Return to Hiroshima by Bob Van Laerhoven
Translated by Brian Doyle — Belgian TV crime series have made a huge leap forward in recent years, with Salamander and Tabula Rasa being the most recent ones to hit the UK screens. Belgian crime fiction, however, has been more opaque to English-speaking audiences and is…
No Place Like Home
Written by Rebecca Muddiman — Some people are born lucky, others drag their bad fortune behind them like Jacob Marley’s chains. Polly Cooke definitely falls into the latter category, although things begin so brightly for her you may be fooled into thinking otherwise. Polly is 35…
Kiss of Death by Paul Finch
UK crime fiction stalwart Paul Finch has made an enviable career for himself, no doubt helped by his experiences as a policeman, crime beat journalist and screenwriter. His Heck series, featuring DS Mark ‘Heck’ Heckenburg of the National Crime Group’s Serial Crimes Unit, is now…
Something in the Water
Written by Catherine Steadman — She’s best known as Mabel Lane Fox in the Downton Abbey TV series, but Catherine Steadman’s debut novel couldn’t be further from the life and times of Lord Grantham’s fictional Yorkshire estate. It opens slap bang in the present, in…
The Good Sister
Written by Morgan Jones — “Out of pain will come good. That is how history is made.” These are the uncompromising words uttered by the 17-year-old protagonist of this novel. What would make an apparently well-adjusted, serious young girl flee to actively embrace extremist propaganda?…
Russian Roulette
Written by Sara Sheridan — When Sheridan’s first Mirabelle Bevan book, Brighton Belle, was published in 2012 I was quickly hooked by the story of an ex-Secret Service backroom girl, Mirabelle, who thinks her life is over after World War II. Like many women who are…
The War in the Dark
Written by Nick Setchfield — Christopher Winter works for British Intelligence, and although he’s a spy, his talents lie more in removing threats to the state than tradecraft or espionage; he is somewhat of a blunt instrument. It is London, in the autumn of 1963 and…