April 27, 2021 A Rage in Harlem and The Real Cool Killers by Chester Himes Reviewed by Annabel I first discovered the mad world of Chester Himes’s Harlem in an old Allison & Busby paperback of The Crazy Kill,…
March 5, 2021 Hotel Cartagena by Simone Buchholz Translated by Rachel Ward Reviewed by Annabel I’ve come late to German ‘Queen of Krimi’ Simone Buchholz’s novels. Hotel Cartagena is the ninth of…
February 18, 2021 House With No Doors by Jeff Noon Reviewed by Annabel Having been a fan of Jeff Noon’s cult spec fiction novels set in an alternate Manchester, I was surprised and delighted…
January 21, 2021 The Searcher by Tana French Reviewed by Annabel A new novel from Tana French, Irish author of the acclaimed Dublin Murders series is always worth waiting for. Her latest,…
December 1, 2020 The Lost and the Damned by Olivier Norek Translated by Nick Caistor Reviewed by Gill Davies This is the first novel by Olivier Norek to be translated into English. It was first…
December 1, 2020 Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the world by Mark Aldridge Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long When I was younger and read every Agatha Christie book I could lay my hands on, she always produced a…
August 25, 2020 My Summer Reading: Broken Harbour by Tana French Reviewed by Harriet I was very late in the day in discovering the novels of Tana French. I’d tried her first novel, In the Woods,…
August 6, 2020 Grave’s End by William Shaw Review by Annabel William Shaw, former award-winning music journalist has, in recent years, become one of the UK’s must-read crime authors. Although he’d already…
January 30, 2020 Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide, by Barry Forshaw Review by Basil Ransome-Davies When I started teaching popular fiction courses forty years ago, having always been more drawn to Jesse James than to…
January 21, 2020 Happy Ever After by C. C. MacDonald Review by Basil Ransome-Davies Adultery. It crops up everywhere. Few grown-up pastimes are as popular as disobeying the sixth Commandment. Where would novels, plays…
October 10, 2019 Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke Review by Gill Davies This powerful and engrossing novel continues a series of crime novels in which Attica Locke uses plot and suspense to…
September 5, 2019 Sanctuary by Luca D’Andrea Translated by Howard Curtis and Katherine Gregor Review by Basil Ransome-Davies Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ‘em/And little fleas…
July 25, 2019 Big Sky by Kate Atkinson Reviewed by Harriet He wished that he could just once hear his sister play a solo again. Or help his sister pin up the…
June 4, 2019 Cold For the Bastards of Pizzofalcone by Maurizio de Giovanni Translated by Antony Shugaar Reviewed by Gill Davies This is the third book in a series of police procedural novels by the successful Italian…
March 5, 2019 Winterman by Alex Walters Review by Rob Spence East Anglia has quite a lot of previous when it comes to crime fiction: Colin Watson’s chronicles of Flaxborough, James…
February 12, 2019 Slow Motion Ghosts by Jeff Noon Reviewed by Annabel I first discovered Jeff Noon’s weird take on our world when his debut novel Vurt was picked up by a major publisher after…
February 7, 2019 The Lost Man by Jane Harper Reviewed by Annabel I’ll say it up front, Jane Harper’s third novel, The Lost Man, was totally unputdownable! Not having read her first two,…
January 15, 2019 The Infinite Blacktop by Sara Gran Review by Basil Ransome-Davies At times crime fiction seems a genre so powerful that it sucks in and revitalises other forms. At others, literary…
October 18, 2018 The Second Rider by Alex Beer Translated by Tim Mohr Review by Gill Davies The Second Rider is the first novel in a projected new series by the Austrian writer,…
September 27, 2018 By the Pricking of Her Thumb by Adam Roberts Reviewed by David Harris Roberts seems to have been very busy lately so I’m glad he managed to include a return to the world of The Real-Town…
February 6, 2018 Force of Nature by Jane Harper Reviewed by Gill Davies Following on from her highly-acclaimed first novel, The Dry, Jane Harper has written a second gripping story featuring the harsh…
January 16, 2018 Zen and the Art of Murder by Oliver Bottini Translated by Jamie Bulloch Reviewed by Terence Jagger We are not in Japan, but Germany; set in the snowy Black Forest, not far from…
November 7, 2017 Nine Lessons by Nicola Upson Reviewed by Harriet Nine Lessons is the seventh of Nicola Upson’s crime novels featuring the mystery writer Josephine Tey (1896-1952). I normally have a…
October 12, 2017 Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke Reviewed by Gill Davies This is Attica Locke’s fourth novel and a stunning follow-up. Black Water Rising was set in 1981; Pleasantville in 1996 and both used the…
May 4, 2017 Murder on the Pilgrims Way by Julie Wassmer Reviewed by Victoria If you are like me and enjoy the format of traditional cosy crime – an atmospheric setting, a great cast of…
