State of Terror by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny
Not to be outdone by husband Bill, who has teamed up with James Patterson twice, Hillary Clinton has collaborated with Canadian crime author Louise Penny for a blockbuster political thriller. State of Terror is a zeitgeisty tale immersed in realpolitik with an all-too-plausible nightmare scenario…
The Dark Remains by Ian Rankin and William McIlvanney
This novel was one of the publishing events of 2021. Ian Rankin has completed William McIlvanney’s unfinished manuscript of a prequel to the Laidlaw trilogy – the series credited with establishing the Tartan noir subgenre. (If you’re new to Laidlaw, you can read more about…
Riccardino by Andrea Camilleri
Translated by Stephen Sartarelli — The publication of the Inspector Montalbano stories in English spans nearly two decades so it’s no wonder we have formed such an attachment to the irascible but brilliant detective. Now, however, the curtain is about to fall and we must…
The Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield
The Canadian Astronaut who brought us Space Oddity while on a space odyssey now delivers a grand space opera. The Apollo Murders is an accomplished debut novel, an original and engrossing Cold War space race thriller. Set in 1973, with the confrontation between the US…
Black Reed Bay by Rod Reynolds
Following last year’s gripping Blood Red City, a contemporary financial thriller set in London’s Square Mile, British writer Rod Reynolds has returned to the setting of his earlier novels, the United States. You may remember his post war trilogy which opened with The Dark Inside…
A guide to the Inspector Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri
The writer Simonetta Agnello Hornby argued that Andrea Camilleri should have been put forward for the Nobel Prize. He was a major cultural figure in Italy, and in the arts across Europe. Of course, he’s better known in the English speaking world as the creator…
A Few Days Away by Tony Knighton
A Few Days Away is a hard-edged contemporary noir novel with a relentless anti-hero – a thief with no name. He is hell-bent on revenge and recovering the money that went missing after a bungled robbery that left his partner dead. It’s the second in…