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Thursday 2nd September | |||||||||||
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Reviews and Articles listed A-Z by author >> ReviewsThe Killer's Art Mari Jungstedt The strength of Mari Jungstedt's novels set on the Baltic island of Gotland have been atmospheric. She conveys the claustrophobic comfort of living in isolation, on an island which is, in effect, a small town. This is highlighted by the contrast between her detective, Anders Knutas, and the television reporter Johan Berg. Knutas is the least depressive of Scandinavian detectives; he is a man happy in his job, his marriage, and his environment—not self-satisfied but not asking more of his Gotland life than it can provide, and seeing in it many of the old virtues of Swedish society... Needle In A Haystack Ernesto Mallo Mallo is a former member of the anit-Junta guerrilla movement and his experience informs his deft narrative and offers a tough visceral vision that has the ring of truth about it. Needle in a Haystack is a compelling, blood-stained document of tyranny and brutality told with skill and passion. Inspector Cataldo's Criminal Summer Luigi Guicciardi Luigi Guicciardi's protagonist Cataldo is an atypically tall, blond Sicilian, who works methodically and calmly in this, the first in a series of crime novels where the emphasis is very much on solving the puzzle rather than on vivid and unsettling descriptions of violence. Let's hope that new publisher Hersilia provides English readers with the further adventures of Inspector Cataldo... A Question Of Belief Donna Leon Donna Leon's elegant crime novels enjoy great success in various translations throughout the world. But, ironically, there is one country where they are not rendered into the native tongue: Italy, the stamping ground of her wily Commissario Brunetti. The reason? Italy is also the adopted country of Leon herself, an American expat who feels that the endemic corruption her copper encounters would seem provocative from an incomer... Barry Forshaw in The Independent Mark Timlin is celebrated for his Nick Sharman thrillers (the TV Sharman programmes — with Clive Owen — are being re-released on DVD). In the Sharman books, the London writer pulled off an impressive piece of sleight-of-hand: while giving every impression of gritty urban reality and the life of a cynical London private eye, the actual narratives functioned on an almost hyper-real level, with plausibility less important than sheer narrative momentum... 'This sketching in of plot cannot do justice to the intricacies of this novel's structure, nor its prose which, even in translation, is both challenging and playful. 'Nature is a labyrinth of distorting images,' a butterfly collector tells Sebastian as the latter prepares his murder trap...' Give 'em Hell Malone Russell Mulcahy, Director Can one have one's cake and eat it? Director Russell Mulcahy thinks you can. His frenetic, hyper-violent period action movie, Give 'Em Hell Malone, functions both as an over-the-top 1940s style private eye movie (complete with treacherous femme fatale) and as a wicked parody of the genre... A Game Of Sorrows Shona Maclean The Game of Sorrows makes stimulating company for a trip to 17th-century Carrickfergus. The Celtic atmosphere has striking pungency, and Seaton is a nicely idiosyncratic protagonist. His sometimes anachronistic 20th-century mindset is balanced against the prejudices of his time – he is prone to judge people by their religion, rather as Umberto Eco gave his otherwise modern-minded sleuth in The Name of the Rose some negative medieval views on women. Although the brio of the earlier book is more fitfully evident here, MacLean once again demonstrates that she is a distinctive talent... Barry Forshaw in The Independent Esteemed editor and anthologist Maxim Jakubowski's new crime fiction imprint MaxCrime hits the ground running with this exuberant and ambitious novel from a writer who is already something of a sensation in Australia. Hit by Tara Moss weighs in at a solid 563 pages, but there is nary a wasted word in this visceral novel from a writer who has been both a licensed private investigator and a firearms expert (not to mention snake handler and racing driver). Paul Clifford Bulwer-lytton /a String Of Pearls Thomas Prest And Other Titles If you feel that some of your Penguin Classics are looking the worse for wear, here is the perfect opportunity to spruce up your shelves with this highly collectible batch of smartly presented reissues, collectively described as Victorian Bestsellers. The common denominator here is, of course, sensation - and everything from Bulwer-Lytton's Paul Clifford (which coined the immortal phrase — as its opening line – 'It was a dark and stormy night') to more widely recognised Victorian classics (such as Wilkie Collins' two finest books, The Moonstone and The Woman in White) are reissued in beautifully designed, matt-cover editions... Pieces Of Modesty Peter O'donnell Many collectors will be grateful for this welcome reissue of one of the hardest-to find Peter O'Donnell Modesty Blaise books. The 6 stories in this collection have the indomitable Modesty and her loyal sidekick, Willie Garvin, travelling and fighting their way around the world, from South America to Berlin, Finland to London, using everything that comes to hand, from a circus cannon to human kite-flying, to survive against the odds... What sort of issues do you expect your crime fiction to cover? If you feel that personal responsibility, cracks in the welfare state and the problems of parenthood are fair game for the crime novel, then Jo Nesbø is your man. All of these (and many more) are crammed into his weighty latest book, The Snowman... Barry Forshaw in The Independent One can have nothing but praise for Julia McKenzie's intelligent, subtly acted incarnation of Agatha Christie's immortal spinster heroine, and the high gloss of this series of productions is immensely pleasing. What is puzzling is the variable direction given to the prestigious supporting casts who are often encouraged to act in a massively larger-than-life, end-of-the-pier fashion (in marked contrast to Julia McKenzie's nicely understated performance... Involuntary Witness Gianrico Carofiglio Italian lawyer Guido Guerrieri has not always been proud of the cases he has won. However, following a painful separation Guido undergoes a personal crisis that has a transformative effect on his moral outlook. When a nine year old boy is found murdered at the bottom of a well close to a well-known beach in Southern Italy local police are quick to label a Senegalese peddler as the culprit. Guido is approached to defend the peddler called Abdou Thiam although the weight of evidence against him seems overwhelming before the trial has even started. But Guido is quick to see the inconsistencies in the reports gathered about the case and soon comes to realise that Thiam is effectively being framed and demonised because of his ethnic background Sami Macbeth just can't get lucky. Having a girl's name doesn't help. Spending two and a half years in prison for a crime he didn't commit doesn't help much either. Coming out to find his sister in deep trouble makes things worse. Especially when it seems the only way he can get her out of it is to involve himself in something a lot more serious than the crime he didn't commit in the first place... At The Chime Of A City Clock D J Taylor Taylor has switched effortlessly forward in time from his Kept: A Victorian Mystery to the deep depression of Thirties Britain to bring us an atmospheric tale revolving around Ross, a would-be writer, behind with the rent and reduced to selling cleansing fluids door-to-door (ah, memory, it all comes back...). The Scroll Of The Dead David Stuart Davies 'What do you know of the real world, with real people and real passions, Mr Sherlock Holmes? You just sit here in your dry and dusty room working on clues and theories, never considering the hurt, anguish, and tragedy in which your cases are soaked. People are merely pieces of the puzzle to you, like figures on a chessboard. As long as the mystery is solved you have no consideration of how their lives are affected by your actions. You do not care.' Fever Of The Bone Val Mcdermid Admirers of the crime writer Val McDermid are a touch sniffy about the TV series Wire in the Blood — rightly so. Onscreen, McDermid's damaged criminal profiler Tony Hill is reduced to a rather bland copper in the hands of the actor Robson Green. Hill on the page is a much more multi-faceted character — and if you need persuading, Fever of the Bone is a salutary reminder of the superiority of the printed page over the dumbed-down visual image... Barry Forshaw in The Times Fear The Worst Linwood Barclay Fear the worst? Isn't that what all good crime novels should make the reader feel, regarding the beleaguered protagonist? The Canadian novelist Linwood Barclay is well versed in the ways of putting the reader through the wringer. It is a trick that Aristotle knew all about: catharsis. Certainly, that feeling of having been thoroughly purged (in a strangely pleasant way) is what Barclay's writing delivers here, very much in the fashion of his successful No Time for Goodbye.... Barry Forshaw in The Independent The Girl In Alfred Hitchcock's Shower Robert Graysmith This is both a fascinating concept and intriguing read. Graysmith is the author of the New York Times bestselling true-crime classic Zodiac, (filmed with Robert Downey Jr and Jake Gyllenhaal as Graysmith himself), and in The Girl in Alfred Hitchcock's Shower he again investigates a bizarre real-life mystery: the disappearance of the body double for Janet Leigh in Alfred Hitchcock's classic Psycho Mr Shivers Robert Jackson Bennett A TRAIN crosses the Missouri state line with a man clinging to the side of a cattle car. three other men, shabbily dressed, also hold on, their eyes peeled for the freight boss who, if he catches them, will "whale them raw". This is the powerful opening to Robert Jackson Bennett's debut Mr Shivers, arriving on these shores festooned with the kind of praise rarely visited on first novels. It's the time of the Great Depression in the USA and the man hitching a ride is Marcus Connelly, who has little to live for except revenge... Barry Forshaw in The Express A Jew Must Die Jacques Chessex Like The Vampire Of Ropraz, Jacques Chessex's previous novel (see my review here) published in English translation by Bitter Lemon Press, A Jew Must Die is based on an historical crime, and like the first book it raised questions Swiss society did not necessarily want raised. But where Vampire was more concerned with the way society reacted to a crime, A Jew Must Die is more concerned first with the crime itself, the murder, in Payerne, of a Jewish cattle-merchant by Swiss Nazis, and by the lack of reaction from Swiss society to this crime... THE Tory Party's mantra "Broken Britain" might be said to be affirmed by Simon Lelic's provocative debut novel Rupture. Britain is in the grip of a humid summer when teacher Samuel Szajkowski strides into assembly at his school and unleashes a barrage of gunfire. Three pupils and one colleague lie dead before he turns the gun on himself...Barry Forshaw in The Express The remarkable life of the writer Joan Brady is surely a fit subject for an autobiography – but until she writes one, we'll have to be content with highly assured thrillers such as her latest, Venom. We'd already been acquainted with Brady's non-pareil skills in the much-acclaimed Bleedout, which had such writers as Jeffery Deaver and Val McDermid queuing up to scatter praise; the new book builds on (and consolidates) the success of its predecessor... Hollywood Moon Joseph Wambaugh It's the larger-than-life miscreants who really take the biscuit. The usual collection of drag queens and murderous crackheads begins to seem almost quotidian against the cast of villains here. Fraud artist Dewey Gleason and his sharp-tongued wife, Eunice, make their money by stealing credit cards and looting mailboxes. They decide that it's time to move into a bigger league, and initiate an ambitious plan for a kidnapping. But they make the mistake of hiring a fellow criminal, whose secret life as a serial sex attacker is to throw a monkey-wrench into their plans... Barry Forshaw in The Independent Previous 25 Next 25 |
