iBookKindlePrintReviews

A Man's Head by Georges Simenon

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Translated by David Coward — Having accrued an incomplete collection of dog-eared, yellowed and slightly foxed editions of Simenon’s Maigret novels by scavenging second hand bookshops, Penguin’s project to reprint all 75 of them was music to my ears. This set is being translated afresh…
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Book Club

Dog Will Have His Day

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The Three Evangelists appeared in English in 2006, and this is the long awaited sequel by Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau, AKA Fred Vargas. The story opens with the bizarre discovery of a human toe bone in a random dog turd. Louis Kehlweiler is the sharp-eyed observer. He…
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Book Club

The Lying-Down Room

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“I love Paris in the summer when it sizzles”, goes the old song. Certainly, the August heat is a trial for Chief Inspector Serge Morel as he tries to solve a puzzling and brutal series of murders. Not only is Morel finding the temperature a…
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iBookKindlePrintReviews

Death in Pont-Aven by Jean-Luc Bannalec

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Translated by Sorcha McDonagh — If you’re keen to discover some new French crime fiction, Jean-Luc Bannalec is a real find. Death In Pont-Aven introduces us to Commissaire Dupin, a cantankerous Parisian caffeine junkie, who polices the small Breton village of Pont-Aven, a sleepy community…
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News

First look: Euro Noir pocket guide

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Following on from his pocket guide to Nordic Noir, crime fiction chronicler Barry Forshaw has written Euro Noir: The Pocket Essential Guide to European Crime Fiction, Film & TV. Inside, you’ll find chapters discussing the development of crime fiction – tipping some great authors –…
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PrintReviews

The Cemetery of Swallows by Mallock

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Translated by Steven Rendall — Don’t you just love novels which begin with a nearly impossible set-up… and somehow find a way of resolving it? Set-ups don’t get much more implausible than this. Manuel Gemoni, a fairly well-adjusted young Frenchman with a charming wife and…
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