All the Reviews

How do you find books to read?  For many, it’s the tried and true. Authors you’ve enjoyed in the past. For those of us active in online reading groups, new authors are frequently discovered by word of mouth. It isn’t very often that a new author comes my way about whom I know nothing at all. Usually if they are good, there is a buzz about them. People start talking about the book they’ve just read and others pick up on it.  I hadn’t heard a word about M.R. Hall’s, THE CORONER so I had no real expectations that this was anything other than just another run-of-the-mill crime novel. You ... Read review

Cliff's back - Lazarus with a quadruple bypass no less.  He's resigned to never getting his licence back and his agency is now in the hands of his daughter Megan and her PI boyfriend.  He still misses Lily, and he's still driving "a" trusty Falcon, and he's no longer so pressed for money.

More importantly, he's lucky to be alive.

Recovering from a quadruple bypass has it's own challenges - the exercise requirements, the pills that have to be taken for the rest of your life, the limitations that the awareness of mortality places on you, and there are glimpses ... Read review

Clare Curzon began writing in the 1960s and has published over forty novels under a variety of pseudonyms, with twenty or so of these in the Superintendent Mike Yeadings series.  OFF TRACK is the first time I've come across this series.

It has been a long while since I struggled for months to finish a book, but reading OFF TRACK turned out to be a very disconcerting experience.  The basic plot is that Lee Barber, a train driver, leads a perfectly normal life until one night he overshoots a station and a passenger reports him.  When a drunk Lee then comes across the man he ... Read review

Berlin in 1939 is not an easy place to be if you're not a supporter of Hitler and the Nazi Party.  Being the Chief Auditor in the Reichsbank, right at the centre of the Party's finances would always be a tricky assignment, but if you're only there to try to stop the advance of the Third Reich it's an even more difficult place to be.

Franz Schmidt isn't a typical hero, he's quiet, a small self-contained man, who has drawn on incredible internal resolve in his opposition to the direction that Germany is being driven in.  He has divorced his wife (a matter of self- ... Read review

The Hal Challis series is really growing into something particularly interesting, as well as entertaining.  There's a distinct edge to this story, there are obviously some issues which the author wants to talk about, and he's cleverly worked a number of elements of social observation and commentary into what is, overall, a good solid police procedural.

Hal and Ellen's romantic interest at the end of the last book has developed into a live-in relationship.  Which has a number of complications - not just that they work together and that Hal is Ellen's boss.  Ellen's divorce ... Read review

The last thing THE TALL MAN needs is another review - the book is winning awards left right and centre at the moment.  I must confess it wasn't a book I was particularly looking forward to reading, suspecting that the subject matter was going to be very very confronting.  After it won the DAVITT AWARD from the Sisters in Crime, the judges comments on the night, were the little extra push required to make me stop dithering (well sooking really) and pick up the book.

Whilst I'm very very glad I finally did, reading THE TALL MAN was not a pleasant, easy or necessarily an ... Read review

THE CHALK CIRCLE MAN is the first book in the Adamsberg series by French writer Fred Vargas.  As they have been translated out of series order, fans of this fantastic set of books know Adamsberg well by now, without having had the chance to be in at the beginning so to speak.  This release gives the reader a unique opportunity.  For existing fans a chance to see where Adamsberg came from, and to consider a first book, in light of knowing how good the series has become.  For new readers a chance to start at the beginning if that is your preference.

The strange blue circles ... Read review

The Twelve Detectives are a famous group of crime solving individuals - spread throughout the world.  In the 1880's their exploits are well known - the magazine The Key to Crime regularly publishes the story of their investigations.  Sigmundo Salvatrio works in his father's shoe repair shop, but he doesn't dream of being a cobbler - his dream is to join the ranks of the acolytes of the world famous investigators.  It seems a pipe dream as Renato Craig, the only one of the detectives who lives in Buenos Aires has always opposed recruitment of his own acolyte.  Sigmundo is therefore ... Read review

I confess to not putting a category or genre on this book because I'm not really sure what it fits into (other than fiction of course).

This is a fabulous little book - the story of Marcus Blainey, a poet who works as a cop.  The cop persona is taking over rapidly and he's not coping well.

Marcus tells his own story - and he's very very hard on himself.  It might be that he's got a point in some places, but really he's not quite as bad as he seems to think he is.  But he doesn't cope well with anything much in his life.  When his wife left him I don't think ... Read review