Reese Witherspoon’s book club choices are a bit hit and miss; this one’s a miss. It’s billed as a murder mystery but the mystery remains unresolved, to the extent that we’re never even sure if there was a murder. The author gives the main character a happy ending and then just kind of forgets about […]
Thriller
November Road by Lou Berney
The casual manner of the frequent and brutal killings in this novel is slightly disturbing, but then a number of the characters are mob hitmen. It is New Orleans in 1963, and Frank Guidry knows too much the role of the mob in the assasination of President Kennedy. He’s loyal to his mob bosses, but […]
The Mystery of Three Quarters by Sophie Hannah
What’s not to love about a man who sleeps with a little net over his moustache to keep it tidy? Sophie Hannah conveys Hercule Poirot’s idiosychrosies and prejudices so beautifully that the murder mystery at the heart of the novel is a bonus. The Mystery of Three Quarters is the third novel Hannah has written with […]
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
This mind bending thriller is a cross between Agatha Christie at her bloodiest and Groundhog Day. A sick sort of house party is taking place in a dilapidated mansion in a secluded forest some time in the distant past. At 11pm the host’s daughter Evelyn Hardcastle will be murdered. The protagonist Aiden wakes up each day […]
A Double Life by Flynn Berry
I liked Flynn Berry’s earlier novel Under The Harrow very much, and expected to like A Double Life more than I did. The story is inspired by the 1974 case of Lord Lucan; a privileged man, a bitter marital split, a nanny brutally murdered (presumably because the killer mistook her for the wife), and then the disappearance of the […]
Still Lives by Maria Hummel
I only finished this book so I could tell you not to bother with it. According to The Book Reviewer’s Code of Ethics (that I just made up) I can’t give a book a star rating unless I’ve finished it. So I finished it, and that two and a half hours of my life I […]
After the Darkness by Honey Brown
Wow, this is pretty darn awesome. A middle aged couple, Trudy and Bruce (such uniquely Australian names), happen upon a secluded mansion containing a gallery on The Great Ocean Road. They go inside and what happens inside effectively poisons the rest of their lives. Brown’s writing is mercifully free of cliche and conveys the horror […]
The Katharina Code by Jorn Lier Horst
Love a good bit of Nordic crime fiction. This one is quite not as gripping as its back cover suggests; my heart was not close to stopping at any stage. It is a however a gently unfurling story which is just interesting enough to keep you reading, with a satisfying conclusion. But as far as […]