Geoff Jones's Favourite Discovery of 2012
I enjoy Amazon's kindle promotions where they let you purchase a book by a new author for a nominal amount and once hooked the price increases for the follow up books to the correct one (which is fair enough!).
This year I started reading Gordon Ferris's books. He has two series on the go. The first one was Danny McRae and there have been two books so far, set in London post second world war. He has been badly injured in the war and is trying to make a living as a private investigator. The second series and my particular favourite is Douglas Brodie. Again there have been two books so far, set in post war Glasgow. Brodie is a journalist and knows some of the most violent villains. Brodie becomes friendly with an Advocate – Samantha Campbell. Both series are well written and very violent but gripping. The amount of research and attention to detail is immense when you are setting a series around sixty years ago. Interestingly in January (ebook)/ April (print) there is a third Brodie book (Pilgrim Soul) and this will feature the characters from both series – sounds interesting.
There are several authors who owe their sales to these promotions, James Craig also is another one to look out for. TV & Film adaptations rarely work for me. Lynda La Plante is an exception (probably because of her TV background) but other favourite characters don't translate to the small screen. For example Rebus and Alan Banks are poor adaptations, partly I think because you have in your imagination how a book character's description looks like and the actor doesn't match your imagination ideal!
Read Geoff's reviews here.
Read the Euro Crime reviews of Gordon Ferris's books and James Craig's.
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