Candle Flame – Paul Doherty
Brother Athelstan once again dons his habit for a medieval mystery in this dark tale: Candle Flame, by Paul Doherty. It’s the thirteenth book in the Sorrowful Mysteries series featuring the Franciscan monk and the coroner Sir John Cranston. It’s February 1381, the weather is freezing, but London is boiling with resentment. John of Gaunt ...
The Black Eyed Blonde – Benjamin Black
I’m with Stephen King, when he said, “Raymond Chandler, wherever he may be, is probably smiling.” Why? Because Philip Marlowe, the original hardboiled, hard-luck PI is back in business in The Black Eyed Blonde, by Benjamin Black. And he’s in more than capable hands. It is the early 1950s. In Los Angeles, Marlowe is as ...
Missing You – Harlan Coben
We put so much trust in the internet: we share our secrets, we bare our souls and we look for love. But it’s always a gamble and we’re always blind. In Missing You, the latest scorcher by Harlan Coben, NYPD detective Kat Donovan gets more than she bargained for on an online dating site. The ...
Buried Angels – Camilla Lackberg
What could possibly be cooler than a husband and wife / detective and crime writer team? Not very much – unless they’re also Swedish. Scandi noir heaven. The team in question is Detective Patrik Hedstrom and Erica Falck and Buried Angels by Camilla Lackberg is their eighth case together. Easter 1974. A family vanishes from ...
Northanger Abbey – Val McDermid
Interesting, this. The Austen Project asks best-selling authors to rework the six Jane Austen novels with modern settings, the first being Joanna Trollope’s Sense and Sensibility. Why? Well why not? Literal circumstances – dates, times, places – may change, but the wit and finesse of Austen’s characters is timeless. One of her darker novels – ...
Natchez Burning – Greg Iles
This is a big juicy novel. It may weigh in at over 700 pages, but they fly by, with one cliffhanger after another. As Stephen King says, Natchez Burning by Greg Iles is: “Extraordinarily entertaining and fiendishly suspenseful. I defy you to start it and find a way to put it down.” Now that’s really ...
The son – Jo Nesbø
If there were a crime writers’ award for a picaresque life, it wouldn’t be at all difficult to justify giving it to Jo Nesbø. After being signed by Norwegian premiership side FC Molde, a cruciate ligament injury ended his footballing career. He then worked as a financial analyst by day, and played in a major ...
The Stone Wife – Peter Lovesey
In a break with the usual police procedural tradition, I’ll start with a confession: Peter Lovesey is a new name to me. Further investigation reveals that he has written 35 crime and historical novels and was Chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association. He’s been presented with Lifetime Achievement awards both in the UK and the ...
