Now this was dark fun! Wilbur Cox works in an advertising agency in London. He commutes in every day from north of London. He likes to go for a drink with his colleagues before catching the train home. It’s a bit of a walk to the tube station, but there’s a short cut through a Read More
Category: Blog Tour
Unnatural Death by Patricia Cornwell – blogtour
It’s hard to believe that we’ve now reached the 27th Kay Scarpetta thriller from Patricia Cornwell! I remember discovering them back in the early 1990s, reading the first two, Post Mortem and Body of Evidence, back to back and then devouring each one as they were published up until about 2000. I’m pretty sure that Read More
The Beaver Theory by Antti Tuomainen, blogtour
Translated by David Hackston And so we come to the final part of Antti Tuomainen’s Rabbit Factor Trilogy featuring the awakening of Henri Koskinen, an actuary, a man who thinks in numbers. It began in The Rabbit Factor when Henri learns he has inherited his brother’s adventure park, the failing YouMeFun. Henri discovers that Juvani Read More
Divide by Anna Jones – blogtour
It’s the last day of the blogtour for this thought-provoking book and I’m delighted to be closing the tour. Anna Jones is a journalist specialising in country affairs, working out of Bristol. She’s also a farmer’s daughter, and her book is her analysis of the relationship between town and country as its sub-title says. On Read More
The Murmurs by Michael J Malone – blogtour
Last year I read my first book by Malone who is a mainstay of Tartan Noir. Quicksand of Memory led me up the garden path and back again with its twists and turns, so I wasn’t going to turn down his latest, The Murmurs, was I? It begins with Annie Jackson waking from a nightmare Read More
The Traitor by Ava Glass – blogtour
Emma Makepeace is back! Last autumn, I absolutely devoured The Chase – Glass’s first book in the ‘Alias Emma’ series, and I was delighted to join the blogtour for the second book in the series, The Traitor. It begins with a body in a suitcase, Emma is called to join her boss Charles Ripley at Read More
The Trap by Catherine Ryan Howard – blogtour
This was my first encounter with the Irish thriller writer, I very much doubt it’ll be my last, for I enjoyed The Trap very much, not wanting to put it down. Howard is particularly known for her twists, so I was hoping for some in this novel, which didn’t disappoint on that score – but Read More
Deadly Autumn Harvest by Tony Mott – blogtour
Translated by Marina Sofia I should state at the outset that Marina (who blogs here) and I have been blog-friends for many years now, but despite living not so far from each other have never quite managed to meet up – yet! She and her colleagues are the brains behind Corylus Books, crime translation specialists Read More
The Housekeepers by Alex Hay – blogtour
I don’t normally read much historical fiction, and when the publisher sent me a proof copy of this debut novel a good while ago, I wasn’t sure about it, but added it to my pile as publication was still months away. Later, when Anne from Random Tours invited people to join the blogtour, I realised Read More
Summer Fishing in Lapland by Juhani Karila
Translated by Lola Rogers In my ever-growing experience of Nordic reads, I think that the Finns win in terms of quirk factor! And, Summer Fishing in Lapland is perhaps the quirkiest of the lot so far – described as Finnish weird in terms of genre. It is a delightful, madcap adventure and debut novel by Read More
The Bleeding by Johana Gustawsson – blogtour
Translated from the French by David Warriner The Bleeding is an unusual crime novel with three timelines covering three different eras, combining a millennial police procedural strand set in Québec, with two historical threads, one set in post-WWII Québec in 1949, and the other older still in 1899, in Belle-Époque Paris. The focus of each Read More
Psyche and Eros by Luna McNamara
I must admit that Psyche and Eros are two characters from ancient Greek and Roman mythology, Eros also being known as Cupid to the Romans, that I know little about. I know nothing about Psyche other than her name; of course, I know a tiny bit more of Eros as the God of Love who Read More
Black River by Nilanjana Roy
I’m delighted to be one of today’s stops on the Pushkin Vertigo blog tour for this gripping noir novel by Indian author Nilanjana Roy. Although billed as a murder mystery, and there is indeed a murder to be solved, it is also very much a ‘state of the nation’ novel bringing the religious politics of Read More
The Man in the Corduroy Suit by James Wolff
I’m delighted to be the penultimate stop on the blogtour for this book, the third standalone spy novel of ‘The Discipline Files’ series by James Wolff. A new author to me, and one I’ll definitely be returning to since reading this novel. The book begins with a top secret memo, outlining the admission of a Read More
Thirty Days of Darkness by Jenny Lund Madsen
Translated by Megan E. Turney This debut novel is already a prize winner in Madsen’s home country of Denmark, and it’s easy to see why. At first we love to hate the protagonist, Hannah, an established writer of much praised and exquisitely crafted prose novellas, who has fallen into that mid-career slump; her backlist is Read More
A Game of Deceit by Tim Glister – Blog tour
Exotic locations are de rigueur for the period spy novel genre, but none are more suited for a bit of cold war paranoia and plenty of double-crossing than Hong Kong in the mid 1960s. That is the setting for half of Tim Glister’s third Richard Knox spy novel. I haven’t read the first two – Read More
Isaac and the egg by Bobby Palmer – blogtour
The paperback of this big bestseller was published last week. I had bought the hardback for myself when it was first published, so this blogtour provided the impetus to rescue it from being buried in my TBR piles. It begins with a harrowing scenario. Isaac Addy stands on a bridge, unsure whether to jump or Read More
Viper’s Dream by Jake Lamar – Blogtour
This novel just drips atmosphere – of two specific types! First there is Harlem in the 1930s – A contained world within New York City that is as complete in itself as in Chester Himes’ wonderful novels from the late 1950s (which begin with A Rage in Harlem reviewed here). Secondly, there is the world Read More
More. Numbers. Every. Day. by Micael Dahlen & Helge Thorbjørnsen – blog tour
Translated by Paul Norlen. Let’s face it, I was always going to find a popular science book written by a pair of Swedish behavioural economists about the psychology of numbers absolutely fascinating! Back in 2020 I read a book called Numbers Don’t Lie by Vaclav Smil which teased out all kinds of wonderful facts from Read More
Beautiful Shining People by Michael Grothaus – blogtour
I must admit that reading the first few pages of this novel, by American author Grothaus, I thought 372 pages of this… will I make it to the end? Something I would do my best to do because I’d signed up for the blog tour. Well something clicked and I couldn’t put the book down. Read More
Squeaky Clean by Callum McSorley – blogtour
I’ve had problems before with Glasgow dialect in novels, spending so much time deciphering it that I lost the enjoyment of reading the text. I really crossed my fingers that Squeaky Clean would be readable, and my heart fell slightly when we met some of the characters that frequent the car wash that makes the Read More
The Hand That Feeds You by Mercedes Rosende – blogtour
Translated from the Spanish by Tim Gutteridge This is the first novel I’ve read by a Uruguayan author. It was superb, and given my recent diet of mainly Argentinian literature when I’ve ventured to South America to read, it had a different feel to books from its neighbour – Uruguay is sandwiched between the northeast Read More
The Forcing by Paul E Hardisty – blogtour
Canadian, Hardisty is an engineer, university professor and climate change scientist as well as author of six novels. I’ve not read any of the previous five, but his sixth is an urgent clarion call to us all. If I had to do an elevator pitch for it I’d say… JG Ballard’s The Drought meets Logan’s Read More
Dirt by Sarah Sultoon – blog tour
I must confess, I know very little about the kibbutz movement at all. My knowledge is coloured by the media portrayal in the 1960s and 1970s of Utopian communes of hippy farmers which belies the hard work that farming actually is. Wikipedia tells me that the kibbutz volunteering phenomenon took off in the mid-1960s, peaking Read More
Animal Life by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir – blog tour
Translated by Brian Fitzgibbon One of the highlights of my Nordic reading back at the beginning of the year was discovering new to me authors, of whom Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir was one. Her first novel to be translated into English, Butterflies in November was quirky and delightful; an episodic road trip with added recipes. She’s Read More
Dashboard Elvis is Dead by David F Ross – blogtour
Anyone who knows me, knows I love a book with rock’n’roll at its heart. Dashboard Elvis is Dead is such a novel, but it is also a lot more too. This novel may have started out as the story of a Texan runaway who met a Scottish band on tour in the USA, but the Read More
The Vicious Circle by Katherine St. John
It’s my turn on the blog tour today for this super psychological thriller, set mostly at a retreat in the steamy tropics of Mexico’s rainforest. Sveta loves Chase, Chase loves Sveta, Chase still loves his mum, and his mother is the one thing standing between them regarding their wedding. It must be on her old Read More
Urgent Matters by Paula Rodriguez – Blog tour
Translated by Sarah Moses I’ve been reading a bit more Latin American literature in translation this year. All in translation from Spanish, but from a range of countries: Cuba, Colombia, Mexico and Argentina, to be precise. Most of these novels have also been noirish or had a psychological thriller feel, but all have been unashamedly Read More
Deceit by Jónína Leósdóttir
Translated by Sylvia and Quentin Bates I’m delighted to be today’s stop on the blogtour for yet another new to me Icelandic author. Deceit is the first of Jónína Leósdóttir’s books to be translated into English, brought to us by Corylus Books and translated by veteran Icelandic translator Quentin Bates with Sylvia Bates. Deceit is Read More
Thirteen Ways to Smell a Tree by David George Haskell
I’m delighted to be on of the stops leading off the blogtour for this super little book, a collection of essays about the olfactory aspects of trees by a noted writer and biologist. I was particularly interested in this volume as it promised not just nature writing, which is a theme I’ve been actively trying Read More