This post was republished into my blog’s original timeline from my lost posts archive. Dirty Snow by Georges Simenon Translated by Marc Romano and Louise Varèse For most of us, Simenon is famous, justly, for his creation of Maigret, the pipe-smoking French detective that appeared in over a hundred novels and short stories from the 1930s Read More
Tag: Crime
Doing what comes naturally …
This post was edited and republished into its original place in my blog timeline from my lost posts archive. Lucky Bunny by Jill Dawson Jill Dawson is one of those authors who appears to write a different book every time, although when you look underneath, there are links. The Great Lover tells the story of poet Read More
3 shorter reviews – Nesbo – Sabato – Teller
This post was edited and republished into my blog’s original timeline from my lost post archive. The Tunnel by Ernesto Sabato Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, foreword by Colm Tóibín Ernesto Sabato died recently, just two months short of his one hundredth birthday. He was regarded as one of the greats of Argentinian literature, having Read More
Old reviews from 2011: The start of two dogged detective series…
Cop Hater by Ed McBain Ed McBain is the author who really created the police procedural novel, with his series of fifty-five 87th Precinct books written between 1956 and 2005. In the introduction to Cop Hater, he tells how he came up with the idea of a squadroom of police officers, all with different characters, whom together Read More
Where ‘they beat him up until the teardrops start’ …
Following the Detectives: Real Locations in Crime Fiction edited by Maxim Jakubowski Taking twenty key locations in crime novels and investigating what the areas mean to the authors and their detectives, this book contains a mine of useful information. From Inspector Morse’s Oxford to Wallander’s southern Sweden, from Brunetti’s Venice to Marlowe’s LA – each of Read More
Don’t call me Vicky! Meet V.I. Warshawski …
Indemnity Only by Sara Paretsky. Meet V.I. Warshawski – friends get to call her Vic, never Vicky. Indemnity only is the first in a series of 13 novels featuring the sassy Chicagoan PI. One evening she meets a new client, a banker, who wants her to find his son’s missing girlfriend. Vic goes to the boy’s pad to Read More
Sookie Stackhouse #2
Living Dead In Dallas by Charlaine Harris Living Dead in Dallas is the second in the hugely successful Sookie Stackhouse series of vampire novels by Charlaine Harris. If by any chance you’ve not encountered them before, either as books or in their TV incarnation True Blood, I suggest you start here with the first. In this second novel, Sookie is Read More
Bodies in Bologna
Almost Blue by Carlo Lucarelli Translated by Oonagh Stransky Lucarelli is apparently an established author of over a dozen books, and a TV presenter to boot, but this is the first of his detective novels to get translated into English. Ispettore Grazia Negro is part of a new group within the Italian constabulary set up Read More
A Cosy Mystery That Hits The Spot – Death of a Gossip by M.C. Beaton
M C Beaton, the pen-name of Marion Chesney, is a prolific author of cosy mysteries with two hit series to her name… You may be familiar with Agatha Raisin – a bossy urban sleuth who now lives in the Cotswolds and is delighted to stick her nose into things to keep busy. While I’ve read the Read More
When motherhood all gets too much?
The Point of Rescue by Sophie Hannah. Sally and Nick have two young children and they both work hard. The year before, Sally was feeling the strain of juggling motherhood and her career, all the multi-tasking; she was desperate for a break from it all. When a business trip fell through, she didn’t tell her husband. Read More
An Evening with Sophie Hannah
Last night it was my great pleasure to go to a literary dinner in Abingdon hosted by that second home of mine(!) Mostly Books at a local hostelry – an Abingdon first I believe. The Mostly Booklovers club at the shop had been offered a list of authors who might be approached to give an Read More
File under Noir, not Fantasy
The Dresden Files Books 1 and 2 by Jim Butcher A few weeks ago while talking about crime series to read, my good blog-friend LizF recommended these books to me. As is often the case with me and my TBR mountains, I’d spotted them myself some time ago and had already picked up the first Read More
Of Gangsters and the Great Depression
The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen It’s the 1930s in the height of the great depression, millions are out of work and bands of bank-robbing outlaws are regarded as folk heroes in the USA. Former public enemy number one, John Dillinger, has recently been sent to his grave and stepping up to the top Read More
Marshal Guarnaccia – kidnap in the Florentine hills
Death in Springtime by Magdalen Nabb. The first I’ve read, this is the third novel in Nabb’s series of police procedurals set around Florence and featuring Marshal Guarnaccia. I was recommended this series by good blog-friend LizF who kindly sent me this one to get me started. Nabb, who died in 2007, wrote fourteen novels in Read More
Heatwaves can be murder!
August Heat by Andrea Camilleri Translated by Stephen Sartarelli This is the third of Camilleri’s novels that I’ve read, the tenth in the popular series featuring Inspector Salvo Montalbano, and it was the most enjoyable yet. It’s nearing the middle of August and the heat in Sicily is getting unbearable. Montalbano’s girlfriend Livia is arriving Read More
136 pages of Classic Noir
Double Indemnity by James M Cain I love the classic crime noir novels of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but somehow never got round to read any by James M Cain. I wanted a short novel to fill in a couple of hours and with these 136 pages published in 1943, I found a perfect Read More
A Favourite Author – Michael Connelly
Weekly Geeks, the bookbloggers community website, posed an irresistible task for this week’s topic – to tell us about a favourite author and why you love their books. I’ve raved about Paul Auster who is my real literary hero before, so thought I’d talk about another very different author whose books I love today. I’ve Read More
An evening with Sara Paretsky
Sara Paretsky, the creator of Chicago private investigator V.I.Warshawski, was in town yesterday to coincide with the publication of Hardball, her P.I.’s thirteenth outing. Arriving, she cut a cool figure, clad in gold and skinny trousers with a trendy leopard-print cap and her short, cropped silver hair. The audience immediately warmed to her, with her Read More
The First Detective Novel
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins This was my bookgroup’s Christmas read – we like to pick something classic for festive reading. This was a popular choice, as several of us, me included, have read Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, the real-life Victorian murder case which inspired Collins. I started reading well before Christmas, Read More
This is not a Whodunnit, but a Whydunnit!
Rupture by Simon Lelic This is not a normal whodunnit crime novel, it’s a ‘whydunnit’. We know from the start that a mild-mannered school teacher shot and killed three pupils and a teacher before turning his gun on himself. It’s D.I. Lucia May’s case and although it appears to be an open and shut case, Read More
A chilling and contemporary twist on the vampire novel
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist Translated by Ebba Segerberg All the other vampire books I’ve read in my ‘Season of the Living Dead’ have been rather cosy or had a good sense of humour. But then they’ve been mostly aimed at teens and young adults.Then I came to a Nordic vampire Read More
Sookie & Vampire Bill – what a couple!
Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris The high-school vampire novels I read last week were but mere hors d’oevres in preparation for this – the main course. The Sookie Stackhouse novels have been given the HBO treatment by Alan ‘Six Feel Under‘ Ball, and are currently on our screens as True Blood, but before I Read More
Richard III – Dastardly murderer or totally misunderstood?
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey Most people if asked, including me, would think of Richard III as the hunchback who murdered the princes in the tower. Our information generally comes from Sir Thomas More’s hatchet-job of him by way of Shakespeare and Laurence Olivier or Anthony Sher with a crutch capering around the stage. Read More
What my Mum is reading
Being between books to review at the moment, I asked my 70-something Mum what she’s reading. She probably reads more books than I do, and every time I see her she borrows a bagful or two. She always returns them with sticky notes on telling me what she thought. She reads widely, and dare I Read More
A solid and enjoyable police procedural
Spider Trap by Barry Maitland Barry Maitland is the author of a series of nine crime novels so far featuring the detective team of ‘Brock and Kolla’. Some years ago, I remember reading one of the earlier ones, The Chalon Heads, which was set in the world of stamp collecting. A plot involving gangsters and forgers Read More
Loser’s Town by Daniel Depp
Loser’s Town is the first novel by Daniel Depp, half-brother of the more famous Johnny. As a Hollywood insider, it is full of satirical glimpses of life in the public eye and what goes on behind closed doors. Dave Spandau, ex-stuntman turned private eye is an intelligent and gruff hero that you can’t help but warm Read More
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
This book comes with a bit of baggage. A debut novel, and thriller no less, set in Stalinist Russia. Its publishers gave it a massive publicity campaign, and got it longlisted for the 2008 Booker. Instant controversy – thrillers can’t be literary can they? Well yes they can, you only have to think of John Read More
The Pianist’s Hands by Eugenio Fuentes
This is a crime novel with a difference – where the crime itself, or rather the investigation, doesn’t play much of a part. Instead it’s all about getting under the skin of the main characters, finding out all their foibles and weak points, until the murderer’s identity can be divined. It starts out telling us Read More
Three from the archives …
Let me introduce you to three books I particularly enjoyed reading back in 2006 … Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen Life in a travelling circus was hard, and when anything happened to upset the equilibrium it became brutal, as this well-researched novel details. These crises come one after the other here making this book Read More
Short Takes
I’d like to introduce you to a couple of books that I particularly enjoyed earlier this year before I started my blog … Gold by Dan Rhodes. This is a gently humorous novel about Miyuki and her annual trip to the same Welsh seaside village out of season, where she walks, reads, and drinks beer Read More
