‘We are more alike than different.’ This is the essence of Dr Adshead’s argument: that while it is easier to write off certain criminals as monsters, it is essential to admit their humanity and recognise the value of rehabilitation over our instinctive desire for vengeance. Of course, this is easier said than done, but Dr […]
How do you electrocute someone on a frozen lake, in front of dozens of witnesses? Equally significant, perhaps, is why. Why choose such a complicated murder method? Why choose to risk carrying out such a dangerous act in front of such a large audience? The local police in sleepy Three Pines – a small, Quebecois […]
We all know that images can be crafted. Public personas can be exactly that – a carefully crafted creation, shaped for and by an adoring public. Celebrity Lara King knows all about fame: how to get it, how to keep it and how to manipulate it. Then her daughter vanishes…and the persona begins to unravel. […]
One abandoned baby. Two sisters with a secret. The ‘Munro Baby Mystery’ has been a wonderful money spinner for the Doughty sisters for over 70 years, but when family matriarch Connie Doughty dies, her younger sister Rose begins to wonder whether it’s time to tell the truth… What’s it about? Once upon a time, two […]
It’s the middle of the night and there’s a shadow looming over the bed. Of course, it’s only Margret, a child who suffers nightmares, come to inform her mother there’s a man in the house. A bad man, because who else would be there at this time of night? Elisa drags herself out of bed […]
I have recently discovered the joy of audiobooks. ‘Child A’, read in a perfectly disinterested fashion by Holliday Grainger worked really well in this format. The jumps in time were often confusing and disconcerting, but on reflection I think they were meant to be. After all, Lex Gracie is not a straightforward narrator… What’s it […]
‘All of them? Even the children?’ The fireplace sputtered and crackled and swallowed his gasp. ‘Slaughtered?’ ‘Worse.’ There was silence then. And in that hush lived all the things that could be worse than slaughter. By now, readers of Louise Penny’s Three Pines series may think they know these characters well, but Penny is determined […]
When I was in sixth form, there were a handful of books I would always recommend. ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by Margaret Atwood was top of that list (which was how I came to lend it to a friend who never returned it). I remember being chilled by the harshness of Offred’s world and stunned by […]
With so many potentially brilliant books I want to read, sometimes choosing the next one feels like a challenge. So, as this year’s Crimefest approaches, I’ve set myself an actual challenge: to read some of the books by the panellists which are already gracing my shelves (some of which I doubtless picked up at the […]
This is one of those ‘it caught my eye, but’ books. It clearly caught my eye enough for me to buy it, and, in fact, I recently added a second Louise Penny title to my collection, still without having ever read the first. There was obviously something about the plots I found appealing – or […]