Sunday, January 15, 2012

New Reviews: Goodwin, Harvey, James, Johnston, Kitson, Koppel, Marklund, Pastor, Price

As well as the 9 new reviews, don't forget to see which title, author and translator made the top spot for the Euro Crime reviewers' favourite book of 2011.

The competition's still open: win Death of the Mantis by Michael Stanley (no geographical restrictions).

Here are this week's reviews:
Susan White reviews the latest in the Yashim the Eunuch series by Jason Goodwin, An Evil Eye (and Susan has even tried some of the recipes featured in this series);

John Harvey's Good Bait features a new protagonist plus a couple of characters from earlier books including DCI Karen Shields from the heart-breaking Cold in Hand and is reviewed here by Maxine Clarke;

Michelle Peckham thinks Peter James's Dead Man's Grip signals that the series could be running out of steam;

The Silver Stain is a belated but welcome return for Paul Johnston's PI Alex Mavros, set in Greece, reviewed here by Geoff Jones;

Terry Halligan found Bill Kitson's latest DI Mike Nash, Back-Slash hard to put down;

I review Hans Koppel's She's Never Coming Back tr. Kari Dickson which I didn't enjoy very much;

Fortunately Lynn Harvey had a better experience with Liza Marklund's The Bomber which has been retranslated by Neil Smith;

Norman calls Ben Pastor's Liar Moon "grown-up crime fiction"

and Lizzie Hayes reviews Joanna Price's debut A Means of Escape set in the Glastonbury area (and incidentally is very cheap on Kindle at the moment).
Previous reviews can be found in the review archive.

Forthcoming titles can be found by author or date or by category, here and new titles by Mark Billingham, Kevin Brophy and Hakan Ostlundh have been added to these pages this week.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Karen - Interesting how there were some ups and downs this week, but good to see some good 'uns in there :-).

Maxine Clarke said...

Very good set of reviews. Your review of She's Never Coming Back is excellent, and has let me off reading this particular title (eligible for the international dagger). Incidentally, though the link to your review works from the EC home page it does not work from this blog post.

I haven't read this particular Roy Grace book but I had previously decided to stop reading them after the one about the women who are obsessed with branded shoes, etc, including descriptions of abuse to a kidnap victim. Also in that book, there is a complete turnaround in the character of the missing wife - in previous books Grace remembers her fondly, now she's portrayed as a whining nag. Yes, a series to stop reading as it has become more commercially succesful- pity as it started out so well with the first two or three.

Karen (Euro Crime) said...

Thanks ladies. I've fixed the link - too many hs!