'A serial killer stalks the games' ... Although I do find myself wondering how much of the book was simply inspired by the title. Having come up with that, did the rest of it all fall into place?

There are a few writers for whom I will read anything they care to offer. Rebecca Solnit is one of them. She never fails to delight me, both with the ways she builds a sentence and, even more so, the way she builds bridges between ideas. Somehow, River of Shadows had eluded me for a while, but the light it throws on the character of Muybridge and Leland Stanford and how their joint obsession ultimately gave rise to the movies is beyond fascinating.