Reviews
The Whispers Of Nemesis Anne Zouroudi
contributor: Giles Morgan
When a group of villagers in Northern Greece re-open a grave they discover a terrible secret. It is in fact the custom within the Greek Orthodox church to exhume the dead after around four years of burial and then to wash and clean the bones and place them in an ossuary. However, when the body of the poet Santos Volakis undergoes the ritual of exhumation it becomes clear that they have been replaced with those of a pig. In the small village of Vrisi the news spreads like wildfire and superstitious locals claim it is the work of the devil...
Stieg And Me Eva Gabrielsson, Translated By Marie-francoise Colombani
contributor: Brian Ritterspak
After much preliminary speculation over its contents, Eva Gabrielsson's fascinating and quirky memoir about her life with the most successful Scandinavian crime writer of all time turns out to be a truly fascinating read. Gabrielsson rules out no areas for discussion (including the now-famous feud with her late partner's family)...
Death In Slow Motion/the Double Agent Peter O'donnell/neville Colvin
contributor: Barry Forshaw
Titan Book's welcome reissue series of the classic Peter O'Donnell adventure strip Modesty Blaise has reached a particularly intriguing point: the two reprint volumes here cover the years when Neville Colvin's immensely stylish art was doing perfect service to O'Donnell's matchless scripts. In many ways, Colvin was one of the key successors to the late, great Jim Holdaway (Modesty's visual co-creator), having a longer stint on the strip than the equally impressive (but shorter-lived) period of illustrator John Burns who was also inspired by Holdaway...
The Killer Is Dying James Sallis
contributor: Barry Forshaw
If you've been nurturing a particular writer at your bosom for years, secure (and happy) in the knowledge that he or she is known only to the cognoscenti, it's somewhat difficult to share your favourite when the whole world sits up and take note. That process is very likely to happen for one of the very best writers in the crime fiction genre, James Sallis, as the film of his lean and sinewy masterpiece Drive opens (with Ryan Gosling as the protagonist). And if the first book that the new legion of Sallis fans picks up is The Killer is Dying, there will quickly become aware of why they the writer is held in such high esteem...
Brighton Rock Rowan Joffe, Director
contributor: Barry Forshaw
Rowan Joffe was repeatedly obliged to remark upon the fact that his film was not a remake of the Boulting Brothers film but a new version of Graham Greene's novel. To a large degree, this was a truthful observation, but one egregious miscalculation gave the lie to the notion, and proved that the earlier film version was very much in the filmmaker's minds when filming in the 21st century. Ironically, both versions were criticised for downplaying the Catholic elements of Greene's novel but in neither case did this criticism have any real validity...
Chicago Shiver Terry Holland
contributor: Jem Cook
From the Victorian-style conceit of the locked room crime to the careful pacing of the narrative you know that you're in the presence of a masterful and confident storyteller, in full control of his material, putting together an entirely satisfying thriller. Holland doesn't mistake complex characterisation with complex writing. He keeps the writing simple and pushes the story along. This is unapologetically good storytelling...
All Yours Claudia Piñeiro
contributor: Russell James
If you read only one crime book in translation this year, make it this one, a book that grabs you from the start and whips along at pace – and in which the twists, unlike those in so many crime books, are credible. This is what people would do, you think, caught in a hell of their own making. Set in Argentina (Buenos Aires) the hell is domestic, the eternal triangle – or is there another side? Inés discovers a love letter to her husband, follows him to the woods where he'll meet his lover – and sees him push and accidentally kill her...
Not A Number: Patrick Mcgoohan: A Life Rupert Booth
contributor: Barry Forshaw
Whether in The prisoner (or its equally accomplished predecessor, Danger Man), the late Patrick McGoohan is always impressive: stern, intelligent, sexually attractive to women, but always maintaining a monk-like celibacy (a by-product of the actor's stern Catholicism). McGoohan, a maverick talent and prickly man who never quite achieved the Hollywood stardom that appeared to be his due (possibly because of his unbending moral code – the very code that made him turn down the libertine role of 007) still appeared – with distinction – in such films as Time to Kill and Braveheart...
Sweet Money Ernesto Mallo
contributor: Russell James
Argentina in the 1980s was a faraway and very foreign land. Ruled – in so far as that unruly country could ever be ruled – by the Junta, the only way to live was on your wits and luck. And bribery. Superintendent Lascano is about the only straight cop in the force, and the thief Mole Miranda is one of the few crooks to believe there is or might ever have been honour between thieves...
World's Greatest Stuntman Vic Armstrong
contributor: Barry Forshaw
If your pulse has been raised by some dangerous-looking stunts in the great action movies of the modern era, the chances are that you've been looking at Vic Armstrong. It's him taking the licks for Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, and doing similar duty for a variety of James Bonds. And if you thought that you've always been looking at Christopher Reeve as in flight or in action as Superman in some of the more energetic scenes, the man in the blue tights and red cape is – yes — Vic Armstrong...
The Cleansing Flames Rn Morris
contributor: Brian Ritterspak
Reading this absolutely splendid fourth entry in the RN Morris sequence of riffs on the detective Porfiry Petrovich from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is a bittersweet experience, as Morris is apparently about to put the character on hold to strike out for pastures new. Although the auguries are that he will prove quite as successful in a different arena, many readers would be perfectly happy to read more outings for the wily 19th century Russian detective...
Prince Rory Clements
contributor: Giles Morgan
It is Spring 1593 in England and the playwright Christopher Marlowe has been killed under mysterious circumstances. Shakespeare is the senior secretary of Sir Robert Cecil, a powerful member of the Privy Council. He has been investigating Marlowe because he is suspected of having been involved in a written attack on Protestant refugees from the Low Countries and France.
Shakespeare is convinced the playwright has been murdered but cannot prove it because of a lack of evidence...
Face Of The Devil Nj Cooper
contributor: Brian Ritterspak
Those who have followed the protean writing career of NJ Cooper over the years have learned to expect the unexpected, and there is no question that for the Cooper aficionado, it's been an unpredictable journey. There is no denying that Cooper has transmogrified into a very different entity from the writer who used the name 'Natasha' before the blunt initials which now prefixe her work — and if evidence of this is required, a few pages of Face of the Devil will serve to make the point. It is quite possibly her most rigorously written and uncompromising book yet, with a narrative grasp that simply cannot be resisted.
Live Wire Harlan Coben
contributor: Barry Forshaw
As footballers (and other super-rich types) wield injunctions to keep their secrets buried, they may feel they are fighting a losing battle in a world of scattershot electronic dissemination.
Perhaps they should try murder... Barry Forshaw in The Independent
Baby Godiva Marty Holland
contributor: Woody Haut
Mary Hauenstein, aka Marty Holland, aka Mary Holland, is best known for writing the novel and the story on which two classic examples of film noir are based: Otto Preminger's 1946 Fallen Angel, and Robert Siodmak's 1950 The File On Thelma Jordan. Both films feature two memorable noir femmes fatales: Linda Darnell in the former film and Barbara Stanwyck in the latter...
A Book Of Blues Courttia Newland
contributor: Barry Forshaw
As a collection of energetic, visceral short stories, A Book of Blues is both a sign of the rude health of the short story form and a salutary reminder that Courttia Newland is one of the most unusual and invigorating writers on the current literary scene. From the disparate fictions he has tackled, we are reminded that Newland has mastered the tropes of crime fiction and the more rarefied literary forms on display here...
The Fifth Witness Michael Connelly
contributor: Barry Forshaw
A story that gives society little credit
It's a moot point just how responsibly popular fiction can address serious issues of the day, as opposed to simply mining such things for material. But as ammunition for those who feel that crime fiction is a formidable tool, Michael Connelly's The Fifth Witness is useful. This is a trenchant novel that, within the framework of a diverting entertainment, makes some persuasive points about a nation in thrall to the banks (the US, but, by extension, this country) – and about the limits of personal responsibility... Barry Forshaw in The Independent
City Of Lost Girls Declan Hughes
contributor: Giles Morgan
In some ways a little too professionally rendered there are times when a little more off-beat characterisation and depiction of cultures and places might have been welcome. However, Hughes has a prose style that doesn't hang about and undeniably moves with some speed and velocity making this a diverting and enjoyable tale of Celtic noir.
The Watermen Patrick Easter
contributor: Barry Forshaw
AT A Dickensian riverside pub in Wapping a charismatic ex-policeman gazes out at the swinging hangman's rope which is kept for the tourist trade.
Patrick Easter, who spent 30 years in the Met, is intelligent and bookish and might well have been the model for PD James' copper-cum-writer Adam Dalgliesh.
The occasion is the launch party for his series featuring former naval officer Tom Pascoe... Barry Forshaw in The Express
Kusanagi Clem Chambers
contributor: Brian Ritterspak
... the ingredients are all in place for a colourful blockbuster thriller, freighted with the kind of authentic detail that is Chambers specialité de la maison — and Kusanagi (although it is not a book with any notable nuance) is truly kinetic entertainment.
Hotel Bosphorus Esmahan Aykol
contributor: Giles Morgan
As a portrait of a fascinating city Hotel Bosphorus paints an intriguing and humorous picture... unfortunately the MacGuffin at the heart of this mystery does not quite match up to that. Still, the further exploits of this feisty heroine suggest a promising future for what is intended to be an ongoing series. I look forward to more tales of strong Turkish coffee and cigarettes.
Six Red Herrings Mike Stotter
contributor: Barry Forshaw
Mike Stotter has established a name as one of the most adroit practitioners of the Western in this country, but his crime fiction credentials are not to be sniffed at (not least his stewardship of the excellent crime fiction website Shots). This crime collection is varied and inventive...
Swedish Book Review 2011:1 Sarah Death, Ed.
contributor: Barry Forshaw
The latest edition of Swedish Book Review is as intriguing and provocative a literary smorgasbord as ever, whetting the appetite for some Scandinavian books which will (hopefully) appear in the UK in translation before too long. If they do appear, of course, that will be courtesy of the ministrations of the exemplary translators that Great Britain can offer, several of whom are represented here...
Hotel Bosphorus Esmahan Aykol
contributor: Russell James
As professions for amateur detectives go, being owner of a crime bookshop has its plusses. This one, Katie Hirschel, is a German ex-pat running a shop in Istanbul, and is thus able to understand and comment on her adopted city – and comment she does, for Katie is quite a gossip, chattering to us as she might do to her best friend in the beauty parlour (a favourite pastime, it seems, in Istanbul...
