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Potted Reviews 1 – A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James and The...
It’s been a while since I’ve written any reviews so I might be a touch ring rusty. But I’ve got a backlog to get through, so here goes. First up is A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James,...
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Potted reviews: Russian Roulette: The Konstantin Files by Keith Nixon,...
Keith Nixon’s The Fix impressed me a couple of year’s back (and the sequel of sorts I’m Dead Again is just as good). Both featured a six-feet-five Russian tramp called Konstantin whose skillset is...
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Review: How’s The Pain by Pascal Garnier
Simon is an ageing hitman with a terminal illness undertaking one last job before retirement. He befriends the young and simple-minded Bernard and employs him as his driver (telling him that he’s a...
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Review: Zulu by Caryl Feréy
I grabbed this recently while on a book expedition in London. I’d never heard of either the author or the book before, but the blurb appealed to me. It pitched the narrative as somewhere between...
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Review: The Colombian Mule by Massimo Carlotto
Massimo Carlotto’s The Colombian Mule is one of a series of novels featuring a recurring character called Marco ‘The Alligator’ Buratti, an unlicensed PI who was once imprisoned for a crime he didn’t...
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Review: Nowhere by Roger Smith
After last year’s grand guignol excess (in terms of both violence and the vileness of the characters) in the mostly US set home invasion thriller Man Down Roger Smith has toned things down and returned...
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Potted Reviews: The Rapist by Les Edgerton, Berlin Noir by Philip Kerr,...
It’s been a while since I posted any reviews. I’m still avoiding most social media, but I thought that my recent reading has included some strong books that deserve exposure to a much wider audience...
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Review: How’s The Pain by Pascal Garnier
Simon is an ageing hitman with a terminal illness undertaking one last job before retirement. He befriends the young and simple-minded Bernard and employs him as his driver (telling him that he’s a...
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Review: Zulu by Caryl Feréy
I grabbed this recently while on a book expedition in London. I’d never heard of either the author or the book before, but the blurb appealed to me. It pitched the narrative as somewhere between...
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Review: Black Gum by J David Osborne
Having read a couple of Osborne’s previous works (Low Down Death Right Easy and Our Blood In Its Blind Circuit), and having found them both rather impressive, I’ve had my eye on Black Gum for some...
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Review: Amsterdam Rampant by Neil Cocker
Fin McPhail is having a difficult time out in Amsterdam. He’s getting over the break-up of his marriage (and a resulting case of sexual dysfunction) by throwing himself into his job as a marketing...
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Review: Perfidia by James Ellroy
I loved James Ellroy’s LA Quartet. They are about as perfect a series of crime novels as it is possible to get, and in White Jazz he produced one of the best novels ever written (in any genre). It...
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Review: Angels of the North by Ray Banks
Set in the Derwent Hall estate in the Eighties, when Margaret Thatcher’s social experiment with selling off public utilities to the highest bidder, selling council houses to willing tenants, and...
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Review of Ben Turner Is A Dead Man by Ryan Bracha
Some months on from the events of Paul Carter Is A Dead Man, things have changed drastically in New Britain. The slow-burning rebellion that Carter started culminates in a short, bloody war with the...
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Review: Man Down by Roger Smith
In Roger Smith’s Man Down (his first set in the US), South African ex-pat couple from hell, John and Tanya Turner (who are like George and Martha from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, if George and...
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Review: Mixed Blood by Roger Smith
Regular readers will know how much I love the work of Roger Smith. In my opinion, he’s the best writer of noir thrillers around. His work is a mixture of razor sharp, clipped prose, incisive and clever...
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Potted Reviews: Rust and Bone – Craig Davidson, American Death Songs – Jordan...
A couple of heavily altered stories from Craig Davidson’s collection of shorts Rust and Bone were the basis of a recent film of the same name by French director Jacques Audiard. It was a good film, a...
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Review: The Bitch by Les Edgerton
Les Edgerton’s crime novels and short stories have a rich vein of truth and knowledge running through them that most crime writers, even the most talented, simply can’t emulate. Which is hardly...
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Review: A Day in the Life of Jason Dean by Ian Ayris
Jason Dean is an a hard man, a very hard man, the kind of scary-looking bloke who gets sent to collect debts and, if needs be, kill people, which is exactly happens on this particular day, but the...
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Review: The Scent of New Death by Mike Monson
When Phil Gaines’ new wife, a kinky young barmaid called Paige, and his business partner, a psychopathic pervert and genius getaway man called Jeff, run off together it’s a case of so far, so bad. But...
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