Litro literary magazine: the ‘Whodunnit?’ issue
Litro literary magazine, based in London and now with a New York edition too, has curated a series of delicious crime short stories for its recent ‘Whodunnit?’ issue. As customary with Litro, the stories cover an eclectic range of settings, atmospheres and styles. They’re well-crafted pieces of writing taking the reader to a host of ...
The Dark Inside – Rod Reynolds
Intense, unconventional and a very good read. Rod Reynolds makes a fine crime fiction debut with ‘The Dark Inside’, and he does so by taking several authorial risks, all of which pay off, yielding a gripping plot with a difference. The biggest risk, to the most satisfying outcome, Reynolds takes with the main protagonist. Charlie ...
The Jump – Doug Johnstone
‘The Jump’, Doug Johnstone’s sixth crime novel, tells the tale of a mother’s harrowing journey from her teenage son’s suicide into another family’s disturbing secrets. It’s a gripping read with skilfully portrayed protagonists, permeated by a powerful sense of place: the Firth of Forth and South Queensferry, where for all its industry and technology mankind ...
In Bitter Chill – Sarah Ward
There’s always room on my reading shelf for a good police procedural novel, and ‘In Bitter Chill’, crime fiction debut by Sarah Ward, turned out to be a fine read indeed. Ward has taken an apparently unglamorous setting – a small town in Derbyshire, peopled by ordinary people and policed by ordinary coppers – and has ...
Snow Blind – Ragnar Jonasson
‘Snow Blind’, the debut novel by Icelandic author Ragnar Jonasson, sensitively translated by Quentin Bates, has clearly been written from the heart. It’s filled with affection for an utterly unforgiving and compellingly beautiful corner of the world, the tiny town of Siglufjörður, perched on the edge of a deep fjord in northern Iceland, 25 miles ...
London Rain – Nicola Upson
‘London Rain’ is the seventh instalment in the series Nicola Upson has created featuring the crime fiction author Josephine Tey. In real life Tey was a prolific writer both before and after World War 2, and Upson takes full advantage of her character’s interesting circumstances to devise crime novels that are both fascinating for the skilfully-rendered ...
Camille – Pierre Lemaitre
With ‘Camille’, French author Pierre Lemaitre (translated by Frank Wynne) has brilliantly completed the trilogy begun with ‘Irène’ and continued with ‘Alex’: chapeu! Both of its predecessors are first-rate crime novels, but ‘Camille’ stands out as one of the best I have read in recent months. It contains all the essential elements of great crime ...
The Killing of Bobbi Lomax – Cal Moriarty
Hypnotism, antique books and coins, and nameless dealers. Forgery and a bankrupt property company that left thousands of angry investors in the lurch. Vicious local politics and a religious sect, the Faith, that’s one hundred and fifty years old, with a mafia-like hierarchy and a bigamist founder. Add three gruesome bombings with two dead and ...
