The Blessing Way

When it comes to crime fiction I have to admit a preference for British and European writers. I think I’ve generally made an assumption (without any evidence, I should add) that European crime fiction tends to me more psychological, more complex in terms of its narrative twists and generally more sophisticated writing, whereas American crime [...]

Engleby

Surprisingly, perhaps, this is the first Sebastian Faulks novel that I’ve read and I picked it up not really knowing what to expect. To be honest, I thought it was going to be a campus novel and that is certainly how it starts off, but it soon becomes a dark psychological thriller. The novel is [...]

Grotesque

This is the second of Natsuo Kirino’s novels to be translated into English and, as with Out, Grotesque cannot easily be categorised as a crime novel. It is so much more than that. The novel begins with the murders of two Tokyo prostitutes, but there is no whodunnit element to the narrative. We learn early [...]

Once Upon A Time In The North

Once Upon A Time In The North is the latest book by Philip Pulmanand is a prequel to the hugely successful His Dark Materials trilogy, telling the story of the first encounter between the aeronaut Lee Scoresby and the armoured bear Iorek Byrnison. It is only a short book and I read it out loud [...]

Empire State

It’s difficult to know what exactly to write about Henry Porter’s Empire State. Porter’s themes are the old familiar ones: terrorism, international crime, espionage, the rather questionable behavious of the security services, all set in a world where morality is not the black and white issue we might like it to be, and where the [...]

The Swallows of Kabul

Yasmina Khadra is the pseudonym of Algerian army officer Mohammed Moulessehoul, who adopted the tactic to avoid submitting maunscripts to the army censor. Originally written in French, The Swallows of Kabul tells the story of ‘ordinary’ people struggling to survive (and more often than not failing to do so) under the brutal Taliban regime. Like [...]

I Haven’t Dreamed of Flying for a While

This is the third of Taichi Yamada’s novels that has been translated into English in recent years and, although it was originally published in Japan in the early nineties, this will further cement her growing reputation outside of her home country as being a leading voice in contemporary Japanese literature. As with Strangers and In [...]

Carter Beats the Devil

I have a few books to blog over the next few days, so let me start by saying a few things about Glen David Gold’s Carter Beats the Devil. This is a first novel and, judging from the acknowledgments, one that was originally conceived as part of a postgraduate programme in Creative Writing. It is [...]