iBookKindleReviews

Disintegration by Richard Thomas

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Anyone familiar with Thomas’s neo-noir anthology The New Black will know the author is a fan of the dark stuff. So you won’t be surprised to learn that Disintegration, subtitled A Windy City Dark Mystery, is pitch black in tone. The un-named protagonist of Thomas’…
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Fatale

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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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Blood on Snow

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Norwegian author Jo Nesbo is well-known for his Harry Hole novels. This is not one of them. Instead, Nesbo is trying something new and here we have a short noir novel with a remarkable plot and a very dark and cold atmosphere. The anti-hero of…
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Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbo

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Translated by Neil Smith — Ever since the ambiguous ending of Police in 2013, Jo Nesbo’s fans have been waiting. Waiting, and wondering if there will be another Harry Hole thriller. The wait continues but in the meantime the Norwegian author, and flag bearer for Scandinavian…
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Fatale

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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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The Darkest Heart

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Dan Smith is a wizard at conjuring up the atmosphere of inaccessible, hostile locations around the world. This time it’s the mining landscape of inland Brazil, where capitalist greed is rife and human life cheap. This is essentially a rewriting of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,…
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The Mad and the Bad

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When a kidnapping goes wrong a young nanny, just released from an asylum, and her charge are pursued across the French countryside by bungling gangsters and a dyspeptic English hitman. This story is equal parts hardboiled thriller and capitalist satire. Winner of the French Grand…
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