REVIEW

As The Thrills And Chills Multiply,

The Bodies Pile Up In John Wick 4

The first rule of thumb when writing any mystery or crime novel is don’t kill the dog. When Keanu Reeves' original John Wick first arrived on the silver screen back in 2014, moviegoers expected to see a wild action movie about a widowed hit man being brought back into the criminal underworld. But within the first 20 minutes we see his adorable puppy—a gift from his late wife—(big spoiler alert coming) brutally killed, a barbarous act of animal cruelty that essentially has driven the entire movie franchise ever since. While the cleverly titled John Wick 4 is incrementally better than the other three, sitting through the 169 minutes of bloodshed is much like playing Mortal Kombat with no joystick. Within the first few minutes I lost track of how many bad guys Wick kills, but one reliable online source places the body count at 140. This is almost double the 77 he dispatches in JW:1, a bit higher than the 128 he takes out in the sequel, and respectably more than the 94 he terminates in JW:3. The entire point of the storyline is that Wick is the best assassin in the world and, conveniently, impervious to death—which pairs nicely with the fact that no one in law enforcement seems to be bothered by the murder and mayhem that follows him wherever he goes. I can see the headline now in Le Monde:

Dozens Dead In Arc de Triomphe Killing

Spree; Police Nowhere To Be Found

Anyone who expects JW:4 to be an introspective character study of an assassin weighing his conscience against his chosen profession will be sadly disappointed. But the rest of us who are looking for a mile-a-minute death ride will earn every penny spent on a ticket. [Oh…one more thing: in the last half hour of the film, Wick must decide between shooting a singularly focused mercenary, or a particularly driven hitman who’s about to kill a dog. Guess which one he chooses.]

Was 1973 Actually The Greatest Year

For The Release Of Crime Movies?

It’s a debate that makes for equally great conversation at writers’ conferences and around the dinner table: what year more than any other was the best of all time for crime movies. Previously in BunzelGram I’ve made a case for 1971, during which we saw the release of such classics as The French Connection, Shaft, Dirty Harry, A Clockwork Orange, Diamonds Are Forever, Get Carter, Klute, and The Anderson Tapes. Then again, in 1972 we got The Godfather, Deliverance, The Hot Rock, and Superfly. Not quite as many crime masterpieces as the previous year, but a contender for its first installment in the saga of the Corleone crime family. Of course, many critics contend that 1974 is actually the best year for crime movies, with The Godfather Part II, Chinatown, Murder on the Orient Express, The Conversation, The Taking of Pelham 123, and Sugarland Express. Recently, however, Crime Reads’ Olivia Rutigliano made a strong case for why 1973 is actually the greatest year crime movies ever had. True, there was no Francis Ford Coppola entry, but the line-up featured The Long Goodbye, The Sting, Serpico, Mean Streets, Paper Moon, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Badlands, Dillinger, The Last of Sheila, Papillon, The Outfit, Scarecrow, and Live and Let Die.

DNA Cold Case

Woman Found Dead In Massachusetts

Finally Identified After Four Decades

The remains of a woman found in a small Massachusetts town in 1978 have been positively identified more than four decades after her death, using “old fashioned police work” and advances in forensic genetic genealogy. As reported by CNN, the “Granby girl”—so-named because of the town about 12 miles north of Springfield where her body was found—was identified earlier this month as Patricia Ann Tucker, whose skeletal remains were discovered in a wooded area near a logging road, about 85 miles west of Boston. An autopsy revealed she died of a bullet wound to her left temple, First Assistant District Attorney Steven Gagne said in a news conference. The remains had been out in the elements for several months before she was found, and the subsequent autopsy only concluded that the victim was an unnamed woman between the ages of 19 and 27. In March 2022, cold case investigators sent a DNA sample from her remains to Othram, a forensic laboratory in Texas credited with helping solve a lengthy list of other cold cases, and earlier this year they got a solid genetic match to a woman living in Maryland. She told investigators that a family member who had two sons had gone missing in the 1970s, and investigators were able to locate one of the sons, whose DNA confirmed that the previously unidentified woman was his mother.

Six Brilliant Hitchcock Films Based On

Equally Brilliant Works Of Literature

In a career spanning over six decades, Alfred Hitchcock directed over 50 feature films, and he remains one of the most highly successful—and revered—filmmakers in the Hollywood studio system. Over the course of his lengthy and prolific career, Hitchcock worked in a variety of genres, but he’s still best known as a master of suspense. As Josh Bell recently wrote in Novel Suspects, “Such Hitchcock thrillers as Rear Window, Rope, and Lifeboat spawned entire subgenres of their own, and 1958’s Vertigo, starring James Stewart and Kim Novak, was voted the greatest film of all time in the most recent edition of the British Film Institute’s influential Sight & Sound poll. Decades before the usage of such terms as ‘elevated horror,’ Hitchcock proved that genre films could be sophisticated, complex, and enduring works of art.” One of Hitchcock’s greatest strengths was finding the right source material, and many of his most beloved films were based on mystery and thriller novels and short stories. There’s no bad place to start with Hitchcock, really, but for avid readers looking for a Hitchcock primer, here’s a list of six brilliant Hitchcock films based on brilliant works of literature.

25 Supernatural Mystery Novels

That Will Keep You up at Night

I don’t usually discuss supernatural thrillers or crime novels in BunzelGram, but they’re a valid subgenre with a strong and avid following…so why not? Put simply, supernatural mysteries are those that combine a classic whodunit structure with elements of the paranormal or supernatural. As Murder-Mayhem noted last week, this sometimes means a story that takes place in a retirement home for werewolves and witches, while other times the elements are more subtle. Perhaps there’s no actual ghost at all, and merely someone who wants you to think there is. Most of the time, though, these books feature at least a little touch of the uncanny, if not the arcane. Often, their protagonists are something a little more than human—or, at the very least, a lot out of the ordinary. From clairvoyant flower sellers to professional stage magicians, from phony mediums to outright witches, these amateur sleuths have all dabbled (or dived) into the world of the unusual. Sometimes, these tales are blood-chilling, sometimes cozy, and sometimes humorous, but always they manage to drive the reader’s desire to put the pieces together and see the puzzle solved—and the villain exposed. With that in mind, here are just a few of the best supernatural mystery books for a spine-tingling experience.

NOW AVAILABLE!!!

Greenwich Mean Time

“A globe-spanning, mind-spinning thriller that will delight fans of Jason Bourne. Rōnin Phythian, an assassin with extraordinary powers and a code of his own, deserves a sequel. Make that sequels.” —Joseph Finder, New York Times bestselling author of House on Fire

“Greenwich Mean Time is a rollicking good time of thrills and skills.” —New York Times bestselling author Steve Berry

"Over-the-top action..." —Publishers Weekly

"Original, riveting, and with more unexpected plot twists and turns than a Disneyland roller coaster, Greenwich Mean Time is a fun read for anyone with an interest in assassination and conspiracy psychic thriller novels."

—Midwest Book Review

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