Book Club

The Visitors

This debut novel is anything but run of the mill. Set on the fictional Scottish isle of Bancree, The Visitors is a heady mix of myth and modern life, with a plot that ebbs and flows like the waves that surround its misty setting.A modern…
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Book Club

A Madras Miasma

Set in the eponymous Indian city just after World War I, the green shoots of India’s desire for independence are pushing through. Superintendent Christian Le Fanu is in self-imposed exile from England, and is summoned to investigate when the body of a white woman is…
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Book Club

Undercover

A football player’s agent called Lydia Gallagher has her family kidnapped during a visit to Northern Ireland. But undercover cop Cormac Kelly has infiltrated the gang. Lydia’s husband is shot and Kelly is forced to blow his cover. He managed to save their lives but…
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Book Club

The Amazing Test Match Crime

We reviewed Adrian Alington’s 1939 hilarious crime novel during Classics in September 2014 where it landed a five-star rating. A shadowy organisation has hired a gang of thugs to disrupt The British Empire, and they’re going to start with cricket. The Professor, Sawn-off Carlo and…
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Book Club

Malice

Japanese sensation Keigo Higashino is back with his fourth novel in English translation – the first of his series following police detective Kyoichiro Kaga. Here popular author Kunihiko Hidaka is found dead in his home the day before he is due to leave the country….
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A Dark and Twisted Tide

This seventh outing for Lacey Flint and Mark Joesbury finds the former Met Detective looking for a quieter life as she finds her feet as a member of the Metropolitan Police’s Marine Unit. Some chance of that after an early morning wild swim in the…
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Book Club

An Event in Autumn

This really is the last ever Wallander book from Henning Mankell and it’s one to savour. The novella features the Swedish detective in a typically despondent mood as autumn sets in. Suddenly, it seems like a cherished dream is about to come true: a house…
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The Darkest Heart

Dan Smith is a wizard at conjuring up the atmosphere of inaccessible, hostile locations around the world. This time it’s the mining landscape of inland Brazil, where capitalist greed is rife and human life cheap. This is essentially a rewriting of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,…
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