Continuing my entanglement with the Criminal Element, I parse two very different British TV crime miniseries: Ordeal by Innocence and Bodyguard. “A country house, a dead body, a pack of suspects—sounds like Agatha Christie, no? Of course, it does. It’s said that Dame Agatha named 1958’s Ordeal by Innocence as one of her two favorite…
Criminal Element: The Fallen Architect
More consorting with the Criminal Element led me to read someone else’s book about a disgraced architect: The Fallen Architect is an atmospheric novel featuring an intriguing mystery, a sympathetic lead (who can also draw and paint), and a (literally) theatrical supporting cast, all set effectively in a colorful milieu….
Criminal Element: Ghost: My Thirty Years as an FBI Undercover Agent
My other recent run-in with the Criminal Element lands me on the right side of the law, with a review of FBI memoir Ghost: The career-end autobiography seems to come in two flavors. The vanilla version is from the person who truly, intensely believes in the organization to which they…
Criminal Element: Babylon Berlin
The Burrow goes to Weimar for my latest scrape with the Criminal Element, a review of the hit German TV series Babylon Berlin: Despite its utter failure to provide stability for the German people between the wars, the late Weimar Republic has been fabulously successful in another regard: providing the…
Criminal Element: Fauda
The Criminal Element meets Doha 12 in my latest review: Fauda is a vivid, fast-paced Israeli political thriller that features kinetic storytelling, expertly played tension, and highly authentic action sequences. It also finds time to present the human side of a conflict that’s become dehumanized over the decades. Its two…
Criminal Element: Four Seasons in Havana
My latest entanglement with the Criminal Element takes me across the Florida Strait to the land of mojitos: The Las cuatro estaciones (Four Seasons in Havana) detective novels have brought Leonardo Padura fame, a certain amount of financial and political independence, a visit by Anthony Bourdain … and now, a…
Criminal Element: Riphagen
My latest run-in with the Criminal Element has me watching a TV show about a bad, bad man: The spectrum of “bad behavior” stretches all the way from kicking puppies to genocide. How despicable can the central character of a movie or TV show be before you can’t watch it…
Criminal Element: The Fall of the House of Knoedler
I’m abetting the Criminal Element again, this time with an article about the most spectacular modern art forgery scandal of the last twenty years. Between 1994 and 2008, Knoedler & Company — the oldest art gallery in the United States — sold for $80 million dollars forty paintings created by some of…
From Thailand with Love: Operation Antiquity
In yet another scrape with the Criminal Element, I talk about an operation smuggling a different sort of pot (not the green kind) from Thailand into the U.S. A crowd gathered outside the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, California, on the morning of January 24, 2008. They weren’t museum junkies;…
Life Imitates Art
A post for my blog went free-range on me and ended up on Criminal Element. It’s a true-crime story that may sound a mite familiar if you know what The Collection is about: “In December 2002, two burglars broke into the Vincent van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. They didn’t use…