All the Reviews

Crow Stone, Jenni Mills

"Corax the Raven - the messenger of the gods. Just when you think life is on track, along comes a socking great bird, squawking news of a divine quest. My advice is, shoot the bloody thing....."

The quote at the start of CROW STONE hinted at something with a very dry, quirky sense of humour and it definitely delivers - on the lighter moments, with good characterisation and a tremendous, taut, tense and frequently disturbing plot.

Katie was a little girl in Bath, living with her overbearing father, her mother left them when she was only a toddler. In many ways ... Read Review

All She Ever Wanted, Patrick Redmond

If you're looking for a disconcerting psychological thriller, with the lead up to the crime as the focus of the story, ALL SHE EVER WANTED could be the book for you.

Tina was a weak, bullied, vulnerable child. Deserted by the father she adored, belittled by a mother that blamed her for everything that had gone wrong in her own life, Tina was a scrawny, ugly duckling child - the object of derision and cruelty by nearly everyone around her. Her only real emotional support, her aunt, tried to care for the girl that everybody else, if she was lucky, ignored. All she ever ... Read Review

The Laughing Policeman, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

Harper Perennial have recently started republishing the Martin Beck series by Sjowall and Wahloo - originally written between 1965 and 1975. (The full series as at this book, is outlined below.) These books are often included in lists of the great classics of crime fiction. They integrate a wide range of social and cultural issues alongside their crime fiction base, making some very pointed observations and statements about Swedish society at the time that they were written. Even allowing for the way that they mirror society, as seen through the author's joint eyes at that time, they ... Read Review

Ice Trap, Kitty Sewell

Dafydd Woodruff was a very young surgeon when he made a nearly fatal mistake on the operating table. Shaken to the core by this event, he takes a locum position in the northern Canada wilderness to recover from his guilt and reassess. He spends a year in Moose Creek - just enough time to experience the frontier style life.

Fifteen years later, Dafydd is a consultant surgeon in Wales, trying to start a family with his wife, the marriage struggling under the pressure of infertility, when he receives a letter from Moose Creek. The letter is from a young girl who says she ... Read Review

The Torso, Helene Tursten

This is the second book translated from this author and it starts out with a torso in a bag being found on a beach in Sweden. The only clue to the identify of the body is a tattoo, and the body, as well as dismembered, has been horribly mutilated.

This crime is soon connected with a similar mutilation murder in Denmark, so the investigation moves between Goteborg, Sweden and Copenhagen in Denmark with Irene Huss and her colleagues working closely with Danish police. The mutilations are pretty graphic and the violence is extreme, but strangely there are suddenly a series ... Read Review

The Man on the Balcony, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

Harper Perennial have recently started republishing the Martin Beck series by Sjowall and Wahloo - originally written between 1965 and 1975. (The full series as at this book, is outlined below.) These books are often included in lists of the great classics of crime fiction. They integrate a wide range of social and cultural issues alongside their crime fiction base, making some very pointed observations and statements about Swedish society at the time that they were written. Even allowing for the way that they mirror society, as seen through the author's joint eyes at that time, they ... Read Review

A Stain on the Silence, Andrew Taylor

James and Nicky are a happily married couple, no kids, new big fancy house, everything seemingly idyllic between them. Until the day that James receives a call on his mobile: “Jamie .... It's me!”. The only woman who has ever called him Jamie was Lily Murthington. When James was a young boy his father was killed in a car accident and his mother worked overseas, eventually remarrying. James was bundled off to boarding school where he met Carlo Murthington. Carlo had a younger sister, Felicity and a stepmother – Lily. James spent a lot of school holidays with the Murthington family, but ... Read Review

Dreamquake, Elizabeth Knox

Dreamhunters can catch and broadcast dreams. They are able to enter a sort of alternative reality - “the Place” and hunt and catch all sorts of dreams. They can then bring those dreams back and broadcast them to an audience of people. These performances are entertainment, sometimes relaxation, amusement or even healing. They can also sometimes be very very threatening. In Southland, a location that seems to evoke New Zealand, The Rainbow Opera is a Dream Performance / opera house with a central stage that Dreamhunters project from into small chambers full of their sleeping audience. ... Read Review

The Bullet Trick, Louise Welsh

Stage magician William Wilson lives a pretty hand to mouth type of existence as an opening act. In these way past vaudeville days, a stage magician is not really all that in demand. He also doesn't get many gigs at retirement parties for policemen, but Detective Inspector James Montgomery has the nickname of “The Magician” and somebody thought Wilson's appearance would be funny. The stage show certainly goes okay, but afterwards the reason why he's the particular magician asked to do the gig is revealed. It seems that Montgomery is carrying something in his wallet that Bill, the owner ... Read Review