Polish author Kaja Malanowska wrote her third novel Fog (translated by Bill Johnson) as an experiment in attracting a broader readership through the crime genre. Her previous two novels, the autobiographical Drobne szaleństwa dnia codziennego (Small Madnesses of Everyday Life) in 2010, and Patrz na mnie, Klaro! (Look at Me, Klara!) in 2012 were literary…
Lara Thomson’s debut One Night, New York, opens at the top of the Empire State Building in the height of the depression. Two women, Frances and Agnes wait up there, planning to push someone over the edge. In returning to this setup, Thompson will range across the highs and lows of New York City in…
Debra Oswald’s latest book The Family Doctor opens with the shocking death of a young family at the hands of their father and husband. This sounds a little like the set up of Jane Harper’s debut The Dry. But while Harper used this scenario to launch a mystery story, Oswald’s take is much more realistic….
The scourge of opioid addiction is at the core of the dramatic thriller Crisis. A tension-filled opening sees a teenager, Cedric Beauville (Charles Champagne), in deep snow near the US-Canadian border being chased by unseen pursuers. The lad’s capture sets off a chain of events. Jake Kelly (Armie Hammer) is deep undercover. The Drug Enforcement…
The Little Things is definitely not the movie I was expecting from director John Lee Hancock. After all, when you’ve got The Blind Side, Saving Mr Banks and The Founder on your resume, you might feel a little typecast. But Hancock breaks the mould here with a gritty crime thriller. And more than that, he…
A cheeky gangster flick with attitude, Pixie is a bloody delight … and I do mean that literally. As the body count mounts, the star of the show, Pixie O’Brien (Olivia Cooke), bats her eyelids and schemes away. Pixie is the adopted daughter of a gangster who fell out with a bunch of gun-toting priests,…
True crime has been “flavour of the month” for a while now (at least since the Serial podcast burst into public consciousness). And nothing fuels the imagination like an unsolved mystery. Director John Dower (My Scientology Movie) skillfully combines the two in The Mystery of D. B. Cooper, producing arguably the best documentary of 2020….
Some movies are good. Some movies are bad. And some are just so bonkers, they defy rational assessment. Fatman is one of those. Co-directors and writers Eshom and Ian Helms have crafted a stunning piece of whack-battery that seems more like a fever dream than an actual plot. Not that there’s anything wrong with zany…
Brad Furman knows his way around a legal drama. After all, he directed the much-admired The Lincoln Lawyer (2011) with Matthew McConaughey. But he bites off a bit more than he can chew with City of Lies, a fact-based drama about high-profile murder and police corruption. This mostly well-made film concerns the 1997 murder of…
Vincent River is not a location; it is the name of the character at the centre of Philip Ridley’s powerful 2000 one act play of the same name that addresses homophobic-based violence, which can really be extended to include violence against any form of difference. However, even with this knowledge, Vincent’s character remains elusive as,…
