A perfect hardboiled heist novel, a terrific Korean military mystery flick, and some great new songs

Roundup 09/01/2024

Greetings from Read Max HQ, and welcome to our weekly roundup column, in which I pick out some worthwhile and often overlooked books, articles, movies, and music to recommend to paying subscribers. For this week’s round-up, I’ve got:

• A compressed, flawless, darkly hardboiled pulp heist novel;

• an excellent, twisty mystery movie set in the Korean DMZ; and

• four great new singles.

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Now, the roundup. First, as always, a dispatch from the future: