Book Club

Hell is Empty

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Conrad Williams provides a fitting finale to his Joel Sorrell trilogy. The London-based PI finally gets the chance to match wits with his wife’s murderer after a gang of killers escape from a maximum security prison. From the very beginning, these books have been distinguished…
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Book Club

Murderabilia

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A tale that begins with a neat pile of clothes at the side of a busy Glasgow railway track doesn’t sound all that promising, does it? But in the talented hands of Craig Robertson that abandoned clobber marks the start of a darkly disturbing, gut…
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Book Club

The Borrowed

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Chan Ho-Kei’s The Borrowed is a backward-facing epic, looking over sixty years of the modern history of Hong Kong. In six parts it tells the story of Kwan Chun-Dok and his protégé, Sonny Lok, two Hong Kong cops navigating the corrupt and changing world of policing, as…
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Book Club

The Watcher

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The initial premise of this psychological thriller by Ross Armstrong is a post-modern twist on Hitchcock’s 1954 film Rear Window. Lily Gullick is a bird watcher who also spies on her neighbours but her voyeuristic skills are tested when one of them is murdered. She…
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Book Club

The Collection

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Lance Charnes has produced a crime thriller that’s fun and funny. Ex-con Matt Friedrich has to figure out who’s using stolen art works in a giant money-laundering scheme. Rubbing elbows with investors in high-priced art sounds rather civilised, especially in sophisticated Milan – until he finds out that…
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News

Up the creek without a pistol

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On the Radar — The new year is in full swing and 12 January is a big day for crime fiction releases. Our first news report of 2017 brings you nine books to consider, starting with white water rafting in Maine and concluding with nine…
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iBookKindlePrintReviews

Rupture

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Written by Ragnar Jonasson, translated by Quentin Bates — Iceland’s modern answer to Agatha Christie is back in fine fettle, with a tale of two mysteries set in the northernmost regions of this remote island nation. This instalment of the crime series featuring young policeman Ari Thor Arason slots in…
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iBookPrintReviews

Burning Bright

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Written by Nick Petrie — Nick Petrie’s debut, The Drifter, was our favourite first novel of 2016. So, 2017 starts with a bang for the author with the sequel, Burning Bright, released on 10 January. The book sees the return of is Peter Ash, a veteran Marine…
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