Eurovision fans, here’s a treat for you. In ‘No Dream Impossible’, Nigel May treats readers to a comedy murder mystery, set during the “Eurowide” song contest. What’s it about? Willkommen, bienvenue and welcome! It’s time for the newly launched musical celebration that is the Eurowide Song Contest, debuting in the unglamorous city of Ermpit in […]
‘You accused Mia of being a witch and bewitching your father. Do you remember that? When a young woman is found murdered at the foot of Pendle Hill, the obvious suspect is Will Perkins, a local schizophrenic who recently denounced Mia as a witch and sought her arrest. When DCI Liam Doyle and his team […]
‘A shadow moved between her and the sun, and a pang of relief went through her. Help was on the way.’ Murder can be brutal. It can be banal. But in DCI Geldard’s Norfolk, a ten year old murder is top of Greg’s priority list, until a rash of unsolved disappearances becomes something more sinister. […]
Would you know if you had married a serial killer? Of course you would, you think, by which you mean you would never have married him. But before you scoff too vigorously, you should know that Sonia Sutcliffe had no idea. One day, when her husband returns from a weekend away, Martha watches him put […]
‘Jack Palmer had seen the movies: when aliens invade, humans will come together to save the world.’ Unfortunately for Jack, when a superior alien race decide to invade earth, it seems the films are wrong: cowed by their brutally dispassionate taskmasters, whose punishment for every infarction, however minor, is instant death, most humans rapidly learn […]
‘My hands were those of a ghost. They were not my own.’ We often talk about how important it is to (metaphorically) walk in someone else’s shoes, but what happens to your sense of self when you can’t walk in your own? This is journalist Nathan Dunne’s account of his experiences with depersonalisation, a form […]
She’s found the one. He’s just not the one for her. I’m not usually a reader of romances, but I liked the strapline for this one and was intrigued by where this meet-cute might go. What’s it about? Jessie meets Cal and they spend an amazing day together, so when the night ends without them […]
‘I wonder if people realise how many victims of Hiroshima were not adults. but young children’. In her moving account of searching the ruins of Hiroshima for her niece and nephew, Sadako fills in this gap in our understanding with powerful, horrifying stories of loss, destruction and innocence. What’s it about? When the atomic bomb […]
Welcome to the world of DI Ridpath. After a serious brush with melanoma that forced him to take nine months off work, he’s ready to return to his post – but his boss has decided to sweep him into the long grass. His crime? Being ill on the job. Shunted into a new role as […]
This was my introduction to ‘Sunshine Noir’, which is apparently similar to Nordic Noir but set in brighter, sunnier climes, specifically, in ‘Facets of Death’, in Botswana. I am late to the party, both to the subgenre and to the world of Detective Kubu, but I’m glad to have finally investigated this treasure. Speaking of […]