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Dark Blood, Stuart MacBride10/03/2011 - 3:43pmThe problem with an author making it onto my "Pre-Order IMMEDIATELY list" is that once the book arrives I have that dreaded "do I read immediately or hoard" dilemma. It's easier with some of my all time favourite authors - there's a few, well not to put too fine a point on it, aren't as young as they used to be. Stuart MacBride, on the other hand, is a young man. Last time I set eyes on him he looked to be in remarkably good health. But still, you never know. Publishers are queer folk and they may suddenly have a brain freeze, or worse still, Stuart may just get distracted by ... Read Review |
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The Small Hand, Susan Hill22/02/2011 - 12:52pmSusan Hill is probably best known to Crime Fiction fans for her Chatto and Windus series, but THE SMALL HAND is a ghost story with mysterious overtones which would appeal to anyone who is looking for something which is just simply beautifully written. A short (and sumptuously packaged) book, THE SMALL HAND is the story of antiquarian bookseller Adam Snow as he takes a wrong-turning one day and stumbles across the derelict old White House deep in rural England. Curiosity draws him towards the house, and the unmistakable sensation of a small hand creeping into his own ... Read Review |
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Before I Go to Sleep, S.J. Watson21/02/2011 - 4:07pmBEFORE I GO TO SLEEP is the story of a woman who wakes up every morning beside a stranger. She's completely forgotten the last 25+ years of her life. A woman in her late 40's, she can remember her 20's but she only gets glimpses, erratic flashes of her life since then. The man she wakes up beside every morning reminds her, yet again, that he is her husband Ben and that he will look after her. The house has photos in strategic places, there are notes on the board in the kitchen to remind her what she needs to do. What's particularly creepy about this scenario is that the reader is ... Read Review |
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The Black Path, Åsa Larsson03/02/2011 - 3:12pmI reread THE BLACK PATH last weekend. I did that because despite originally having read and reviewed it a while ago, it was one of those books that every time I spied it on a shelf, I was drawn to thinking about again. And I wanted to find out why. At the time that I originally read it I reviewed it thus: "THE BLACK PATH is the sort of book that you need to read with your preconceptions and expectations firmly locked in a drawer. Having not read the second book in the series yet, I know something happened to Rebecka in that book, but the details aren't ... Read Review |
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The Priest, Gerard O'Donovan29/01/2011 - 5:19pmSerial killer storylines. We've all said it. Over it. One more serial killer storyline and I swear..... So I'll adjust previous assertions and instead say I'm over SOME serial killer storylines. THE PRIEST, the first crime novel from Irish author Gerard O'Donovan has a serial killer that actually doesn't kill all of his victims. Instead they are horribly injured, disfigured, tortured and abused, but they don't all die. And our serial attacker is one of those mad, bad, weird religious nutter types - the burns that he leaves his victim's with eventually reveal that ... Read Review |
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Why She Loves Him, Wendy James29/01/2011 - 11:34amHaving just loved WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? when I read it last year, I was really pleased to find this collection of short stories by Wendy James. Whilst not crime fiction, these stories expore a range of themes from extremely fragile friendships, awkward parent-child relationships, unhappy marriages and longing. All of these stories vary in their style and content, many of them skating lightly through the subject matter, others pulling the reader into the ... Read Review |
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Like Clockwork, Margie Orford28/01/2011 - 3:30pmMargie Orford lists, among many other activities, that she does Advocacy work for a Rape Crisis group in South Africa, so it's not very surprising LIKE CLOCKWORK looks very closely at the horrific consequences of rape and extreme violence against women. Because of that there's nothing particularly easy about reading this book, but it definitely fulfils one of my major preferences in crime fiction - which is to inform the reader. No matter how uncomfortable that information can sometimes be. Dr Clare Hart is a police profiler who lives on Cape Town's Seapoint promenade, ... Read Review |
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Red Ice, James Phelan28/01/2011 - 2:03pmNever having read any of James Phelan's Lachlan Fox series before, RED ICE had to be approached as a standalone, which probably made for a different experience than that of the dedicated fan. Lachlan Fox is an ex-navy operative turned investigative journalist, and in this book he's in France with friends, at the same time that the Russian Ambassador and his wife are assassinated. Despite being on holidays, Lachlan very quickly finds himself back in the action, in one of the all-time great car chase sequences. Followed by a very personal threat, a Russian criminal who ... Read Review |
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The Priest of Evil, Matti Yrjänä Joensuu25/01/2011 - 5:15pmEurocrime is really a tremendous imprint, providing some real little gems of books from a range of different cultural backgrounds. These books provide the crime reader with a glimpse into another culture. And make you realise that whilst some things are very different, more often it's the similarities that are surprising. The things that THE PRIEST OF EVIL shows are the same in Finland, as they are where I come from, include the way that people can be invisible. Sometimes it's because of age, often it's age and gender combined. The other thing that seems to be ... Read Review |
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A Death in Tuscany, Michele Giuttari21/01/2011 - 5:11pmA DEATH IN TUSCANY is the second book from former Florence police chief Michele Guittari, billed as a bestseller in Italy and translated into nine languages. I was particularly interested to read this as the first book A FLORENTINE DEATH had a number of elements which didn't work at all for me, and I wanted to see if this was first book syndrome or more to do with this particular author's style of storytelling. A DEATH IN TUSCANY starts out with the discovery of the body of a girl near a small Tuscan hill town. Scantily dressed, no identification, the problem for police ... Read Review |
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Black Ice, Hans Werner Kettenbach21/01/2011 - 3:40pmBLACK ICE is the first of German author Hans Werner Kettenbach's novels to be translated into English, and it's taken me from it's original publication date of 2005 to read it. Which is good in one way as there appears to have been more books since then. Which are now on my immediate buy list and I know that is probably going to sound very strange, as this isn't a particularly straightforward book. Scholten, the long-time employee of Erica Wallman, isn't a pleasant man. He's probably one of the most unpleasant characters I've encountered in crime fiction for quite a ... Read Review |
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Madigan Mine, Kirstyn McDermott18/01/2011 - 2:24pmI don't read a lot of Fantasy - Dark or not, but luckily I've been steered in the right direction when I have picked up one of these books - and MADIGAN MINE is no exception. What was even more startling is that this is a first book, yet it's very assured, cleverly paced and quite engaging. This book is the story of Alex Bishop who meets up with his childhood friend Madigan Sargood after many years apart. A very intense love affair follows, with tensions over friendships, time spent together and time spent apart. Their affair eventually ends, but the attraction ... Read Review |
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Rumpole and the Reign of Terror, John Mortimer12/01/2011 - 11:25amHilda is writing her memoir, so it's probably just as well that Rumpole doesn't know what she is doing locked away in the boxroom for hours on end. But Rumpole is very busy telling his own story of how he nearly lost his livelihood (aka the Timson family clan), and found himself involved in the new world of Terrorism trials. Despite being extremely concerned about the wherewithal to support both the ongoing requirement for furniture police, Fairy Liquid, scrubbing brushes and Vim alongside his own meagre indulgences in Chateau Thames, Rumpole's sense of justice is ... Read Review |
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The Serbian Dane, Leif Davidsen11/01/2011 - 12:40pmI can't remember the last thriller styled book from a Scandinavian author that I've read - but I certainly hope I'll find another one soon. THE SERBIAN DANE lingered too long on the unread piles around here - but once started it was fascinating. A Serbian hitman, Vuk, born in Denmark but very much formed by the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, is hired to kill an Iranian author. Sara Santanda has decided to come out of hiding, and her first appearance is scheduled for Copenhagen. Santanda's contact in Denmark, Lise Carlesen works for the newspaper Politiken. ... Read Review |
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The Genesis Flaw, L.A. Larkin10/01/2011 - 1:57pmBig conspiracies, cyber-threats and nefarious company goings on aren't my favourite thriller material, so I was more than a little worried about my reactions to THE GENESIS FLAW. This is a first book from Australian author L.A. Larkin (who, from her blurb, works for one of Australia's leading climate change consultancies). The author's background, and the sorts of research listed that went into the book did make it something I thought might be worth having a look at despite my personal preferences. There's an interesting combination of settings in THE GENESIS FLAW. The ... Read Review |
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Out of the Black Land, Kerry Greenwood07/01/2011 - 1:42pmIt's always interesting to hear where the idea for a book came from. Kerry Greenwood was on a tour in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt when an inscription on the wall of a tomb triggered a desire to write a same-sex love story in a time and place where it wasn't something that was surprising, noticeable, wrong, or scandalous. What she has actually written is an elaborate, detailed, and fascinating story of an Ancient Egypt as a society which differs dramatically from current day mores. I've never thought of myself as much of a fan of Ancient "epic" novels, but what I ... Read Review |
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The Celtic Dagger, Jill Paterson06/01/2011 - 3:02pmDialogue. It's something I'm increasingly aware of, as it should be part of the way that an author can show (as opposed to tell) the reader what the characters are seeing, thinking, considering, experiencing. Combine really good dialogue with a feasible plot and an author can transport the reader to the world that they are building within the book. Poor dialogue on the other hand yanks the reader out of the immersion experience and makes a book a less enjoyable experience. Obviously the problem with this is defining what is "good dialogue". For this reader, it's all about ... Read Review |
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Harbour, John Ajvide Lindqvist05/01/2011 - 3:40pmI can't remember the last thriller styled book from a Scandinavian author that I've read - but I certainly hope I'll find another one soon. THE SERBIAN DANE lingered too long on the unread piles around here - but once started it was fascina I say I'm not much of a fan of paranormal books, but as with all of my absolute declarations on reading matters, there is an author out there who is destined to blow my prejudices out of the water. John Ajvide Lindqvist is one of those authors. Since the first of his books LET THE RIGHT ONE IN became an all-time favourite of mine, I ... Read Review |
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Follow the Money, Peter Corris04/01/2011 - 1:21pmYou really have to worry about Cliff Hardy. Every year he seems to dig himself a bigger, deeper more dramatic hole and he's not as young as he thinks he is. Or so it seems from these books, but realistically Cliff is timeless. He has to be - don't try to do the maths of how old he must be - your brain will hurt or you could suddenly wonder why you're not quite such an action hero when you're nowhere near Cliff's age! Cliff's timelessness is part of his attraction, as is his blatant disregard for the rules, personal safety, and doctors advice. In recent years he has ... Read Review |
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The Likeness, Tana French30/11/2010 - 2:00pmPerhaps I should start by saying I didn't have any problem at all with IN THE WOODS - not how it ended, not that there were unresolved issues. To my mind it made everything much more realistic. I know that in real life there are things which are never explainable, not everything is "fixed", not everyone's believable or reliable. Having enjoyed that book, I was particularly interested in THE LIKENESS. For those who aren't aware, this isn't part of a series - each book is standalone, so don't pick it up expecting the open ... Read Review |