What have you been reading during lockdown? We’ve gone for a classic espionage thriller, a smattering of short sharp stabs, an angry, radical thriller and a masterclass in modern American literature. All of them turned out to be four- or five-star high fliers. Take your pick… SS-GB by Len Deighton This may be in the…
A genteel seaside town on England’s south coast isn’t the usual setting for a homicidal maniac to start stalking his prey – but then, this killer is more than a little unusual. For a start, he sends his intended victims a letter which explains his peculiar personality – thus simultaneously providing the police with potential…
In this, the first Thomas Haftmann book, we encounter the controlled madness of two men, one a former cop, the other a misfit and killer of women. Ex-homicide cop Thomas Haftmann is recently divorced and working as a PI. Barely surviving financially, and haunted by his own twin demons of gambling and alcohol, Haftmann gets…
It ain’t easy for an author writing British crime fiction to find that pivot-point between a realistic, believable situation and a genuinely gripping storyline. While the UK crime-rate is far from ideal, blazing gun battles, weird serial killings and helicopter chases aren’t exactly part of everyday life. So BritCrime thrillers tend to veer from one…
Original and inventive, Northtown Eclipse takes the typical crime cliché of a seedy private eye and subverts the standard hardboiled detective story into something significantly more substantial. Author Robb White twists the tropes of the genre to tell a much more meaningful story, one which explores the human condition at its most personal – a…
Van Veeteren is among the most famous of Swedish fictional detectives, but this was my first written encounter with the character. This book started off brilliantly with a mystifying mystery of the locked room tradition: a drowned wife in a locked bathroom, the husband so inebriated he could only remember their wild festivity of the…
It doesn’t matter if you’ve not read the two earlier encounters with Daniel Beckett, the Soho-based private investigator, raconteur, womaniser, fashionista, badass mofo and international man of mystery – you pretty much get the measure of the man in the opening three chapters of Femme Fatale. He flirts, fights, flirts some more, struts his peacock…
We first mentioned Mark L Fowler’s quirky and distinctive homage to the golden age detective almost a year ago, and are delighted to hear that The Man Upstairs is getting greater exposure now to introduce it to a wider audience. Mark has written several standalone novels which explore the darker side of life, as well as…
In the best tradition of the two-time-loser gumshoe detective, private eye Derek Lasker is one step away from sleeping on the streets. He’s run out of cash. He hasn’t had a client in months. He’s no clue where his next low-fat latte might be coming from and he’s reached a crisis of personal hygiene due…
Murderers, thieves, political killers and private investigators – these are the people who populate Simon Maltman’s new collection of 12 short stories. I say ‘new’, but if you’ve read his novel, ‘A Chaser On The Rocks’ then you’ll recognise Billy Chapman, a private investigator who plies his trade in the 1940s while Belfast suffered its…
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