Dead Opposite the Church The factual title gives you a feel for how this crime novel will develop: facts are followed by facts and little intuition is needed to connect them, which is just as well, as our main protagonist is rather short on intuition… What’s it about? Edward Packman ran his weekly newspaper as […]
Puzzle fans rejoice: DI Manson is on the case. As part of their ongoing mission to revive excellent but neglected authors, Dean Street Press are reissuing some of the most entertaining golden age crime fiction. ‘Who Killed Dick Whittington’ (written by husband and wife writing team E. & M. A. Radford) is indeed a classic […]
‘I thought that love would last forever. I was wrong.’ So wrote Auden in his beautiful and haunting poem, ‘Funeral Blues’. But, what if it could? In these digital days of iPhones, iPads and iWatches, how far away are we from the possibility of an iRachel? Cass Hunter explores longing, loss, love and, erm, the […]
How do you make a witch? Sharon Bolton has some ideas, and her latest novel is a wonderfully chilling tale of conspiracy and murder in a small northern town at the foot of Pendle Forest. What’s it about? ‘I imagine that Patsy regained consciousness slowly, and that her first lucid thought was that she was […]
I’d not heard of Lisa Jackson before, but her books dominated a whole shelf on the library’s crime section, so I thought her books would be worth a read. Unfortunately, by the time I had finished reading the prologue, I was already feeling reservations… What’s it about? Dr Kacey Lambert was once targeted by a […]
‘Perfect People’ is a stand-alone story by popular crime writer, Peter James, in which the political is made, and remains, intensely personal. What’s it about? Having lost their four year old son to a rare genetic disease, John and Naomi Klaesson seek out controversial geneticist Leo Dettore in an attempt to ensure their next child […]
I would love to run a bookshop. By which I mean I would love to live in one, arranging the books just so, dipping in and out of my favourite tomes, discovering new authors and titles as part of my job – what bliss it all seems! But of course, the reality would be rather […]
Snap decisions can be dangerous. We never meet Eileen Bright. Instead, we begin with a hot, airless car and her three small children: Jack, Joy and Merry. They fuss and bicker exactly as you would expect, but underneath their casual cruelties there is a deep fog of unease: their mother went to get help, but […]
‘An elk emerges from the overgrown pines and it is monstrous.’ Tuva Moodyson, isolated Gavrik’s newest reporter, is less than keen on being surrounded by overgrown forest and occasionally charged at by an elk, but Gavrik is home and home is near where her terminally ill mother lives, so she’s learned to live with her […]
One crossed wire. Three dead bodies. Six bottles of bleach. What a strapline! I was sold, but if you want more… What’s it about? Where to begin? Insomniac Seth, who is married to borderline-alcoholic Maeve, gets to know suicidal Hadley as a result of a crossed phone wire and a weird late night hobby. Hadley […]