The Smiling Man
Written by Joseph Knox — Razor-sharp with blunt-talking northerners, literary but spiked with page-turning ferocity, tragedy laced with hope and a convincing cop anti-hero who gets justice both in and outside of the law. These are just some of the paradoxes that make The Smiling…
The Bone Keeper
Written by Luca Veste — Luca Veste, best known for his Liverpool based crime thrillers starring DI Murphy and DS Rossi, is back with a standalone serial killer thriller. The story opens in the past, when an unnamed narrator is 11. She, her 14-year-old brother…
Holy Ceremony
Written by Harri Nykänen, translated by Kristian London — Finnish crime fiction has always been on the quirky side when compared to the more earnest crime novels of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Less often translated or adapted for film or television than the other Scandinavian countries,…
Deep Blue Trouble
Written by Steph Broadribb — Lori Anderson, Steph Broadribb’s Florida-based bounty hunter and single mother, returns in Deep Blue Trouble. There’s no rest for Lori as this story begins one week after the events in the author’s debut novel, Deep Down Dead. Old Man Bonchese, head…
That Old Black Magic by Cathi Unsworth
Another music-related title for a Cathi Unsworth standalone book, and this one had me in its spell from early doors. Like Without The Moon – which we reviewed in 2015, it is set firmly in World War II. Open this eye-catching and slightly spooky cover,…
Keeper by Johana Gustawsson
Translated by Maxim Jakubowski — If you’ve read Johana Gustawsson’s first novel Block 46, you’ll know that this is an author who doesn’t shy away from hard-hitting subjects and graphic descriptions of the cruelty humans inflict upon each other. Keeper, her second novel, confirms her place…