The following reviews have been added to the review archive over on the main Euro Crime website:
New Reviews:Previous reviews can be found in the review archive and forthcoming titles can be found here.
Maxine Clarke is very impressed with Karen Campbell's debut novel, The Twilight Time, set in Glasgow and now out in paperback;
Amanda Brown finds that the stories in Paul D Gilbert's The Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes "add to the Holmes legacy";
Geoff Jones reviews Lee Martin's Gangsters Wives (the case of the missing apostrophe perhaps?) calling it "an easy read";
Terry Halligan gives an explanation for the (perceived) slow pace of Aly Monroe's The Maze of Cadiz which he enjoyed nonetheless;
Pat Austin continues her reviews of the Red Riding Quartet by David Peace, with part three, 1980 - "the writing is superb and I really couldn't put it down."
and Fiona Walker reviews the latest and in fact the first in the Adamsberg series by Fred Vargas to be translated into English - The Chalk Circle Man calling it a "condensed Vargas primer"
UPDATE: Possible spoiler in the comments below if you haven't read White Nights by Ann Cleeves.
3 comments:
Terry's was a good review and I respect his opinion although I don't agree with him. Here are a few quotes from other reviews of The Maze of Cadiz. I don't like being in a minority of one, well not every time.
"overall the book is a disappointment"
"I didn't find it completely satisfactory"
"perhaps Cotton will get to do something other than sweat"
I do understand the concept of "manana manana" after all I have a first cousin with the surname Garcia. ;o) But this novel does not have the plot or characters to keep you reading for 300 pages without being bored.
I can see I'm going to have to read The Maze of Madrid. One of the things that so delights me in Norman's reviews, whether I concur or not, is that he does so lay it on the line. One of the problems with crime fiction is that critical reviews are getting to be like hens' teeth. Maxine moves me to put Twilight Time on my list, though I think naming Cameron's boss 'Rankin' is so obvious as to be off-putting. Tributes of the sort should be sly and amusing, not obvious going on twee. I'm a trifle more sensitive than usual re names since reading Ann Cleeves' White Nights. Early in that book she introduces a character who has the same name, minus a silent 'p', as a defendant in one of the most famous murder trials of the last century. Daft thing to do, I thought, horribly obvious, and I can cross her off as a suspect, for that would be too daft by half. Wrong. She is our murderer, notwithstanding she has so little motivation that if she had any less she'd merely be a serial killer, and in spite of the fact that we have to believe this unremarkable middle-aged lady strung up a fully-grown man from the beams. I was so infuriated by the book that I did a review search to see if anyone else had noticed these little matters -- or perhaps I should say mentioned them, for there is a difference that goes to the heart of my suspicions re the lack of critical reviews. Anyway, I was happy to find one, if only one, for, like Norman, I'd rather be in a minority of at least two.
Thanks for the reviews of the Red Riding Quartet. My Other Half who very rarely reads fiction (aside from Ian Rankin) bought the four from Amazon last week (with a little egging on from me), so I'm looking forward to reading them once he's finished.
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