Creator: Donald Pirie
Publication date: 2005-09-21
RRP: £14.67
Price: £3.07
Review The Flood (CD) / Orion:Is it a comforting or precarious feeling, being the UK's number one best-selling male crime writer? Only Ian Rankin could answer that, but it's clear that the author is not content to rest on his laurels, and is always prepared to reinvigorate his excellent Inspector Rebus novels whenever a sense of déjà vu starts to creep in. And now we have Rankin's The Flood, a reissue of his first, unremarked novel. Was Rankin wise to sanction the re-release of this early book? After all, when we were given the chance to read again all the novels of Martin Cruz Smith had written before his groundbreaking Gorky Park, it was a sobering experience - as the latter novel was a quantum leap in achievement beyond the previous books. Not so with The Flood: while this darkly disquieting novel caused ripples on its first publication, its reappearance after 20 years is something of a cause for celebration. Rankin began the novel as a 25-year-old student, and its publication by a small university publishing house (with a modest print run) escaped any critical attention. It took the atmospheric and gritty Rebus novels for us to see just how talented Rankin was, and it's a fascinating experience to re-encounter this tyro work. The Flood is not a crime novel. Mary Miller is an alienated young woman. As a child, she had had an accident involving a flood of chemical discharges from the local coal mine - she had survived, badly injured, but sympathy for her plight evaporated when the man who was responsible for the accident met his death in a mining accident shortly after. The pious community she lives in views her with superstitious dread. [+]Time passes, and she gives birth to an illegitimate son, Sandy. Her unsatisfactory love affair with a teacher is going nowhere, and her son has started a relationship with a homeless girl. But both Sandy and his mother have to confront the past, and both find their lives will be changed by elemental forces - notably the flood of the title. As the above conveys, this is sombre stuff, but that won't put off Rankin aficionados, who look for the dark and disturbing in his work. While the book is (inevitably) not as fully achieved as his later work, there are many fascinating pre-echoes of the off-kilter psychology that is Rankin's stock-in-trade, and any rough edges of the narrative are more than offset by the power of the already highly individual vision on offer here. -Barry Forshaw.
Creator: David Case
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2005-04-15
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £12.49
Price: £9.72
Review Murders in the Rue Morgue: And Other Stories / Tantor Media, Inc:
Creator: Nathaniel Parker
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2006-06-02
RRP: £10.99
Price: £4.24
Review The Blood-Dimmed Tide / Macmillan Audio Books:
Publication date: 2004-11-08
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £16.63
Price: £9.45
Review Best of Sherlock Holmes: v. 1 / Hodder & Stoughton:
Authors
- John Eldredge; Stasi Eldredge
Publication date: 2005-03-15
Dewey code: 248.843
RRP: £13.99
Price: £9.23
Review Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul / Oasis Audio, Div of Domain Communications:
Creator: Bill Paterson
Publication date: 2008-01-02
RRP: £13.70
Price: £7.00
Review Dead Souls (Latest edition) (CD) / Orion:
Authors
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- William Gillette
Publication date: 2005-06-25
RRP: £11.99
Price: £7.91
Review The Immortal Sherlock Holmes / MJW Publishing Limited:
Creator: Kerry Shale
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 2006-05-02
RRP: £13.99
Price: £3.55
Review The Death Collectors / HarperCollins Audio:
Publication date: 2007-05-03
RRP: £16.63
Price: £14.23
Review Confessions of Brother Haluin / Hodder & Stoughton:
Publication date: 2006-10-09
RRP: £18.58
Price: £11.77
Review Cross / Headline:James Patterson has a position that is unassailable - as one of America's most reliable crime and thriller writers, his best-selling status is assured. But it has to be said that he has tested the patience of his long-time readers by the series of books written in collaboration with other, lesser-known writers, in which it seemed that his own participation was the least important element. True Patterson fans will always welcome books such as Cross as the real deal: unadulterated James Patterson, sans collaborators. Here we have Patterson's favourite protagonist, Alex Cross, in the days when he was making his mark in the Washington, DC Police Department. To his horror, he witnesses his wife being murdered in front of him by an unknown killer. Years pass, and Cross has left the FBI for his former profession as a psychologist. He feels he has come to terms with the events of the past, but then receives a call from his ex-partner John Sampson, requesting a favour in tracking down a serial rapist in Georgetown. Soon, the case presents connections to the death of Alex's wife - is he finally being given the chance to catch her murderer? This is James Patterson, doing what he does best: delivering a narrative in which there is not an ounce of wasted fat. Alex Cross is always, of course, a strong protagonist, and the personal element here energises an already kinetic storyline. James Patterson, we are reminded, needs no collaborators. [+]-Barry Forshaw.
Publication date: 2006-11-16
RRP: £16.99
Price: £8.00
Review Hannibal / Random House Audiobooks:
Authors
- Peter Robinson NARRATED BY Geoff Annis
Publication date: 2007-08-01
RRP: £29.36
Price: £13.61
Review Piece of My Heart ( Unabridged Edition): Unabridged / Whole Story Audio Books:
Creator: Joan Hickson
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2003-11-17
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £16.99
Price: £10.36
Review The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side: Complete & Unabridged / HarperCollins Audio:
Price: £12.50
Review Word Play - the Sue Grafton Collection: "A Is for Alibi" , "B Is for Burglar" , "C Is for Corpse" (Wordplay):
Publication date: 2004-07-19
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £12.99
Price: £8.53
Review Resurrection Men: BBC Radio 4 Full-cast Dramatisation (Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:Rebus is back. Resurrection Men, the 13th DI Rebus novel, finds Ian Rankin's doughty detective off the case. He explodes at his superior DCS Gill Templar over the increasingly frustrating murder inquiry into the savage killing of an Edinburgh art dealer and his punishment is a spell cooling his heels at the Scottish Police College in central Scotland. Rebus balks at his "retraining" but he's not alone: he's part of an ill-assorted group of similar officers-all with an attitude problem and a dislike of the institution they find themselves in. Given an old unsolved case to work on the group is obliged to polish up their teamwork while supervisors assess the reprobates. But some of the team have secrets not unconnected to the case they've been handed and Rebus finds that anything goes when it comes to keeping the past obscured. This is Rankin in top form with Rebus rejuvenated by the edgy new milieu he's dropped into. Complicating things, the Scottish Crime Squad asks Rebus to act as a link to someone who can deliver the inside dirt on an old nemesis, gangster "Big Ger" Cafferty. In Edinburgh, Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke has to take over the case of the murdered art dealer and, like Rebus, finds herself getting closer to the unpleasant Mr Cafferty. Forget the miscast John Hannah in the TV movies, this is the real Rebus: gritty, idiomatic and etched in prose that wastes nae a word in its redefining of the crime novel. [+]-Barry Forshaw.
Creator: Emily Woof
Publication date: 2004-05-06
RRP: £14.99
Price: £4.62
Review Tokyo / Random House Audiobooks:Tokyo is another of Mo Hayder's deliciously chilling criminal outings, but probably won't produce the frisson of disapproval that such novels as Birdman and The Treatment did. The days are gone when Hayder was identified as one of a cadre of women writers who did something totally unacceptable: produce grisly crime novels quite as unsettling as the products of male imagination. People seem to have finally accepted that the tough crime novel needn't be an exclusively male preserve. Her troubled female protagonist in Tokyo is Grey, haunting the thronging streets of Tokyo in search of an elusive piece of film recording the infamous Nanking massacre of 1937. But did the film ever exist? The past is a touchy subject for Grey, with incidents in her own life that she has not yet come to terms with. She ill-advisedly becomes a hostess in a nightclub where the clientele is a tad unsavoury (another example of Hayder utilising real-life crime for her plots, with the echoes of a recent murder case). And Grey finds a lead to her quest: a taciturn survivor of the massacre who is now an academic, with no time for the woman pestering him. But Grey makes progress with him-until she encounters a powerful Godfather figure and his violent associates, with a clandestine source for his well-being a much sought-after elixir. Soon, Grey's life becomes two things: very complicated and a place of considerable danger. The change of locale for Mo Hayder here has ensured that the imaginative energy of her earlier books is consolidated, as is the rejection of the now hackneyed serial killer plot. [+]Atmosphere is brilliantly sustained, set pieces are pulse-racing, and (most satisfying of all) Grey is a truly complex and damaged heroine, the perfect conduit for the reader through this dark world. -Barry Forshaw.
Creator: David Shaw Parker
Publication date: 2007-10-05
RRP: £14.99
Price: £4.00
Review Not Safe After Dark: v. 1 / Macmillan Digital Audio:
Creator: Armand Schultz
Edition: Abridged
Publication date: 2008-01-07
Dewey code: 813.54
RRP: £16.99
Price: £5.65
Review Protect and Defend / Simon & Schuster Audio:
![Review Orion / The Narrows [Abridged version]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51zSFI-z5WL._SL160_.jpg)
Creator: David Soul
Publication date: 2004-06-01
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £16.63
Price: £3.47
Review The Narrows [Abridged version] / Orion:Sequels are all about expectations fulfilled: The Narrows is at once a new novel about Michael Connolly's series hero Harry Bosch, cop turned private eye, and a sequel to The Poet, his most highly regarded stand-alone thriller. Harry is investigating the death of Terry McCaleb-the former FBI man who dominated in Blood Work; Rachel Walling has been recalled from administrative exile when the Poet, her former boss Backus, starts killing again and sending taunts intended for her and McCaleb (who he also trained). Connolly is very good on the psychology of investigation and on the essential voyeurism involved in contemplating someone else's mental processes. This is a book with a strong sense of place-Connolly can find menace anywhere from the desert of Nevada to the half-hidden dangerous LA river that gives the book its evocative title. If the book has a weakness, it is in the personal interactions of the two detectives-both Harry and Rachel act according to scripts we know well from previous adventures. Nevertheless, The Narrows is one of America's major thriller writers at the top of his game. -Roz Kaveney.
Creator: Buck Schirner
Publication date: 2005-01-07
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £12.72
Price: £15.23
Review The Poet (CD) / Orion:
| Browse Crime, Thrillers & Mystery:
Models & Brands:
The Flood (CD), Murders in the Rue Morgue: And Other Stories, The Blood-Dimmed Tide, Best of Sherlock Holmes: v. 1, Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul, Dead Souls (Latest edition) (CD), The Immortal Sherlock Holmes, The Death Collectors, Confessions of Brother Haluin, Cross, Hannibal, Piece of My Heart ( Unabridged Edition): Unabridged, The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side: Complete & Unabridged, Word Play - the Sue Grafton Collection: "A Is for Alibi" , "B Is for Burglar" , "C Is for Corpse" (Wordplay), Resurrection Men: BBC Radio 4 Full-cast Dramatisation (Radio Collection), Tokyo, Not Safe After Dark: v. 1, Protect and Defend, The Narrows [Abridged version], The Poet (CD) |
