Romantic thriller will leave you thinking

Mary Roberts Rinehart, noted for her mysteries, hit the bestseller list in 1921 with a romantic thriller. A Poor Wise Man is an exciting read that leaves readers with plenty to think about. Lily Cardew, heir to the Cardew steel fortune, is home after a year of war work in Ohio. Labor trouble is brewing [...]

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Fast paced Sheik blurs absurdities

Orphaned as an infant, Diana Mayo was brought up by a much older brother, who treated her as if she were a boy. When she reaches adulthood and financial independence, the fearless and foolhardy Diana goes for a month  into the North African desert accompanied only by native camel drivers and servants. She is captured [...]

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River’s End Holds Unexpected Laughs

With its mix of Western adventure, mistaken identity, mystery, and romance, James Oliver Curwood’s 1920 bestseller, The River’s End, reads like Hollywood film plot. As he is dying, lawman Derwent Conniston urges the outlaw John Keith to assume his identify and thus evade recapture for the killing of Judge Kirkstone. The two men look as [...]

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The Adventurer Is A Bad Trip

To follow Mika Waltari’s blood-soaked plot requires a thorough knowledge of Renaissance and Reformation history. Understanding Waltari’s cardboard characters requires nothing but suspension of disbelief.

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Jubilee Trail Celebrates Women

Garnet Cameron, newly graduated from a select New York finishing school in 1844, promptly falls head over heals for a Harvard drop-out turned prairie trader. Oliver Hale appeals to a sense of adventure Garnet never knew she had. They marry and set off  for California, planning to return to New York the following year. In [...]

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Trustee Touts Traditional Values

Trustee from the Toolroom will warm your heart without upsetting your stomach with cloying sweetness.

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Trail of the Lonesome Pine is a curiosity lost in melodrama

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine was John Fox Jr.’s first big success, making the bestseller list two years running. The melodrama survives as a curiosity, but it’s too splintered to endure as a novel.

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Escape Is Impossible to Put Down

In the opening scene of Escape, a doctor tells actress Emmy Ritter she’ll be able to walk in a week. “Just in time for my execution,” she replies. Ethel Vance  hooked me with that line, and she didn’t let go until I’d read the rest of her novel that evening. Authorities refuse to allow Emmy’s [...]

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The U[tterly] P[reposterous] Trail

The U.P. Trail is a romantic tale of the building of America’s first transcontinental railroad, the Union Pacific. Zane Grey weaves all the traditional western cliches into his boy-meets-girl story.

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The Golden Hawk Is a Turkey

The Golden Hawk is another bauble on Frank Yerby’s string of best-selling period romances. Yerby sets this one in the West Indies in the 1600s human life was cheap and New World gold plentiful. Everything about this potboiler is totally predictable.

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