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Legal Thrillers for Literary Snobs
Some think of the legal thriller as a fairly recent American sub-genre born in 1991 with the publication of The Firm by former attorney John Grisham. Others might look a little further back to yet...
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The Coen Brothers’ Enduring Ties to Crime Literature
When recently discussing his forthcoming adaptation of Macbeth, director Joel Coen drew a direct line from William Shakespeare’s grand tragedy of power, murder and madness to the bloody business found...
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Reacher, Prospero, and Child
The boy who would one day become Lee Child was eleven years old when the light dawned. He was on the number 16 bus, heading home from King Edward’s School to Handsworth Wood in Birmingham and reading...
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Poison in the Ear: Why Iago Is the Ultimate Thriller Character
I think it’s safe to say that becoming an expert in Shakespeare’s plays presents difficulties. What would “expertise” entail? Do you need to know every consistency and inconsistency in all the versions...
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The Mystery Is The Human Psyche: On Shakespeare, Crime, and Human Motivation
How can a mystery weave a tale about the human psyche? Can the unravelling of plot and the unravelling of human desires occur simultaneously in a story? Those questions were humming away in the...
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The Motive and the Cue: Why Crime Fiction and the Theatrical World Have...
‘The play’s the thing,’ says Hamlet, ‘wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.’ Hamlet famously stages a play called The Mousetrap, showing a fratricide, hoping that it will tweak his murderous...
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What did Shakespeare mean when he wrote “let’s kill all the lawyers?”
Hello there. Perhaps you clicked on this link because you have heard people cite Shakespeare on the necessity of killing all the lawyers and wonder if it’s a myth. Or maybe you suspect it’s one of...
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What Teaching Shakespeare Taught Me About Writing Horror
A desolate moor, haunted by incomprehensible supernatural beings. Chains rattling in a dark castle, ghosts prowling the ramparts. A grisly corpse, hands chopped off and tongue sliced out. For any...
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The Murder Case in Arden Of Faversham, the Greatest Shakespearean-Era Play...
Penned by an unknown hand towards the end of the sixteenth century, Arden of Faversham is the first surviving drama based on an actual domestic murder. From beginning to end, the play’s eighteen scenes...
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Shakespeare’s First Folio has been Stolen Many, Many Times
Late at night on July 13th, 1972, an unknown person entered the University of Manchester’s Library and violently smashed the plate glass top of an exhibition case, stealing the contents. Inside was one...
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