The Poisoned Pawn
Written by Peggy Blair — Like many other crime fiction readers, I was bowled over by Canadian author Peggy Blair’s debut novel The Beggars’ Opera – available in the UK as Midnight in Havana. So, I was eagerly awaiting the second in the series. The…
Someday Never Comes
Written by Frances di Plino — There’s a worrying epidemic in the fictional town of Bradchester. Young children – from as young as six years old – are being smuggled into the town and sold on to paedophiles. Then, when the perverts have finished with…
Cast-Iron Men
Written by Dominic Kearney — As 2007 draws to a close, the city of Liverpool looks like a giant building site as it prepares to take centre stage as the 2008 European City of Culture. It’s a huge fillip for a city that has been…
Scratch One
Written by Michael Crichton, as John Lange — Late last year, Hard Case Crime reprinted eight crime novels written by Michael Crichton. They were under the pseudonym John Lange, while he was at university in the late 60s and early 70s. We reviewed Grave Descend…
The Wrong Quarry
Written by Max Allan Collins — One of America’s leading modern pulp crime authors, Max Allan Collins has been writing Quarry stories since back in 1976. The series began with The Broker, and the most recent one was 2010’s Quarry’s Ex. Now, the hitman hero/anti-hero…









