Author Archives: Bruce DeSilva

About Bruce DeSilva

Crime Novelist

Killed by Illegal Abortion: May Burns, My Great Grandmother.

Posted on October 9, 2018

Before Roe v. Wade, untold numbers of America women died from illegal abortions. One of them was May Burns of Middleboro, Massachusetts, shown here in her only surviving photograph. She was my great grandmother. May, an Irish immigrant, was married … Continue reading →

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Proof That I’m a Born Romantic

Posted on September 21, 2018

I’m a born romantic. Take tonight when I asked my wife, the poet Patricia Smith, to join me in watching a scene from The Hitman’s Bodyguard. In it, the hitman (Samuel Jackson) is telling his body guard (Ryan Reynolds) how … Continue reading →

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My Review of Sara Gran’s New Claire DeWitt Mystery

Posted on September 20, 2018

For the uninitiated, Sara Gran’s protagonist, 40-year-old Claire DeWitt, is the woman Nancy Drew might have become if she had been raised by indifferent parents, developed a fierce drug habit, got seduced by the occult, became sexually promiscuous,  suffered with … Continue reading →

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My Review of “Colorblind,” the Latest Jesse Stone Novel by Reed Farrel Coleman

Posted on September 14, 2018

When a young black police officer hired by Chief Stone guns down an apparently unarmed white suspect in a cross burning, tensions run high in the fictional town of Paradise, MA.  As a white nationalist organization from out of town … Continue reading →

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Check Out My Review of T. Jefferson Parker’s “Swift Vengeance”

Posted on August 24, 2018

For the last decade or so, T. Jeffferson Parker has been using the popular form of the thriller to explore the pressing issues of our day. His previous series, an uneven but sometimes brilliant one featuring undercover cop Charlie Hood, … Continue reading →

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A Chilling Tale of Vengeance: My Review of David Joy’s New Novel, “The Line That Held Us.”

Posted on August 24, 2018

“The Line That Held Us” is David Joy’s third crime novel about life in a mountainous region where family roots run deep and where some folks live by a code that puts them outside of the law. The book’s title … Continue reading →

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My Review of William Wells’s New Crime Novel, “The Dollar-A-Year Detective.”

Posted on August 6, 2018

“The Dollar-A-Year Detective” by William Wells is a detective story with the sensibility of a cozy, somewhat reminiscent of the fine Mario Balzic series by reclusive novelist K.C. Constantine. This novel represents a major improvement over the first novel in … Continue reading →

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New York Yankees Poppycock!

Posted on August 6, 2018

I live in New Jersey, so in the aftermath of the Red Sox four-game sweep of the Yankees, I heard a lot of sports radio poppycock today. Basically, it broke down along these lines: It’s Aaron Boone’s fault. It’s the … Continue reading →

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My Review of A New Philip Marlowe Novel Authorized by Chandler’s Estate

Posted on July 24, 2018

Where others have failed, Lawrence Osborne succeeds brilliantly in bringing back legendary private eye Philip Marlowe. He does so largely by sidestepping the temptation to mimic Raymond Chandler’s idiosyncratic style and by making no attempt to recreate the swaggering private … Continue reading →

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My Review of the Crime Novel by Laird Barron

Posted on May 30, 2018

Isaiah Coleridge, muscle for the Chicago mob’s Alaska subsidiary and the hero of veteran horror writer Laird Barron’s first crime novel, isn’t your typical Mafia hit man. He’s college educated, frequently alludes to Greek and Roman classics and relishes his … Continue reading →

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