Nobody Walks by Mick Herron
Set in the a murky, satirised world of espionage, Mick Herron’s most recent novels, Slow Horses and Dead Lions, featured a fictional branch of MI5 called Slough House whose employees were only one more screw-up from losing their jobs. The books were uniformly well received, and…
The Evil Thereof by Iain McDowall
Iain McDowall was born in Scotland, but now lives in the English Midlands, wherein lies his fictional town of Crowby. Inspector Frank Jacobson last appeared in Envy The Dead (2009), and now he returns as sharp as ever, but with an inch or so more…
Windigo Fire by MH Callway
If you ever head up into the woods of Northern Ontario, you might be warned to mind out for the Windigo. It’s spirit creature, part of the belief system of the Algonquin First Nations people in Canada and can take many forms – sometimes human,…
Sins of the Fathers by James Craig
Inspector John Carlyle is a wearily decent copper, working in the heart of London. He lives with his long-suffering wife and teenage daughter in a block of council flats not far away. Permanently tired, struggling to make ends meet but fiercely honest, he is one…
The Devil You Know by Elisabeth de Mariaffi
Canada is often thought of as a gentler, safer, and dare I say it, more boring version of its southern neighbour. Canadian citizens are less brash, perhaps less overtly patriotic than Americans, and the country’s gun laws are tighter. At least, the kind of violent…
Express train to death - Railways in crime fiction
One of this month’s big crime releases is The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. And when you think about it, railways have often featured as a backdrop in crime fiction. Murder on the Orient Express is, perhaps, the archetypal Golden Age crime novel,…
Harbour Street
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…