Mary Wells Lawrence is so full of herself that it’s a wonder she hasn’t exploded, and the prose is the kind of forced-dizzy hostessy gushing I ordinarily hate, but it works — it’s a fast, …

I don’t like Lupica’s writing, but he selected great stories for this collection.   The Rayna DuBose article is enormously affecting.   (1/20/06)

An excellent overview; if you like higher-end true-crime writing, I highly recommend it. (10/29/03)

For a collection of this type, a lot of the writing is flat, and the essay on the ’91 Series is overwrought; it’s a strange selection, I think.   Mickey Mantle, sure.   ’86 postseason, …

Okay, as excellent as some of the inside scoop is — and you really can’t beat Calvin Schiraldi bitching, almost twenty years after that fateful World Series, “Gary Carter can suck my ass” — the …

The first Lemony Snicket.   It’s a good, fast read, but I don’t know if I’ll bother with the others.   I love Sunny, though.   (4/26/04)

I wanted to like this more than I did.   The writing is good; it’s not uninteresting, it’s not slow anywhere, it’s not a prose problem.   It’s a relatability problem, not because I grew …

Good for true-crime junkies, without as much of the self-promotion Douglas tends to indulge in elsewhere — with the exception of The Cases That Haunt Us, which I highly recommend, I’ve found his other books …

It’s very long, but the length is in the service of thoroughness, and it’s a lightning-fast read with a lot of insights into the defense case — who knew what, why they used certain strategies. …

The jokiness started to wear at the end, but it’s likeable prose and interesting behind-the-scenes stuff.   (1/31/04)