WEB NEWS, FEATURES & REVIEWS

Drive DVD starring Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan and Albert Brooks

contributor: Mark Timlin
Once upon a time, back in the good old, bad old days, I described James Sallis as 'an unsung hero of crime' in my column in the Independent on Sunday. Well, he's certainly not unsung these days, as his novel Drive is now a MAJOR MOTION PICTURE as they were described in my youth

The Pictorial Guide To British 1950s Sci-fi & Horror Comic Books Mike Morley, Compiler

contributor: Barry Forshaw
We can all vividly remember the experience of reading crucial comics in our youth. To this day, I recall being so impatient to consume the bulky British shilling edition of Simon & Kirby's Race for the Moon #2 (which was the US comic in black and white, bulked out to 68 pages with other Harvey comics reprints such as Bob Powell's quirky Man in Black) that I couldn't resist avidly reading it walking beside a railway track next to the towering walls of Walton Jail in Liverpool. Whenever I return from London to the town of my youth, and take a nostalgic walk along that track (now covered with weeds and graffiti), I can never do so without remembering myself as a boy first encountering one of Simon & Kirby's greatest glories — well before I knew who the hell Simon & Kirby were.

Bereft By Chris Womersley

Just once in a while, a thriller comes along that is so good it takes your breath away

Now, It's... Noir Theatre!

contributor: Bob Cornwell
John Foster and Noir Theatre (First Draft at the Charing Cross Theatre, 22 January 2012)

"There is film noir, noir on TV, every kind of literary noir you care to name," John Foster once remarked. "But where is noir in the theatre?" It's a pertinent observation from a man with a long career in TV drama....

The Mattress House By Paulus Hochgatterer

Paulus Hochgatterer has followed THE SWEETNESS OF LIFE, which won the European Literature Prize in 2009, with another novel set in the same Austrian Alpine town of Furth am See

The Retribution By Val Mcdermid

Serial killers in fiction seem almost cosy these days

Edge Of Dark Water Joe Lansdale

contributor: Russell James
If you've read Joe Lansdale before you won't need to read this review; you'll read his latest anyway. If you haven't read him, read this, an astounding tale of a small group (it varies from three to five) escaping from serious trouble in down-home backwoods Texas by sailing a raft down river through lands stalked by danger and controlled by no one. Sounds a bit like Huckleberry Finn? This is a hundred times better...

Good Bait by John Harvey

contributor: Barry Forshaw in The Independent
Turn to your left at a Shostakovich concert in the Royal Festival Hall, and you are quite likely to see the crime writer John Harvey beaming at the pounding orchestral crescendi. If you're at the Barbican listening to Wynton Marsalis lift the roof with a Duke Ellington piece, Harvey may now be sitting on your right, equally transported. But if Harvey is protean in his musical tastes, he is equally so as a writer.

The Istanbul Puzzle By Laurence O'Bryan

Compelling debut thriller combines plenty of stirring action with fascinating historical detail

Raylan By Elmore Leonard

contributor: Mark Timlin
I think I've read most of Leonard's books, and even the ones I didn't like much, I enjoyed. But when he hits the target, it's always a real bullseye, and this is one of them

Birthdays For The Dead By Stuart Macbride

In this stand-alone departure from MacBride's popular Logan McRae series, Detective Constable Ash Henderson has a seriously faulty moral compass

Misery Bay Steve Hamilton

contributor: Michael Carlson
After his Edgar-winning standalone novel, The Lock Artist, (see my review here) Steve Hamilton returns to the familiar ground of Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Alex McKnight, his reluctant detective. For Hamilton it's not quite the retreat it is for McKnight; most of the series has involved Alex escaping, healing or both in the loneliness of the winter landscape, and Misery Bay is no exception...

A June Of Ordinary Murders By Conor Brady

It's not often you get a debut crime novel from a former editor of the Irish Times who is also a former Garda Ombudsman

I Will Have Vengeance By Maurizio De Giovanni Trans Anne Milano Appel

The first in a series featuring an enigmatic Naples detective Commissario Ricciardi and set during the Fascist 1930s

The Golden Scales By Parker Bilal

Parker Bilal whisks the reader straight to the dark heart of Cairo

Happy Days By Graham Hurley

contributor: Mark Timlin
Hurley is still a master of Police Procedural and Happy Days is a superb example

The Mystery Of The Yellow Room

contributor: Maxim Jakubowski
My favourite of all locked-room novels has at last been reissued. The Mystery of the Yellow Room was written in 1908 by Gaston Leroux, better known for The Phantom of the Opera, and has never been bettered. The first in a series of novels to feature the intrepid if naive young reporter and sleuth, Rouletabille, it pits him against the dark soul of the detective Frederick Larsan and the murky secrets of the Stangerson family...

Finders Keepers By Belinda Bauer

With all the usual ingredients and formula of a crime thriller novel, I doubt dedicated genre readers will be disappointed by the latest novel from Belinda Bauer

The Berlin Crossing By Kevin Brophy

A story about reconciliation between the former east and west

Guardian Thrillers Roundup

Believing the Lie by Elizabeth George, Stolen Souls by Stuart Neville, Finders Keepers by Belinda Bauer and Crimes in Southern Indiana by Frank Bill

The Whisperer By Donato Carrisi

The Whisperer grabs you by the throat from the opening chapters

Hope Road By John Barlow

It was around chapter 31 that I realised I was reading the novel in entirely the wrong light, and doing Barlow a disservice in doing so

Dublin Dead By Gerard O'Donovan

The collapse of the Celtic Tiger has added extra resonance to Gerard O'Donovan's fiction

Liar Moon Ben Pastor

contributor: Giles Morgan
The second in the Martin Bora series shares with its predecessor Lumen a bleak poetic vision combined with the unusual and thought provoking device of having a German Wehrmacht Major as its central protagonist and detective. Atmospheric, ambitious and cleverly plotted Liar Moon is an original and memorable crime thriller.

The Retribution by Val McDermid

The Retribution is the seventh novel in the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan series