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  • News & article

    Down Mexico way

    Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 17/01/2020

    » Brit turned American Lee Child is perhaps the most respected author in the crime-thriller genre. His 6-5, 250-pound literary creation Jack Reacher is the most popular of heroes. No small part of the reason is that he's played on the screen by -- rather shorter -- star Tom Cruise. On his own, the behemoth is likeable.

  • News & article

    The kids aren't alright

    Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 08/11/2019

    » Crime is not limited by gender or age. Men, women and children can all end up behind bars for committing criminal acts. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Many jurists advocate that laws be reconsidered periodically to determine whether they are still applicable. Some turn into the Blue Laws of yore, still on the books but no longer enforced. Others get overturned.

  • News & article

    Isis thwarted

    Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 26/12/2019

    » Until the 20th century, jihadists had no bones to pick with the US. Their ire was directed at the UK and France who coveted their lands, and the Jews trying to carve out their own. They got good press when T.E. Lawrence led the Arabs against the enemy Ottoman Turks. The silent film The Sheik romanticised them. The Riffs were favoured in their uprising against Spain. They didn't participate in the North African campaign in World War II.

  • News & article

    Isis foiled

    Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 15/02/2019

    » Until a few years ago, no Western publisher dared say a word against Isis, the Muslim terrorist extremists infamous for taking umbridge and reacting violently. No longer. Isis is now targeted by the media and by novelists with impunity.

  • News & article

    The Future isn't now

    Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 29/08/2019

    » A term I keep encountering is "The Future". You see it on billboards everywhere. Stadiums, department stores, condos, supermarkets, restaurants, theatres, whatever. They eschew the current autos and mobile phones and computers. Space rockets are only a generation or two away.

  • News & article

    America's saviour

    Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 18/10/2019

    » Bill Clinton wasn't the best president of the United States of America, nor was he the worst. Nor was he the most oversexed. John F. Kennedy had more pillow-mates by far. Yet Jackie Kennedy and Hillary Clinton didn't make a fuss about it.

  • News & article

    Religion and warfare

    Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 06/09/2019

    » What all religions, sects, cults have in common is that each believes it is the true one, the others not only unworthy but spawns of the devil, deserving to be liquidated.

  • News & article

    What if?

    Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 25/07/2019

    » A cine buff -- contemporary, silent, foreign -- since my childhood in the Big Apple, still with a good but not photographic memory, I recall a French movie about a wealthy widow who decided to satisfy her curiosity by looking up her old boyfriends. She wondered what would her life have been like had she married one of them.

  • News & article

    Just a thought

    Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 30/05/2019

    » I don't mind admitting that I winced when I plucked an 800-page novel from my review bag, having long advocated that authors don't need more than 400 pages to say what needs be said. The back cover describes it as an espionage novel. I don't recall Ian Fleming or John le Carré penning tomes.

  • News & article

    Ravens' feast

    Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 27/12/2018

    » This reviewer's understanding of historical novels is that the authors do historical research on their topic, using actual figures and imaginary ones where need-be, to write essentially factual and hopefully interesting stories. But not all historical novelists follow this form. Some are more concerned about their own largely fictitious story than the actual events behind it.

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