LONE STAR LUNCH: In Search of William S. Burroughs’ Pea Field
I’d been interested in Edinburg, Texas (they dropped the ‘h’ in the 1930s) ever since I’d bought a souvenir mug in a junk shop that read: Edinburg: Gateway to the Future. I
I Was A True Crime Addict
A few years ago I took a break from my excessively wholesome diet of quality literature to go grazing in the world of trash. I read celebrity biographies, airport thrillers, detect
A Short Tour of the Juarez- El Paso Border
I met Sgt. Ron Martin of the El Paso police department early in the morning, and was about to climb into his car when I found my way blocked by an assault rifle, propped up against
Juarez: City of Fear
“We’re not going to die, are we Dan?” asked my friend Joe, a CBS radio reporter, shortly before we crossed from El Paso into Juarez, Mexico, murder capital of the wor
Criminal Incidences
1 Elgin officer sentenced for possession of child pornography Attorney General Greg Abbott’s campaign against sex offenders and online sex predators in Texas claimed another
Moscow By Night
In summer 2004 Akashic books published Brooklyn Noir, an anthology of crime stories set in New York’s most heavily populated borough. Although initially intended as a one-off, th
Joel Osteen: The New Face of Christianity
Forget Billy Graham and Jimmy Swaggart—the most popular and influential pastor in the US is Joel Osteen. On the surface he is modest and quietly spoken, but his belief in the 
Requiem for a Tyrant
Tearing down the statue of a megalomaniac dictator is usually a joy reserved for the citizens of a newly-liberated country. But when President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov of Turkmen
Andrei Platonov: Russia’s greatest 20th-century prose stylist?
An anti-Stalinist author who died in obscurity in 1951 may be the greatest Russian writer of the last century, his English translator Robert Chandler explains to Daniel Kalder Stal
Death Wish: Why Are We So In Love With Apocalypse?
It’s impossible to avoid the apocalypse these days. Whether we encounter the End in the form of news reports on Global Warming, or fears of Iran getting bomb, or plague panics su