Book Club

Harbour Street

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This novel featuring Ann Cleeves’ character DI Vera Stanhope was the most popular one featured on our site during 2014 and finds its deserving place on our Recommended list. Things get underway with a stoppage – that of a Newcastle metro train which can’t make its…
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Book Club

Malice

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Japanese sensation Keigo Higashino is back with his fourth novel in English translation – the first of his series following police detective Kyoichiro Kaga. Here popular author Kunihiko Hidaka is found dead in his home the day before he is due to leave the country….
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Book Club

The Valley

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Don’t expect a cosy rural crime thriller – the valley of the title is actually a street in suburban London. On the one hand the book is a psychological study of the hopes and fears of the families who live in The Valley, but it…
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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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Book Club

The Last Refuge

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When Scotsman John Callum arrives in the Faroe Islands, he discovers a place that’s as forlorn and remote as he is. Callum is running from something, but it’s not clear what. For a while, it seems like he might just achieve the quiet solitude he…
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Book Club

The Investigation

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Korean crime fiction is something of a rarity, so this translation by Chi-Young Kim is a find. It is 1944, and a mixture of criminals, anti-war activists and Korean partisans are being held in Fukuoka Prison, a Japanese POW camp. The guards have a particularly…
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The Crooked House by Christobel Kent

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Following a series set in Florence featuring private investigator Sandro Cellini, Christobel Kent has shifted the action to an English estuary village for her 10th novel. It feels like a fresh start for the author, who’s been taken on by a different publisher. There’s not…
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