Unseen

Unseen is another debut novel, this time from Mari Jungstedt, a rising star of Scandanavian crime fiction. The book cover proclaims her as ‘a thrilling new voice in Swedish crime’. I think I would be tempted to call her ‘a promising new voice’.
Jungstedt uses her experience in broadcasting to provide some of the background to [...]

Black Seconds

Black Seconds is the fifth of Karin Fossum’s novels to be translated into English (a sixth has recently come out in hardback) and it will certainly do no harm to her reputation as one of the leading contemporary writers of Scandanavian crime fiction, which is currently riding the crest of a wave, with writers like [...]

Last Stop Salina Cruz

Last Stop Salina Cruzis the debut novel of David Lale and tells two linked narratives. The first is that of Arthur Cravan, nephew of Oscar Wilde and Dada-ist poet, boxer, con-man and fabulist, follows his journey through Europe and finally to South America at tetime of the First World War, seeking to escape the draft [...]

The Coroner’s Lunch

The Coroner’s Lunch is the first in the series of Colin Cotterill’s crime novels set in the 1970s in the Laos People’s Democratic Republic after the communist takeover and featuring the elderly and reluctant Dr Siri Paiboun as the crime-solving State Coroner, who is left cryptic clues by the spirits of the murder victims on his [...]

The Book of Murder

Guillermo Martinez is a young Argentinian writer with a PhD in Mathematics. He first came to some notice in the UK a couple of years ago with the publication of The Oxford Murders. That book, which enjoyed a respectable success, has recently been made into a film with John Hurt, which has helped enormously to raise [...]

The Tenderness of Wolves

The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney was one of the successes of 2006, when it won the Costa Prize. Set in mid-nineteenth century Canada, the premise of the plot is simple. A man is discovered brutally murdered in his shack and at the same time a young, troubled man from the town has gone missing. The [...]

Listening Woman

This is the second of Tony Hillerman’s novels that I have read about the Navajo police detective Joe Leaphorn. I was left unconvinced by The Blessing Way  – it seemed a little lame and dated. Listening Woman I found to be a much more satisfying read. Perhaps it has simply taken this amount of time [...]