No, I haven’t branched out into reviewing erotica. The title of Tsutsui’s collection is apt, however, as it features stories which are always bizarre and frequently feature sexual deviance. Of course, normality and sexual propriety are cultural constructs, and Tsutsui delights in tearing these apart to examine them. Amongst this apparently wanton destruction, the reader […]
‘Dark, disturbing and authentic.’ This was the CWA judging panel’s judgement and I completely agree with this description (whilst noting that I don’t know enough about prisons to comment accurately on the third, but the officers’ attitudes feel plausible). So why did ‘The Woman Before Me’ win the CWA’s debut dagger? What’s it about? Rose […]
Imagine a world where ‘sharing’ is valued above all and privacy is considered a dangerous perversion. Such is the world Elton evokes in his 2007 tale of a world that’s exiled experts and lives in a state of ‘Blind Faith’, a world in which ignorance is feted as wisdom and everyone knows everything about everybody. […]
Have I mentioned before how much I love Jasper Fforde’s books? I must have done, because they are all fantastic fun and I reviewed the fabulous ‘Early Riser’ a couple of years ago, but it’s worth stating again. These are fabulous books for anyone with a sense of humour who enjoys books about books and […]
It normally makes a brilliant party, the murder game. But that’s only true when no one actually dies… What’s it about? Secrets. Shame. The ancient history that binds friends together long past the expiration of their shared joy. The set up: Polskirrin, a beautiful house on a remote Cornish coastline. Eight guests, two hosts and […]
“This isn’t a movie. It’s a short story.” In fact, it’s twenty of them, all written by popular Japanese author, Yasutaka Tsutsui, and selected from a career spanning over fifty years, which he admits is now coming to a close. “The ideas aren’t coming anymore,” he told Andrew Driver, translator of this rather miscellaneous, but […]
‘Hands Up’ opens with rookie Officer Ryan Quinn trying to look at himself in a mirror. Literally. He’s not a murderer. Not really. It was a justified shooting, even if the victim was a teenage boy with no weapon who committed no offence. Everyone says so: his superiors, his partner, his mother and his snooty […]
How do we ever reach the truth? In Riku Onda’s deliciously disturbing tale, multiple narrators seek to bear witness to a terrible event, but it is clear that each brings their own prejudices and preoccupations to their retelling. How then, does one achieve clarity and understand the heart of the matter? Perhaps the emotions and […]
The detective and the celebrity blogger. Together, can they catch a serial killer? ‘Death Deserved’, the first collaboration between two well established authors of Nordic Noir, Jorn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger, is a brilliantly engaging tale of a police man hunt that seeks to apprehend a flamboyant serial killer who’s determined to manipulate the […]
What makes a fundamentalist? We all know the answer to this one, right? Indoctrination. Individuals and groups taking ancient, religious texts literally. Basically, a combination of a vulnerable / gullible or angry person and another person or group of people promoting an aggressive ideology. So, all we have to do to prevent the spread of […]