the right notes, especially with character dialogue. My favorite book of the month? I’m going with Photograph. Fin— Now on to next month… May it be better than this one.

Review: "Photograph" by Brian Freeman

 

Photograph by Brian Freeman Blackstone, 2025     In Brian Freeman’s excellent psychological thriller, Photograph—which is due in bookstores Oct. 7th—a Daytona, Florida, private eye, Shannon Wells, is hired for a peculiar job. A worried, middle-aged accountant named Faith Selby, asks Shannon to “[j]ust find out who I am…. That’s all I need to know.” Shannon takes the request at face value and while she finds evidence Faith Selby started life as someone else, she is unable to identify who exactly that someone else was. And it appears this conclusion is exactly what Faith was hoping for. Almost a year later Shannon finds another Selby—Faith’s daughter, Kate—sitting across from her “office” table at a seaside tiki bar inquiring why Shannon had been hired by Kate’s mother. Shannon balks at the request until Kate reveals Faith has been murdered. Kate believes the murder is related to a photograph Faith took of a young girl standing next to a vending machine, her back to the camera, in the parking lot of a roadside motel. The photograph was taken 26-years earlier and it appeared, without Faith’s consent, in a recent coffee table book called Millenium Memories. Shannon agrees to help Kate find Faith’s killer and, using the photograph as her only real clue, she follows a trail of violence and menace to smalltown Michigan where she learns the photograph may be related to an unsolved murder from 1999. Photograph is an atmospheric and wickedly plotted thriller with a touch of the supernatural—Shannon is haunted by nightmares of a woman being murdered in what may be a flashback to her own murder in a past life. The action is lively: there are gunfights, tightly ratcheted tension, and surprise after twisty surprise. While the concept is big and (some might say) over-the-top, Freeman’s clever plotting, his attention to detail, and his likable heroine smooth Photograph into a nail-biting, exciting, and caffeinated literary treat. It should appeal to readers of psychological thrillers, suspense, and mainstream thrillers in equal doses.

Check out Photograph on Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the hardcover.

Booked (and Printed): August 2025

 

Booked (and Printed) August 2025   August was a better reading month than it should have been. Although its four books—one non-fiction and three fiction—and two novelettes were far from a big month. This is because I tend to have late summer reading slumps as I catch up on everything I missed doing earlier in the season. This year I had a couple other complications, too. I started a new job and—well, my damned eyes kept me from the page again. I have a diagnosis, which I’ll keep to myself for now, and a follow up appointment in a few weeks. My fingers and toes are crossed that I’ll get some good news when it happens. While my reading totals were higher than I figured, my reviewing here at the blog was abysmal. In fact, the only review I wrote was for the two novelettes, “BAE-I” and “ROOM E-36,” by Douglas Corleone. These two dark tech scifi tales are the beginning of a series of eleven stories in Corleone’s Ghost Signal: Dark Frequencies. And if the first two are any indication, this is a series to watch. Read my detailed review here. The month started with Max Allan Collins’s shrug-inducing, THE DARK CITY (1987), which is the first in his four book Elliot Ness series. Set in Cleveland, Ohio, after Ness takes the job of Cleveland’s safety director, The Dark City is about an incorruptible cop on a mission to clean-up a vice-ridden police department. The plotting and characters felt like they tumbled out of a 1930s pulp magazine—which is cool—but by the halfway point it had grown rather dull and I found myself yearning for something more interesting. If you’ve never tried Collins, check out his Nathan Heller books. Interestingly, Heller makes a cameo as an incorruptible private eye in The Dark City.

The something more interesting came in the form of Brian Freeman’s INFINITE (2021). This thriller, which is seeded with elements of science fiction, is a breakneck antidote for boredom. Dylan Moran’s life started in the muck—as a boy Dylan watched his father kill his mother before killing himself. And his life has been hobbled by the trauma of that night ever since. Then when Dylan loses his wife, Carly Chance, in a car crash, Dylan sees a familiar man watching it all. A man that could have saved Carly if he'd tried. Infinite is a shocking and an almost surreal—without acting or reading surreal—thriller. It’s a journey into a world of what ifs and what-could-have-beens. The scifi elements, if you haven’t guessed already, are centered around the idea of alternate universes and at least one man’s ability to navigate from one to another. And boy is it fun. My lone foray into fact came with the young adult title, GEORGE WASHINGTON, SPYMASTER, by Thomas B. Allen (2004). This look at the espionage business of the Revolutionary War—which included cyphers, planting false information, stealing correspondence, and running spies throughout the colonies—is informative, fun, and (dare I say) even entertaining. I liked it so much it wouldn’t surprise me if I read it again sometime. August ended with Hank Phillipi Ryan’s psychological thriller, ALL THIS COULD BE YOURS—which is scheduled for release Sep. 9, 2025. Three years ago Tessa Calloway started a national online movement, #MomsWith Dreams, when she livestreamed quitting her job. Since then Tessa has spent more time with her family—husband Henry and their two children Linny and Zack—and written a bestselling novel with an indomitable protagonist named Annabelle Brown. Readers love Annabelle and Tessa, and while on a weeks-long book tour, Tessa, finds this new-found fame gratifying but as the days and events pile up the attention becomes cloying and claustrophobic. Even worse, Tessa believes someone is trying to unveil her dirty little secret: “The one her mother had warned would ruin her.” All This Could Be Yours is a solid thriller with an attitude that is all Hank Phillippi Ryan. Tessa is a complicated and likable character with real world fears, which all of us can relate to. The pacing, especially in the first third of the novel, is a touch slow but Tessa’s likability keeps the narrative interesting. Once the action begins—when the blackmail plot is revealed—all the early flaws are quickly forgotten. And that final reveal is a doozy. My favorite book of August? I’m going with George Washington, Spymaster. Fin— Now on to next month…

Review: "Domino Island" by Desmond Bagley

Domino Island by Desmond Bagley HarperCollins, 2019   Domino Island is Desmond Bagley’s “lost” novel. The manuscript (ms) was discovered by the researcher Philip Eastwood at Boston University’s Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center where Bagley’s papers are housed. Along with the ms—titled Because Salton Died—were letters between Bagley and his editor at Collins, Bob Knittel, and handwritten notes on the ms, identifying planned changes for publication, but Bagley pulled Because Salton Died from Collins and the changes were never made. There are a couple hypotheses about why Bagley stopped work on the book. The first and most obvious is Bagley decided it was a hopeless project and there is some evidence supporting this. In the letter to his editor accompanying the ms, Bagley wrote, “I had a bad case of ‘writer’s block’[.]” He had started and abandoned four “standard Bagleys”—adventure thrillers—and he decided to try something entirely new to get his creative energy going. So, in the early days of 1972 he began working on an Agatha Christie-style traditional mystery, or whodunnit, but Bagley wanted to rework the novel into his usual fare because: “My method of writing is singularly ill-adapted for the writing of a whodunnit. I begin with a situation and let it develop, and the plot follows where the development leads; whereas a whodunnit should be meticulously worked out in a synopsis before a key on the typewriter is touched.” The second hypothesis—and my favorite of the two—involves the film, The Mackintosh Man, which was based on Bagley’s 1972 novel, The Freedom Trap. Doubleday, Bagley’s American publisher, wanted a novel like The Freedom Trap that could be marketed in tandem with the film’s release in 1973. Bagley’s next novel, The Tightrope Men (1973), seemed to oblige this request since it is similar in theme to The Freedom Trap. But both thoughts are purely conjecture since, as far as I know, no one has uncovered any direct evidence to support one theory over the other for Bagley’s motive for ditching Because Salton Died in favor of writing The Tightrope Men. Now on to the review: Bill Kemp, a former Royal Army officer, is a highly competent and well-paid insurance consultant working for Western and Continental Insurance Co. Kemp is sent to the Caribbean Island nation, and former British colony, Campanilla, to investigate the death of the well-heeled David Salton. Salton’s decomposing corpse was discovered in a small boat off Campanilla’s coast, and the local coroner ruled the cause of death as a heart attack. Kemp’s investigation is supposed to be nothing more than a simple “check-the-box” operation, but things start unwinding when he arrives on the island. According to a police captain, Kemp’s body was too far gone for a cause of death to be determined. And Salton had enemies everywhere. He was involved in island politics, and he’d been railing against the island casinos—rumored to be owned by an organized crime syndicate—the banking industry, which specialized in moving money discreetly for wealthy clients without paying much local tax, and the current and very corrupt government. Domino Island’s origins as a whodunnit are visible in the finished book. The mysterious death of David Salton. The wide spectrum of suspects. Kemp’s observations of the police’s inadequate original investigation and his developing and then discarding of suspects and murder theories. But the climactic resolution of the mystery is far from traditional—although a portion is set in something like a drawing room—with a bunch of action and a conclusion that would be difficult for any reader to guess because there simply aren’t adequate clues in the narrative. Which is okay, because Domino Island works well as an adventure thriller through its exotic location, bullet-flying action, and Kemp’s tough guy persona. Domino Island isn’t Bagley’s best, but it’s a welcome addition for any of Bagley’s regular readers. *                   *                   * This is a slightly updated version of a review published on Feb. 17, 2022.

a little more about Domino Island…   After Because Salton Died was found, Bagley’s literary estate allowed the screenwriter Michael Davies to make the changes identified in the manuscript notes and from the correspondence between Bagley and Knittel and Domino Island was born. According to Philip Eastwood’s Afterword, Bagley’s “typescript, of approximately 89,000 words, bore on its title page: NEW NOVEL BECAUSE SALTON DIED (if you think of a better, please do) And more than 47 years after it was written, the publisher did find a better title with Domino Island. *                   *                   * Check out Amazon’s page for Domino Island  For more information about Desmond Bagley and his work, check out The Complete Desmond Bagley at Amazon

 

Review: "BAE-I" and "Room E-36" by Douglas Corleone

 

Ghost Signal: Dark Frequencies BAE-I and Room E-36 by Douglas Corleone Ghost Signal Press, 2025     One of my recent reading discoveries and new favorites, Douglas Corleone, has written a pair of novelettes—BAE-I and Room E-36—in a new series of dark technology sci-fi tales that read like a television anthology series. Both are standalone stories, but they are thematically linked and have disturbingly believable near-future settings. Their shared theme: artificial intelligence is coming for us. The first, BAE-I, which was released in May, is about a concerned mother, LynAnn Duft, and her adult son, Howie. The place: LynAnn’s home in “a small Missouri town forgotten by time.” Howie resides in the basement with his computer, no friends, and no hope of ever meeting that right girl. But everything changes when LynAnn responds to a television ad for a company called Bae-i. A company that will— I’ll let you discover exactly what Bae-i does because it’ll be more fun that way. The other, Room E-36, which was released in June, finds Jack Alden, a travel writer carrying a lifetime of disappointment and demons, wrapping up an assignment in Waikiki. His article is due in two days and Jack knows the best place to write it is on-island. So when an invitation for a free room at a new resort called Echo at Ko Olina—on Oahu’s leeward side—reaches Jack, he grabs it. The hotel is unique because it is fully autonomous; which means it is operated by artificial intelligence without the aid of human employees. A set-up that makes Jack cringe, but… he goes anyway. Because what could possibly go wrong?

These novelettes are scary, thought-provoking, and entertaining as hell. A trifecta of sorts for any reader with a hankering for a good and satisfying tale. Their lengths—somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 words—along with Corleone’s cinematic prose, make them as much fun to read as a television series like The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror are to watch. As usual for Corleone, the settings are vivid and compelling; adding both atmosphere and tension to the narrative. Howie’s basement lair is confining and dark, while the Echo at Ko Olina is obscenely antiseptic. But the real punch is the almost noir-like downfall of the primary characters as they make one bad decision after another. Do yourself a favor and read BAE-I and Room E-36 because we all need a good reality-based scare from time to time.

You can read BAE-I and Room E-36 on Kindle—each is a mere 99-cents or included with you Kindle Unlimited subscription. Click here to go to the Ghost Signal: Dark Frequencies page at Amazon.

Review: "The Wolf in the Clouds" by Ron Faust

 

The Wolf in the Clouds by Ron Faust Popular Library, 1978   The Wolf in the Clouds is Ron Faust’s second novel. Originally published in 1977 as a hardcover by Bobbs-Merrill’s Black Bat Mystery imprint, it has been reprinted by Popular Library (1978)—which is the edition I read—and more recently as a trade paperback and ebook by Turner Publishing. Like much of Faust’s early work, The Wolf in the Clouds is a relatively simple adventure yarn with a poetic lilt that makes it a little more.    A small town in rural Colorado is under siege by a slow-moving blizzard and a rampage killer. A killer who shot several people at a nearby ski resort and is now hiding in the rugged Wolf Mountain Wilderness Area. The storm trapped three college students skiing in the shadow of the Wolf—a high, unforgiving mountain peak—and two forest rangers brave the freezing temperatures to mount a rescue. The rangers, Jack and Frank, find the skiers safely holed up in a small cabin, but they also find the killer; a man named Ralph Brace whom Jack once considered a friend, but quickly realizes he never knew Ralph at all. The Wolf in the Clouds is an entertaining and smoothly written adventure novel. It is written in first person from Jack’s perspective and the narrative includes ideas larger than the story. The complexity of public land use is only one and it is as relevant today, perhaps even more so, than it was fifty years ago. The prose is both complex and simple; easy to read, but with a texture of beauty about it: “Roof timbers creaked, the last light faded from the windows, the stone walls exhaled a new, acid cold. The long winter night was here; we had fourteen or fifteen hours until dawn.” The story lacks the complexity of Faust’s later novels and the protagonist, Jack, is shaded by a cold veneer. He is aloof, even in an early scene with his wife, and something of an outsider with both the Forest Service and the townsfolk, which is forgivable since everything works so well—setting, plotting, character. The Wolf in the Clouds isn’t in the top-tier of Ron Faust’s body of work, which is reserved for his final six or seven novels, but it is still damn good. *                 *                 * This is a slightly updated version of a review published on May 19, 2016.

Check out The Wolf in the Clouds on Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback.

EQMM Cover Art: Nov. 1954, Frederic Kirberger

The marvelous cover illustration for the November 1954 issue of the digest, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine [Vol. 24, No. 5], was created by Frederic H. Kirberger. And wow do I like its stark realism.    The issue is packed with big names and good stories, too, including: “How Does Your Garden Grow?” by Agatha Christie “The Candy Kid,” by Erle Stanley Gardner “I Always Get the Cuties,” by John D. MacDonald “The Suicide of Kiaros,” by L. Frank Baum “Taste,” by Roald Dahl “Only in Chinago,” by Jack London And the first published story, “Whistle While You Work,” by the guys that created the television series, Columbo, William Link & Richard Levinson. Link & Levinson were 20-year-old students of University of Pennsylvania at the time. The back cover—below right—is from EQMM’s longtime advertiser, the now-defunct The Detective Book Club. A club that printed three books in one and spared no expense for its cover design. But I have to admit I have a few in my personal stacks.