KindleReviews

LA Rotten by Jeff Klima

When an angry civilian stands outside the entrance to Los Angeles’ main police station shouting threats and waving a gun around, two things are certain. One, it will end up as suicide-by-cop and that the city’s media will be out in force. And two, because…
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Book Club

Fatale

No-one does contempt for the bourgeoisie quite like the French, and Jean-Patrick Manchette was as hard left as they come. Before succumbing to cancer in 1995 he had re-invented the French noir novel with his own unique brand of hardboiled. In this re-issue of Fatale…
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Book Club

The Black Eyed Blonde

Raymond Chandler is no longer around to write new stories starring his archetypal private detective, Philip Marlowe. So here Benjamin Black steps up to the plate with a mystery meant to follow on from Marlowe’s 1953 novel The Long Goodbye. Does it work? Our reviewer…
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Fatale

Written by Jean-Patrick Manchette, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith — It is not fashionable anymore to be a leftist writer of crime fiction. Yet there have been a few crime writers whose works we now consider to be classics who had left-leaning political convictions. Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, Dashiel Hammett,…
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