“Pronto” by Elmore Leonard – The Sins of the Accountant

Elmore Leonard and the Runaway Bookie

Though logic dictates we ought to be imagining the world of organized crime via large men in suits smoking in dank, poorly-lit basements, the reality is a bit less romantic than that. As it happens, even organized crime wants to stay under the radar and within the confines of the legal world as much as possible, which means they need to have regular civilians working for them. Bookmakers have for a long time now been a favourite “venue of investment” for criminal enterprises, being businesses which can deal in large and irregular amounts of cash. Needless to say, not all bookies came out unscathed from such arrangements. In Pronto by Elmore Leonard, we actually have a bookie who not only works for the mob, but also likes to skim a bit of cash off the top... and the FBI are trying to make him flip over on his boss.

“City of Endless Night” by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child – The Headless of the Metropolis

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child Craft Another Mystery

Collaborations between authors seems to be an increasingly common practice in the digital age, mostly due to the fact communication has evolved to the stage where it's at. It allows various smaller authors to join forces in hopes of increasing their chances at writing a quality novel and gaining recognition. Perhaps more relevantly to our case, it also opened the door for well-established authors to cooperate in hopes of combining their strengths to create something which would outclass what either of them can do on their own. Douglas Preston and Lee Child have already worked together on some occasions and their works have certainly been on the original side of the spectrum, and recently they have returned to the fore once again with City of Endless Night.

“Where Are They?” by Steven Lazaroff and Mark Rodger – The Search for Spacial Kindred

Steven Lazaroff and Mark Rodger take the Logical Route

Our society has most recently developed its tremendous fascination with outer space, largely due to the fact our observational and communicative technologies have advanced by nigh-incalculable leaps in the past decades. However, the allure of the stars always captured the imagination of our ancestors, even as primitive as cavemen if we are to judge by the paintings they left behind. We have been striving for countless years to gain a few more grains of knowledge on what lies beyond our Earthly realms, and if we take a look at the progress we have made in its totality, we would find it is both extremely significant and insignificant at the same time. We might know a lot more than we once did, but it still remains virtually nothing in the grand scheme of things. Nevertheless, Steven Lazaroff and Mark Rodger have decided to compress this sum of human knowledge into a book titled Where Are They?.