May 5, 2022 Even the Darkest Night, by Javier Cercas Translated by Anne Mclean Review by Michael Eaude Javier Cercas rose to literary fame two decades ago with Soldiers of Salamis (2001), a novel…
March 17, 2022 Nine Lives by Peter Swanson Reviewed by Harriet Peter Swanson is a prolific author, averaging one book a year since his debut, The Girl with a Clock for a…
March 10, 2022 The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett Review by Terence Hallett This is an intriguing but also frustrating book. I did wonder if the Shiny editors would allow me to write…
March 10, 2022 After Agatha: Women Write Crime by Sally Cline Review by Karen Langley We readers have never been able to get enough of crime fiction, it seems, and in the 21st century the…
January 27, 2022 The Second Cut by Louise Welsh Review by Gill Davies Louise Welsh has published eight novels. The only one I had read prior to this was The Cutting Room (2002),…
January 27, 2022 The Village of Eight Graves by Seishi Yokomizo Translated by Bryan Karetnyk Reviewed by Harriet Seishi Yozomizo (1902-1991), whose works are hugely celebrated in Japan, has been described as ‘the Japanese Agatha…
January 25, 2022 A Fatal Crossing by Tom Hindle Review by Terence Jagger This is a modern murder mystery, but is set in 1924 and is explicitly in the grand manner of the…
January 18, 2022 A Will to Kill by R.V. Raman Review by Max Dunbar Slayer Rules: R V Raman’s A Will to Kill Mysteries are hard to write, and hard to review. Because of…
January 18, 2022 The Invisible Host by Gwen Bristow & Bruce Manning Review by Elaine Simpson-Long When this book arrived and I saw the names of the two authors, Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning, my first…
October 19, 2021 April in Spain by John Banville Reviewed by Harriet Almost exactly a year ago, I reviewed John Banville’s Snow [here], an immensely enjoyable country house murder mystery. I particularly liked…
May 27, 2021 Summertime, All the Cats are Bored by Philippe Georget Translated by Steven Rendall Review by Terence Jagger He moved cautiously forward through the tall grass, following a trail of broken stems. And it…
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…
