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Thursday 2nd September | |||||||||||
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Reviews and Articles listed A-Z by author >> ReviewsThe Attenbury Diamonds Jill Paton Walsh Apart from her own considerable skills as a novelist, Jill Paton Walsh scored a palpable hit with her exemplary completion of Dorothy Sayers' unfinished Peter Wimsey novel Thrones, Dominations (a piece of legerdemain she repeated in A Presumption of Death), and here's some further Wimseyana from Walsh, this time an original outing for the aristocratic sleuth. The Attenbury Diamonds is delivered with quite as much panache as its predecessors; Sayers aficionados will relish this. Film Noir: The Encyclopedia Alain Silver Et Al I admit it, I'm guilty of having in the past ruthlessly exploited earlier editions of this book. Want a plot for a film you've never seen or dimly remember? Look it up in Film Noir: The Encyclopedia. Want a critique of a film that you can't quite articulate or recall? To jog your memory and critical faculties just check out what one of the critics in the Encyclopedia has to say on the subject... Women Writers And Detectives In Nineteenth-century Crime Fiction Lucy Sussex Subtitled 'The Mothers of the Mystery Genre', this is quite as illuminating as any entry in Palgrave Macmillan's always incisive series of studies of crime fiction in different countries and different eras. Lucy Sussex wears her scholarship lightly, but makes a persuasive case for many of the neglected female progenitors of the detective genre; the final effect of this concise but information-packed volume will be to send to readers out to scour bookshop shelves for some neglected but intriguing women writers. Bending The Willow: Jeremy Brett As Sherlock Holmes David Stuart Davies Who better than the world's leading Sherlockian to write this searching, affectionate and information-packed biography of the late Jeremy Brett, the troubled actor who many consider to be (pace Basil Rathbone) the definitive Sherlock Holmes? Davies had lengthy access to the actor, whose struggle with manic depression was to compromise his otherwise mesmerising recreation of Conan Doyle's immortal sleuth, and there is a forensic, bracingly honest picture of Brett's life... For some time, Tom Harper has been writing elaborate thrillers that marry ironclad narrative skills with some of the most elegantly understated writing in the field; he's the thinking person's Dan Brown. Actually, Harper deserves the latter's success — and more, as Harper is comfortably the better writer. The Lazarus Vault assembles a variety of elements: vulnerable heroine, a labyrinthine plot and lashings of atmosphere, to considerable effect... Blonde On A Stick Conrad Williams This is the real deal: crime writing of a flint-edged, visceral nature that may initially appear to foreground narrative momentum, but is really about character; character, that is, which is delivered on the hoof. London investigator Joel Sorrell has a new client, the enigmatic Kara Geenan... Jim Nisbet, author of The Damned Don't Die, Lethal Injection, Prelude to a Scream, Death Puppet and Price of the Ticket has long been one of my favorite noirists. In Windward Passage, his tenth book, he pulls out all the stops, combining his long-standing noir sensibilities with an off-the-wall post-modern disposition and cultural critique. Pacey, but filled with enough tropes to keep the most hardcore Jim Thompsonite happy... I'm Not Scared & The Crossroads Niccolò Ammaniti Canongate has issued a new paperback edition of Niccolò Ammaniti's I'm Not Scared (originally published in an English translation by Jonathan Hunt in 2003), alongside his later novel The Crossroads. The two books can be read as companion pieces on the complex relationship between father and son, a theme that clearly fascinates Ammaniti – before making his name as a thriller writer, he collaborated with his father (a professor in psycopathology) on an essay on the problems of adolescence entitled 'In the name of the son'... Bad Intentions Karin Fossum, Trans Charlotte Barslund At a recent crime-fiction convention in Bristol, the authors who were after-dinner speakers were dispensing the usual darkly humorous pleasantries to a chuckling audience; how they made a living from murder; how their spouses came up with ever-more ingenious ways of dispatching victims.But then the guest of honour, Karin Fossum, took the stage, and the bonhomie evaporated in a cool blast of Norwegian air... Barry Forshaw in The Independent Entanglement Zygmunt Miloszewski Entanglement is an interesting and unusual crime thriller with the world of psychotherapy forming the backdrop to its central events. The city of Warsaw is vividly evoked, a city whose dramatic and sometimes harrowing past often impinges on its present. The jaded central character of Teodor Szacki is idiosyncratic and well drawn, living on a diet of coffee, cigarettes and hard-boiled eggs in tartare sauce, apparently a cult item on the menu at the Warsaw Regional Court canteen. An intriguing tale that provides a distinctive and unsentimental portrait of post-communist Poland. And like the State Prosecutor's favourite delicacy, hard-boiled... Lawrence, O'donnell Et Al James Bond 007: Nightbird Modesty Blaise: Death In Slow Motion Titan Books continue their largesse in making available invaluable material from classic newspaper strips, collecting them for the first time between the covers of a book. Jim Lawrence's imaginatively written, highly sophisticated James Bond strips, strikingly realised in the highly individual visual style of Illustrator Yaroslav Horak make up the bulk of the 007 collection, with the artwork supplement by the equally talented Neville Colvin, illustrator of the companion volume devoted to the classic Modesty Blaise strips by Peter O'Donnell (who died recently). The question of whether it was suicide or murder, and if the latter who committed the crime, is at the core of Kris Rusch's Hitler's Angel, originally published in the US in 1998, and now reprinted here by Max Crime, part of that list's adventurous mix of new work and reprints of lesser-known titles. This may be the best so far, a serious novel structured around the reminiscence of a long-since retired Munich detective, Fritz Stecher, famed for solving one notorious murder, but trapped in the politics surrounding Geli's death... No One Loves A Policeman Guillermo Orsi, Trans. Nick Caistor If you're feeling like a change from British skies to a sultry Latin climate, then perhaps Guillermo Orsi's novel is your passport. However, the Argentina you will be taken to - while memorably evoked - is not a comfortable place. It is 2001, and the country is in the grip of violent conflict between a rioting populace and brutal police... Barry Forshaw in The Independent The non-appearance of this celebrated series (which came a cropper in the hysteria following the Hungerford killings) has been something a celebrated case – and it's to Network's credit that they have finally released the stylish crime series with a charismatic, pre-Hollywood Clive Owen as the eponymous detective created by ace crime writer Mark Timlin... If you've not yet encountered the edgy crime fiction of NJ Cooper, it's time to adjust that omission. Lifeblood – her new outing for forensic psychologist Karen Taylor – is as sinewy and involving as its predecessor, No Escape... Bank Of The Black Sheep Robert Lewis The Robin Llywelyn trilogy drifts to its conclusion here, in this amiable if aimless tale in which our feckless hero wakes up chained to the bed in a hospice, saddled with two popular clichés from yesteryear – he is an amnesiac and has two months left to live. (He has cancer. No, really.) He has also, it appears, done something very wrong, certainly criminal and possibly homicidal... The Gentleman's Hour Don Winslow Boone Daniels, surfer and private eye, is back for a second novel, and The Gentleman's Hour is every bit as good as The Dawn Patrol (you can find my Crime Time review of that book under reviews). This time, Boone is drawn into two cases, neither of which he wants—one in which he's supposed to help the self-confessed killer of a local surfing legend and father figure, and the other where one of the Gentleman's Hour surfers (the guys who come after the working men on the Dawn Patrol have left) who suspects his wife is having an affair wants Boone to investigate; sleazy divorce work makes Boone feel uncomfortable... Fancy a vacation in South Africa? Here's a book to warn you where not to go and who not to meet. Set in all the wrong parts of Cape Town, among folk so hard you want to wall yourself in with cement, Wake Up Dead is the kind of novel other tough-guy crime stories hope to be when they grow up... The Girl With The Crystal Eyes Barbara Baraldi, Trans. Judith Forshaw This is an unrestrainedly sexual book, its open eroticism and appreciation of female lusts unimaginable in British or Nordic crime fiction– as is the highly stylish mode of dress favoured by most of the characters, though Tommasi lets the side down by wearing fake Ray-Bans... Jane Jakeman in The Independent IS THERE a protocol for killing a fellow intelligence agent? Apparently there is. To end the career of another professional in an honourable fashion it is necessary to take the unused gun from the holster of the man you have shot. Then you place it in his right hand and insert the index finger in the trigger guard. A shot must be discharged to give the impression that the dead man went down fighting...Barry Forshaw in The Express Giorgio Faletti is a man clearly not content with one career; over the years, he has been a lawyer, a TV comedian, a film actor and a singer/songwriter — what's more, he has enjoyed some considerable success at each of these disparate careers. But he is likely to become best-known in the UK for his blockbuster thriller, I Kill, which has already sold over 5 million copies worldwide before its UK appearance in translation... In many ways, Caught represents Harlan Coben at his best. Coben's thrillers have always involved ordinary people caught up in situations beyond their control, and it's Coben's definition of ordinary which often makes them so successful. Inevitably, the setting is affluent suburban New Jersey, but to Coben the bland pleasantness of suburban life often hides dark secrets. Even the most comfortable people turn out to have pasts that haunt them, or come back to haunt them. And the veneer of stability is easily shattered, the hierarchy of suburban concern easily toppled... The Darkest Room Johan Theorin Like his exceptional debut novel, Echoes From The Dead, Johan Theorin's story is deeply woven into the landscape of the Baltic island of Oland (in Swedish literally, Island Land), one which is considered unique by the island's residents (which included my grandmother), and by Swedes in general. It's not just a sense of setting, as it is in Mari Jungstedt's novels set on Gotland, the next island to the east. It's more a sense that the land itself is a force, if not a character, in the story... Criminal Summer Luigi Guicciardi There's something very un-Italian about Italian crime stories. They tend to be urbane, calm and unstressful, the investigating officers patient and discursive, and even the villains often give up without a fight. Once it's explained to them that they've been found out, they raise their hands in acknowledgement and come quietly. Perhaps it's all those years of confession and atonement... The Man Who Left Too Soon: The Biography Of Stieg Larsson Barry Forshaw But Larsson never saw (the book) become runaway bestsellers or knew that, when they reached other shores in translation, he was to become a worldwide publishing phenomenon. As Barry Forshaw explains in this pioneering biography, Larsson had died, aged 50, before the first book appeared even in his native Sweden... Roger Lewis in the Express Next 25 |
