Loser’s Corner – Antonin Varenne
The USA and the UK are the Western powers that have been most involved in the Middle East and North Africa in recent decades. Once though, the leading colonial nation in those areas was France. Raising equally controversial political issues, and with hardly better results. French author Antonin Varenne reminds us of this in this ...
Dark Road – Ian Rankin & Mark Thomson
Something a bit different this way comes. Dark Road marks Ian Rankin’s debut as playwright, working in collaboration with Mark Thomson. It may look like a novel, but this is a dialogue-led playbook and a departure in more than one sense – no Rebus in these parts. While the play itself received a mixed critical ...
Cop Town – Karin Slaughter
I’m going to come straight out and say it: my name is Linsey and I have never read any Karin Slaughter. Perhaps there are just too many great crime authors and not enough time; maybe it’s the action-thriller, blockbustery tone of voice in her marketing that didn’t appeal, but now I’ve paid a little more ...
Abbatoir Blues – Peter Robinson
It’s hard to believe that DCI Alan Banks is now into his twenty- second fictional investigation, but that’s where we find him in Abbatoir Blues by Peter Robinson. When two boys vanish under mysterious circumstances, the community is filled with unease. Then a bloodstain is discovered in a disused World War Two hangar nearby, and ...
Watch Me – James Carol
Crime investigators fit into a number of types: police detectives, amateur sleuths, private eyes, hapless bystanders, forensic investigators, and, more recently – and I would say more interestingly – criminal profilers. Enter Jefferson Winter, in Watch Me by James Carol. There’s a great opportunity for blurring of lines in the profiler’s role: they have to ...
Lawless – Jessie Keane
They say that revenge is a dish best served cold and Lawless, the latest from Jessie Keane, isn’t short of its share of chills. Two powerful families square up to each other in a thriller that doesn’t pull its punches. Lawless is the sequel to Nameless, which saw Ruby Darke running the family shop while ...
The Last Town – Blake Crouch
If you haven’t heard of The Last Town by Blake Crouch yet, you soon will. This is the third installment in the tense and gripping Wayward Pines Trilogy, soon to become a primetime Fox TV show starring Matt Dillon and Juliette Lewis. It’s in production and should hit our screens in Winter 2015. I reckon ...
The Corners of the Globe – Robert Goddard
The Corners of the Globe by Robert Goddard is a smashing tale of mustachioed derring-do set shortly after the First World War. It’s the second volume in the Maxted trilogy: the story of James Maxted, former flying ace, investigating his father’s suspicious and untimely death. The first volume – where you may want to start ...
