Features

A classic revisited: The Little Sister

Philip Marlowe is one of the definitive hardboiled detectives, with few equals in crime fiction. Nevertheless, The Little Sister is hardly Raymond Chandler’s definitive Marlowe novel. Other novels such as The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye and Farewell, My Lovely are better-known, perhaps because of…
Read more
KindlePrintReviews

Lady, Go Die! A Mike Hammer Novel

Written by Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane — I, the Jury, the first Mike Hammer novel, was published in hardcover in 1947. Initially sales were modest but the paperback edition became an incredible success. By that time, the private eye genre was well established…
Read more
KindlePrintReviews

Blackbirds

Written by Chuck Wendig — One of the great things about crime fiction is how varied it is. Golden age cosies sit alongside modern thrillers. European police procedurals and American private eye novels fight for space on the shelves of your local book store. The…
Read more
iBookKindlePrintReviews

Dare Me by Megan Abbott

“At first, cheer was something to fill my days, all our days. Age fourteen to eighteen, a girl needs something to kill all that time, that endless itchy waiting, every hour, every day for something – anything – to begin. There’s something dangerous about the…
Read more
Book Club

Hit and Run

Driving home from a swanky PR do in Edinburgh with his girlfriend and brother – everyone up to the eyeballs on pilfered narcotics and beetroot schnapps – Billy Blackmore drives through a pedestrian. Reporting it will mean lost jobs, arrest, maybe prison, so they do…
Read more
KindlePrintReviews

The Thief

Written by Fuminori Nakamura —The Kenzaburō Ōe Prize is regarded as one of Japan’s most prestigious literary awards, even though it has only been around since 2006. The winner doesn’t get a cash prize, rather the honour of having their novel translated into other languages….
Read more