Review: Queenpin by Megan Abbott

Today, in January Magazine’s crime fiction section, contributing editor James R. Winter reviews Queenpin by Megan Abbott. Winter says:

We never learn our protagonist’s name in Megan Abbott’s latest novel, Queenpin, but we certainly get to know her and the mysterious Gloria Denton. Gloria rocks our heroine’s world in the waning days of the American mob’s golden era. She is a legend, admired and feared perhaps more than any gun-toting thug. She even has the scars from the one time she crossed one of her bosses.

Read the full review here.

Happy Birthday, Demon Dog!

Sunday in The Rap Sheet, Megan Abbott (The Song Is You) paid tribute to “the Demon Dog of American Literature” on the occasion of his birth:

James (né Lee Earle) Ellroy was born on this day in Los Angeles, back in 1948. Coming off last fall’s overwrought Black Dahlia movie adaptation and attendant noise, it is a very good time to, for the moment, set aside Ellroy’s larger-than-life “Demon Dog” persona (a persona that can be hypnotic and that surely helped burnish the Ellroy legend, but can also prevent clear-eyed visions of his literary turnout) and instead look more closely at the written works themselves.

You can read the whole piece here. Ellroy himself was The Rap Sheet’s first guest blogger back in October. You can read his musings here.