A Ballet Of Lepers: Leonard Cohen’s

Attempt To Write A “Psycho-Thriller”

No one ever thinks of song-master Leonard Cohen as a writer of books, let alone thrillers. After all, he gave us the minor fall and the major lift of the modern classic “Hallelujah,” the six flamenco chords of “Suzanne,” and the cheesy drum-machine beat and sotto voce horn riffs of “I’m Your Man.” But you’d have to go way back, and dig real deep, to find his novella A Ballet of Lepers, described by Air Mail’s David Yaffe as “so rancid—flagrantly, deliberately—it almost seems like an experiment in how dark his muse could take him." The story opens with an average young man (his name is never revealed) with an average girlfriend named Marylin (he prefers her sister) and a steady sex life, until he learns that his grandfather will be moving in. "This might have been an impediment, but the old man, from the Old World with broken but lucid English, brings something out in our narrator," Yaffe writes. "Something sinister, freaky, indefensible. As soon as the grandfather enters the narrator’s life, you are in the mind of a psychopath. He beats and taunts his meek and deformed co-worker like Meursault killing an Arab—Camus was a Cohen exemplar—and embarks on an affair with the poor man’s wife just so he can catch them in the act.” While not necessarily a psychological thriller as defined by today’s terms, A Ballet of Lepers was written between 1956 and 1957, when Cohen was in his early 20s and spent an unhappy year at Columbia University, during which time he would describe himself as “passion without flesh” and “love without climax.”

From Bowlers To Beanies To Caps,

The 10 Best Hats In Crime Movies

Crime film might be the most fashionable category of all films, except perhaps for Jane Austen-esque period flicks and those for which Edith Head won her eight Oscars. From femmes fatales to English gentlemen detectives, there are countless distinctive style choices and memorable looks throughout its varied subgenres. Many of these ensembles are fall-friendly (trench coats) and, more often than not, include fabulous hats. As Crime Reads’ Olivia Rutigliano wrote recently, crime cinema is full of excellent hats and, with that in mind, she compiled this list of the 10 best hats in crime movies. Front and center is Paul Newman’s master con artist Henry Gondorff in The Sting, who wears a brown fedora one while he’s plotting with other members of the con, and brings a black-banded gray fedora along with him, once the plot is underway. In Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, Grace Kelly plays Frances Stevens, who owns a decidedly form-fitting wardrobe, and a sun broad-brimmed, while Gene Hackman’s porkpie hat is one of the most indelible elements in The French Connection. Then there’s Bonnie and Clyde, which is full of hats. In fact, Rutigliano says, “There are so many hats in that movie that you wonder if they didn’t stick up a haberdashery in between a few of the banks. But the most memorable hat style in the movie is the beret. Bonnie wears several of them and makes [her] into an elegant, businesslike, and yet playful character, and her soft little hats make her look even more-put together.”

Crime Fiction Set In New York City

Is As Distinct As Its Five Boroughs

While a gritty crime thriller can be set just about anywhere, nowhere seems more suited to dark noir and gunfire and crooked cops and bloody gangs than the streets of New York. Mystery author Roger A. Canaff recently wrote an introspective profile about the city that never sleeps for Criminal Element, in which he offers a look at the five boroughs of Gotham from the perspective of a long-time resident.  “All five boroughs share important similarities: the brackish tides; the steaming asphalt in summer; the howling winds of winter. Forests of street-lamps, mountains of concrete. But to the extent there are differences, here are brief offerings for each borough, moving north to south: 1) Bronx—At once magnificent and godforsaken, this lowest point on the New York mainland [offers] generational poverty and decay, although both show stubborn signs of rebirth, while white black, rich, poor, young, old, nascent and ancient, all collide here. 2) Queens—The entire world on a street corner is possible here, from Micronesia to Ireland and all within a subway stop on the 7 line. 3) Manhattan—There’s a steely, creosote smell that envelops you and seeps into your mouth, clothes, and soul as you navigate the streets; it’s 40 or more distinct communities from the Battery to the Cloisters. 4) Brooklyn—This borough is all about edges, where cultural roots remain closely guarded within Shakespearean borders marked by street signs and playgrounds. 5) Staten Island—The forgotten sister, this surprisingly large island is best defined by the orange ferry that to this day carries millions back and forth from the hilly bluffs of St. George to Manhattan.

13 Mystery Series To Binge-Read When

You’re Out Of Shows To Binge-Watch

I’m just as guilty as the next fan of thrillers and crime shows fan of binge-watching programs on Netflix and Prime, but I’ve found there’s a catch…three of them, in fact: eventually you run out of shows to watch (Bruce Springsteen remains highly prescient), the series is cancelled, or the latest season had ended (usually with a cliffhanger). In any event, sooner or later we need a new obsession, and that brings us to “binge-reading.” I first did this when I discovered the Hardy Boys at age 10, then when I found Alistair MacLean about five years later, and more recently with Robert Ludlum and Baldacci. As Murder-Mayhem’s Orrin Grey recently wrote, “when it comes to binge reading, nothing hits the spot better than a good detective series. Whether that detective is a law enforcement professional, a private eye, or an amateur sleuth, there’s nothing more satisfying than solving mysteries right alongside them. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of great detective series novels out there, from Mark Billingham’s latest, The Murder Book—a continuation of his popular Tom Thorne series—to venerable favorites like Reginald Hill’s Dalziel and Pascoe series. Here are 13 detective books to get you started, drawn from some of the most binge-worthy series out there.

REVIEW

S. Lee Manning’s Bloody Soil Elevates

Her To Rarefied Air Of “Spy Master”

If you despise Nazi’s, fascists, and misogynists, you’ll love S. Lee Manning’s new spy thriller Bloody Soil. This third book in her international suspense series featuring Russian-born American operative Kolya Petrov takes us to Germany, where a far-right political group is determined to return the country to a murderous, totalitarian dictatorship as experienced under Hitler. Drawing parallels to the surge of neofascist movements currently growing across Europe (and here in the U.S.), this riveting novel follows a mysterious American named Michael Hall, who infiltrates an organization known as Germany Now, which forces him to shoot a prominent Jewish anti-Nazi activist as part of his initiation. In carrying out this execution (in a slightly modified form), he attracts the attention of an unexpected enemy named Lisette, a member of the hate-filled faction who, likewise, has infiltrated the group in order to avenge the death of her father many years earlier. As they both work along parallel lines toward the same goal, neither trusts the other as time quickly ticks down toward a critical and bloody showdown that could destroy German democracy—or save it. Manning’s plotting is impeccable, the characters and genuine, and her timing is splendid as the tension builds incrementally, very much as when one winds an old clock. With each new twist the spring tightens ever so slightly, and you simply can’t wait to get to the next page—while forcing yourself to read every word of this one. Without question, Bloody Soil elevates Manning to that rarefied air of spy master. Available November 9.

Coming January 10, 2023:

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

When photojournalist Monica Cross literally stumbles into the site of an old airplane crash at the edge of a Himalayan glacier, she is exposed to a dark and deadly secret that was meant to remain hidden forever. Unaware that her life is in grave danger, she attempts to get home to New York while the Greenwich Global Group—a dark-web, murder-for-hire outfit—pulls out all stops to make sure she never gets there. Spanning ten time zones, nine countries, and four continents, Greenwich Mean Time is a tightly spun thriller that plays out against a sinister plot designed to change the course of history for all time.