New Audible Podcast Tracks Life

Of Alleged Rapist Nick Alahverdian

Not that I’ve tried, but it’s extremely difficult these days to just vanish. Smartphones, exercise trackers, logins, and credit cards betray our every move. But some people do attempt to disappear—and, for a while, succeed. I Am Not Nicholas, a new podcast from Audible, reveals a bizarre, chilling story that began in December 2021, when police turned up on a Glasgow Covid ward with an international warrant to arrest one of its patients. Arthur Knight had recently emerged from a coma with Miranda, his devoted English wife, by his side. The police claimed he was not the Irish-born Knight at all, but Nick Alahverdian, a 35-year-old convicted sex offender from Rhode Island who is wanted in Utah for two rapes. Last November, a judge in Scotland ruled there is no person known as Arthur Knight, and found that the patient was, indeed, Alahverdian living under one of his 16 known aliases. He was identified through fingerprints and DNA, as well as an analysis of his distinctive tattoos. U.S. authorities say Alahverdian faked his own death in February 2020, wrote his own obituary, and fled to Europe to avoid ongoing criminal investigations. Next month he will be extradited to the United States to face the rape charges in Utah.

How Monet’s Impressionism Parallels The Nuances Of A Great Villain

What does Claude Monet’s impressionist style from the mid-19th century have to do with mystery writing? Plenty, when you consider the nuances he incorporated into his works, particularly his refusal to use black paint. As Patricia Raybon points out in a recent Crime Reads article, “In the dappled sunshine outdoors, Monet and his friends cast their artistic eyes on the moment-to-moment movement, light, colors, and dynamism of real French life. One day—as the story goes—painter John Singer Sargent was painting with Monet and asked, ‘Where’s the black?’ Monet’s reply: ‘I don’t allow myself to use black. It’s against the impressionist theory. In nature, all colors are made by mixing.’ While

Sargent considered that a mistake, Monet had forced himself to look more astutely at shadows and the ever-changing light surrounding them. As he saw it, the atmosphere—including its shadows—was awash in hues of blue. Indeed, Monet’s favorite color for painting shadows was violet. Sometimes muted; sometimes bright. For him, a shadow was never just flat black.” In that way, says historical mystery novelist Nev March, “a good villain can’t be just black-and-white, but more nuanced.” Indeed, Monet shows writers how to “paint” with varied subtlety in such famed shadowed images as “A Pathway in Monet’s Garden” (pictured).

DNA COLD CASE

40 Years Later, Suspect Is Convicted

In 1981 Murder Of Carmel, CA Woman

More than 40 years after single mother Sonia Carmen Herok-Stone was found dead in her home in Carmel, California, DNA from under her fingernail led to the arrest and conviction of her killer. Sometime on October 15, 1981, Ms. Herok-Stone was sexually assaulted and then strangled with her own pantyhose; detectives from the Monterey County Sheriff's Office subsequently charged 25-year-old Michael Scott Glazebrook with her murder. His trial led to a hung jury, however, and the District Attorney’s Office opted not to retry him for murder at that time. The case grew cold until late 2020, when Deputy D.A. Matt L’Heureux and a new team of Sheriff’s detectives re-examined all the evidence in the case, and determined that some of it could be tested with DNA technology that hadn’t been developed when Glazebrook first went on trial. They also discovered the suspect was still living and working in Monterey County, and after obtaining a warrant, they sent samples of his DNA and some found at the crime scene to a lab for testing. In August of 2021, they got a definite match and arrested Glazebrook at his residence in Seaside. Earlier this month—more than 41 years after the murder—he was convicted of first-degree murder, with enhancements for using a deadly weapon and for committing rape.

You, Too, Can Eat Like Nero Wolfe

With This High-Cuisine Cookbook

Nero Wolfe fans know that food has always played a major role in the world of Rex Stout’s obese and eccentric armchair detective. As Murder-Mayhem’s Harry Pearson wrote last week, “With a top-class chef on his staff, the New York private investigator can always find time amidst the crime-busting to tuck into a planked porterhouse steak, a plate of lamb shanks, or perhaps a dish of Creole fritters in cheese sauce. Invariably his meal is washed down with a bottle of beer from the Remmer brewery in Bremen, Germany. Wolfe eats so much, so well, and so often, it’s hard to read a Rex Stout novel without feeling a little peckish yourself.” Lunch and dinner are strictly observed in the dining room to exacting standards, and depending on which book you might be reading, he’ll be feasting on anything from braised duck to anchovy toast to corn, which must be shucked at the table and roasted for 40 minutes at 350 degrees. I mention all this because this year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Nero Wolfe Cook Book, a high-cuisine tome that reproduces authentic recipes for many of the gourmet dishes mentioned throughout the 33 mysteries featuring the iconic sleuth.

REVIEW

Stephen Hunter’s The Bullet Garden

Is A Tense And Brilliant WWII Thriller

Confession time: even though I don’t consider myself a gun guy, I love a good sniper story. And no one writes a better one than Stephen Hunter (pictured), especially when they focus on his recurring American anti-hero Earl Swagger. As soon as the Amazon guy dropped my pre-ordered copy of The Bullet Garden on the doorstep, I was digging into an incredibly detailed story about the days immediately following the D-Day invasion in June 1944, when Allied forces were taking heavy casualties from snipers in France’s rolling hills and farmland. The enemy has a marksman who is so good that “if he fires, you're dead,” leading the Allied army and the Office of Strategic Services to pull Swagger out of the Pacific theater and turn him loose in the bocage, also known as “the bullet garden.” It's a story of hunter vs. hunter as Swagger—“knowing everything, fearing nothing, and having been born so brave bullets were afraid of him”—methodically determines who the enemy shooter is, what motivates him, and how he can outsmart his treachery. Meanwhile, the villain demonstrates his distinctly romantic weakness, revealing that he’s human at heart, but a killer at his core. At the same time, a spy plot set in London tracks a mole lurking within Britain’s intelligence circles, whose devious actions threaten to put Swagger’s life in jeopardy. The Bullet Garden is a tension-filled, action-packed, and brilliant historical thriller populated with genuine characters dropped into an authentic story that only could come from the mind of a master craftsman.

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

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. 

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