I first learned about this novel by watching Netflix, which had a series based on the book called Killing Eve. The series stars Jodie Comer as Villanelle, a sociopathic assassin, and Sandra Oh as Eve Polastri, the British spy tasked with bringing Villanelle to justice. Both actors were excellent in their roles, and I...
I don’t remember the name of the movie theater or even where in Denver it was located, since it was 1989 and 1990 when I lived there, but it was my favorite theater in the city because I saw the most interesting movies in it. I saw Kenneth Branagh play in Henry V, still...
Around 1986 or 1987, I went to a bookstore to find my next read. Now you know that I can’t go to scout out reading projects and leave without an hour, or at least not in those days when I took my time looking, analyzing, and deciding. I was bad at deciding and often...
There are novels to understand, but there are novels to experience. After reading G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who was Thursday twice—the second time to remind me of the plot—I concluded that it is securely in the second category. The first time I read it was before my stroke. I not saying that there...
In James Fenimore Cooper’s The Spy, the spy was Harvey Birch, who reported to George Washington. His mission was to watch British troop movements and learn what he could of their intentions. In the novel, he had an unofficial mission: to help Henry Wharton, a British officer, visit his family and return safely to...
Kim by Rudyard Kipling isn’t a spy novel as much as a novel about the type of person who would be recruited as a spy. Kimball O’Hara is a street urchin living in Lahore. A well-known and liked orphan—the locals call him “Friend to all the World”—he’s the offspring between a British soldier, with...
Deciding her future, Mary Panton spends the summer in a villa outside Florence, Italy. She’s in a contest between four men. One man, her husband, whom she deeply loved, has died. A gambler, he left her an income, but it’s insufficient for her to maintain her current lifestyle. A second man, Edgar Swift, intends...
Though I wouldn’t call myself an expert in 19th Century English gothic literature, I had read the main works in that genre. Dracula? Check. Frankenstein? Check. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Check. The Picture of Dorian Gray? Oh, wait! There’s one I’ve neglected. At least, I’ve neglected it until now. I don’t know why...
Though I’ve never read J.G. Ballard before, I discovered as I researched his biography that he’s been in my life for a long time. At least since the 80s, when I saw Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun. This movie was an adaptation from Ballard’s book by the same name, which was an autobiographical...
