WEB NEWS, FEATURES & REVIEWS

The Steel Spring Per Wahloo (Sarah Death, Trans.)

contributor: Michael Carlson
After discovering Martin Beck in the early Seventies in Sweden, I remember searching around for Per Wahloo's early novels, and finding all of them except The Steel Spring. In fact, I had forgotten about the book, until Vintage's reissue of it along with the other Chief Inspector Jensen novel, Murder On The 31st Floor, in new translations by Sarah Death...

The Doll Princess By Tom Benn

Tom Benn's debut novel is a long overdue good thing in many senses

The Nobodies Album By Carolyn Parkhurst

The Nobodies Album is a beautifully observed novel, full of layers and originality

Adventures Into The Unknown, Forbidden Worlds, Collected, Vol 1 Peter Crowther, Publisher

contributor: Barry Forshaw
It is a source of wonder that PS Publishing (under the stewardship of the indefatigable Peter Crowther) continues to turn out such luxury products as these two jawdropping collections of classic American horror comics (in the case of Adventures into the Unknown, in fact, the very first continuous horror comic). If you are an aficionado of the genre, you will be in seventh heaven simply drinking in the sheer sumptuousness of the production values and design here. As with earlier collections of pre-code American comics from PS Publishing, the reproduction and finessing of the original artwork on heavy stock art paper is of the very finest quality...

The Fall Claire McGowan

contributor: Barry Forshaw
Claire McGowan has become a familiar figure on the London crime fiction scene as the new Director of the Crime Writers' Association, but it is clear from this assured debut novel that her real métier is delivering criminous diversions such as may be found in The Fall. There are elements of the police procedural here, with a well-drawn copper in Hegarty — though it has to be said that the latter is cut from a familiar cloth. The real achievement of the book, however, is its strikingly variegated cast of characters, particularly some vividly realised female protagonists whose individual characters fairly leap off the page...

The Drop By Howard Linskey

The Drop is a must for both middle-boiled thriller fans and basement crazy noir nuts alike

Edge Of Dark Water By Joe R. Lansdale

Edge of Dark Water (2012) is the latest mystery from Joe R. Lansdale, adding to the body of work known as his "East Texas noir"

Wee Rockets By Gerard Brennan

Wee Rockets feels like a very prescient book, focused on feral kids with lives dominated by casual brutality and rabid consumerism

Murder On The Thirty-first Floor And The Steel Spring Per Wahlöö Trans. Sarah Death

contributor: Bob Cornwell
Per Wahlöö wrote seven novels outside the partnership with Maj Sjöwall (these two, at least, are dedicated to Maj). Five of them appeared in the UK over the period 1966-74, all amongst the early translations of Joan Tate, that doyenne of Scandinavian translators into English. Collectively, these novels are sometimes known, I understand, as the 'Dictatorship' novels, with backgrounds as varied as South America, Franco's Spain (from which Wahlöö , a committed Marxist, was deported in 1957) as well as the unnamed countries that form the background to these two novels...

The Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty

Adrian McKinty uses the tools of the crimewriter's trade to examine and reshape the recent past

Death In A Cold Climate By Barry Forshaw

A guide to Nordic noir provides some clues to its international success

Nowhere to Run, by CJ Box

Nowhere to Run is the tenth in the Joe Pickett series

Feast Day Of Fools By James Lee Burke

Faith is at the heart of Burke's new novel, but this time there is no attempt at proselytising

Finders Keepers By Belinda Bauer

Belinda Bauer's third book represents a remarkable achievement

Havoc, In Its Third Year By Ronan Bennett

I may have found the perfect historical novel

Forgotten Books: Black Friday By David Goodis

It's as close to Grand Guignol as crime fiction gets

A Vine In The Blood By Leighton Gage

The fifth, Chief Inspector Mario Silva crime novel, A Vine in the Blood, is a police procedural that concentrates on the investigation, not on the graphic nature of murder

Any Human Face By Charles Lambert

Any Human Face is an excellent, well-written novel of suspense (as long as you don't read the cover words before reading the book!)

Death In A Cold Climate: A Guide To Scandinavian Crime Fiction Barry Forshaw

contributor: Mike Stafford
Death in a Cold Climate examines, collectively and individually, the societies of the Nordic countries. In picking their various threads out of the homogenous fabric into which idle criticism often weaves them, Barry Forshaw does each a great service.

Nights Of Awe by Harri Nykänen (translated By Kristian London)

contributor: Russell James
'God alone knew where and why this gadfly had drifted around the earth in the period between his birth and his death, in other words approximately fifty years. I knew a piece here and a fragment there, but as a policeman I just wanted an answer to one question: who killed him?' Hardly the prose style we have come to associate with Scandinavian crime thrillers, and rightly so, since this story is unlike most of those bleak stories.

Good Bait John Harvey

contributor: Michael Carlson
John Harvey's police novels have always been built on the characters of his cops, and there is no one better at revealing those characters through the day-to-day concerns that real people have. In that sense, you might place Harvey firmly in the path forged by, say, Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels, and Sjowall & Wahloo's Martin Beck books. Harvey is a master at very subtly using the cases his detectives pursue to reflect the conflicts they face in their 'real' lives, and this is what is most impressive about Good Bait, which follows two separate investigations...

The Pursued by CS Forester

Jake Kerridge relishes a lost crime novel by the author of the Hornblower series, C S Forester

Conman By Richard Asplin

I hate Richard Asplin. Not in any mean or vindictive sense, you understand, this is purely the type of good-natured hatred one feels for those individuals who go around hogging all the talent.

Key Concepts In Crime Fiction Heather Worthington

contributor: Barry Forshaw
Palgrave MacMillan's Key Concepts series is a provocative and enlightening contribution to academic publishing, but like so much of the publisher's output remains accessible to the general reader. Certainly, anyone with an interest in the crime fiction field will find this a particularly stimulating and insightful read, as Wellington throws fresh light on such standard themes in the genre as Golden Age crime fiction, American hard-boiled and the standard police procedural. One of the most useful sections of the book is the section on genre criticism, sporting a particularly intriguing essay on postmodernism (Worthington's analysis of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose will send readers afresh to the novel).

The Hammer Vault Marcus Hearn

contributor: Barry Forshaw
Anyone with a taste for British cinema of the macabre will have a deep and abiding affection for Hammer Films, particularly in the company's heyday (before it received the Queens Award for Industry). Long one of the most eloquent advocates for the studio and its products, Marcus Hearn here delivers a text which is a perfect combination of enthusiasm and scholarship. The text alone would be an incentive for any Hammer aficionado, but the riches that this extremely handsome volume has to offer absolutely clinches the deal, with a veritable treasure trove of stills and posters, all reproduced in vibrant colour (not to mention a keen eye for design).