Indignation

At the age of seventy-six Philip Roth remains as prolific as ever – perhaps even more so, as if time is running out on him to write all the books he has left within him. Indignation was his novel of last year, like Everyman before it, is a book of modest length – a mere [...]

Tokyo Year Zero

David Peace, perhaps best known for The Red Riding Quartet, which was made into a successful TV series here in the UK and The Damned Utd, a fictional biography of Brian Clough which was made into a film, until recently lived in Tokyo. Tokyo Year Zero is the first in a trilogy of novels, the [...]

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is the much-anticipated final instalment of Swedish writer Stiegg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. The weekend it was published it was already sat on my bookshelf (having pre-ordered it) and I came across two reviews of it. The first was a panel of reviewers on Radio 4 (I think it [...]

Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Darkly Draeming Dexter is the first in Jeff Lindsay’s series of Dexter novels that have since been adapted into a successful TV series. The novel (and indeed all subsequent novels) are, on the one hand, straightforward whodunnits, but with one rather ingenious difference. Dexter, a police department pathologist, who – along with his police officer [...]

Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story

Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story by Paul Auster is so short that it feels like something of a cheat including it on this list at all. In fact, unless I keep this review relatively short it runs the risk of being longer than the book itself. Well, not quite, but you get the idea!
I’ve read a fair bit [...]

The Resurrectionist

In early nineteenth century England resurrectionists were bodysnatchers, stealing the bodies of the recently dead to sell to universities and hospitals for anatomy classes. This was the ‘golden age’ of bodysnatching and for those who were prepared to take the risks, there were handsome profits to be made.
The Resurrectionist by Australian author James Bradley tells [...]

A Most Wanted Man

I have come to John le Carre a little late. When the BBC first dramatised le Carre’s Smiley novels, I must have been about twelve or thirteen, just a little too young for them. My brother, whi is three years older than me, read them voraciously while I stuck to the cosier world of Agatha [...]

Why Look at Animals?

Strictly speaking, being a collectionof essays rather than a work of fiction, Why Look at Animals? shouldnot be on this particular list, but John Berger’s writing is so wonderfully measured and lyrical, that I think its inclusion is justified.
Why Look at Animals? is a short collection of eight essays and one poem, most of which [...]

Doors Open

Doors Open is Ian Rakin’s first novel since he ‘retired’ Rebus in Exit Music and if Rebus fans were expecting a new detective to begin anther series of novels, then Rankin has surprised them. Firstly, Doors Open is a crime novel, rather than a murder novel and, whilst a new dtective, in the shape of [...]

The Girl Who Played with Fire

This is the second volume in Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (the final volume was published earlier this week in the UK) and I found it an even more satisfying read than The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). The same series of characters play their part and Larsson’s anti-heroine, Lisbeth Salander, is his most masterly creation. The [...]