The Good Luck of Right Now by Matthew Quick
Reviewed by Harriet Devine Mom liked to celebrate the little things. Like finding a forgotten wrinkled dollar in a lint-ridden coat pocket, or when there was no line in the…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine Mom liked to celebrate the little things. Like finding a forgotten wrinkled dollar in a lint-ridden coat pocket, or when there was no line in the…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine At the beginning of the The Dead Beat, Martha Fluke is visiting her father’s grave in an Edinburgh cemetery. There was a bunch of yellow carnations at…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine Well, Sophie Hannah has done it again. Did anyone ever have such a fiendishly fertile and convoluted imagination? This is her ninth crime novel, and she…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine Jo Baker has had the brilliant idea of writing, not a sequel, but an account of what goes on below stairs in Pride and Prejudice. All the…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine Rumer Godden is a remarkable writer, and far less well known today than she deserves to be. So, Virago’s decision to reissue some of her novels…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine ‘That’s just where I must part company with you, Inspector’, said the Vicar with a gentle smile. ‘I’m rather a voracious reader of mystery stories, and…
Questions by Harriet 1. With such an unusual and imaginative plot, the first question has to be – where did the idea for The Ruby Slippers first come from? It started with…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine I don’t have much time for endorsements on book covers, and generally they tend to irritate me, especially when they say, ‘if you like x you’ll…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine She stinks. It has to be said. Stinks to high heaven. No, worse, stinks like death. This is not just a smell, an unpleasant odour to…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine On 17 July 1918, four young women walked down twenty-three steps into the cellar of a house in Ekaterinburg. The eldest was twenty-two, the youngest only…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine I’ve been a fan of Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway series since the first novel, Crossing Places, appeared in 2009. The Outcast Dead is the sixth in the series, and…
Translated by Valerie Minogue Reviewed by Harriet Devine ‘It’s very difficult to write a novel about money. It’s cold, icy, lacking in interest’. So said Zola in an interview in…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine For the past couple of years, I have been fascinated by the events of WW2, and have found myself drawn again and again to novels written…
Sebastian Barry fills in some of the background to his latest novel, which Harriet reviewed here. Questions by Shiny Editor, Harriet. 1. The Temporary Gentleman takes place mainly in Ireland and Africa. What…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine A lark, a single bird with her dowdy plumage, burst up from her cup of sand just in front of me and like a needle flashing…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine. Why on earth have we not heard of Celia Fremlin? Well, I certainly hadn’t until recently, and having discovered her brilliant ‘novels of domestic suspense’ through…