New Reviews: Billingham, Burke, Chance, Christie, Larsson, Magson, Rayne, Sharp, Stark & Competition

And the reviews are back! A slightly longer break than I'd anticipated due to family matters but 9 new reviews follow below plus a very short-term competition to win tickets to meet actors from The Killing (Danish version) at The Scandinavia Show next Sunday. I have 4 tickets to giveaway, just enter a few details in this form.

Here are this week's (globe-trotting) reviews:

Geoff Jones reviews the tenth in the Tom Thorne series by Mark Billingham, Good as Dead;

Laura Root reviews Down These Green Streets: Irish Crime Writing in the Twenty-First Century edited by Declan Burke an "anthology of essays and short stories centred on Irish crime writing";

Lynn Harvey reviews Alex Chance's second thriller, now out in mass market paperback Savage Blood which she describes as "Denis Wheatley meets Dan Brown";

I review the audio version of two recently unearthed Hercule Poirot stories by Agatha Christie: The Capture of Cerberus & The Incident of the Dog's Ball which are read by David Suchet;

Maxine Clarke reviews the long-awaited fourth book in translation by Asa Larsson: Until Thy Wrath Be Past, tr. Laurie Thompson which Maxine sums up in one word: "brilliant";

Terry Halligan reviews the second in Adrian Magson's 1960s France-set DI Rocco series, Death on the Rive Nord and he hopes for more in the series;

Amanda Gillies praises highly Sarah Rayne's latest psychological thriller, What Lies Beneath now out in paperback;

The first of two books set in the US written by UK authors is Alex Sharp's Driver: Nemesis, set in New Orleans; it's based on a computer game and written pseudonymously by an "English thriller writer" and reviewed here by Rich Westwood

and the second is Oliver Stark's 88 Killer, his second book set in New York City and which Michelle Peckham found "absorbing".

Previous reviews can be found in the review archive and forthcoming titles can be found by author or date or by category, here.

New Reviews: Bale, Chance, Cotterill, Evans, Hall, le Carre, MacLeod

Two competitions for March, both close 31st March:
1.Win a signed copy of Complicit by Nicci French UK only
2.Win From the Dead by Mark Billingham UK & Europe only

Here are this week's reviews:

Terry Halligan reviews the paperback release of Tom Bale's Terror's Reach;

Amanda Gillies reviews Alex Chance's Savage Blood, which she loved;

Michelle Peckham reviews the first in a new series (presumably) from Colin Cotterill, Killed at the Whim of a Hat set in Thailand;

Lizzie Hayes reviews Geraldine Evans' Deadly Reunion the latest in this "marvellous series";

Susan White reviews Tarquin Hall's The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing set in India;

Geoff Jones reviews John le Carre's Our Kind of Traitor

and Maxine Clarke reviews Torquil MacLeod's Meet Me in Malmo the first in a projected series featuring Inspector Anita Sundstrom.

Previous reviews can be found in the review archive and forthcoming titles can be found by author or date, here.

New Reviews - Natasha Cooper, Philip Kerr etc

Here are this week's new reviews and details of this month's competitions.

Latest Reviews:

Amanda Gillies disputes the blurb claim that Alex Chance's The Final Days is as chilling as The Silence of the Lambs;

Maxine Clarke "thoroughly enjoyed" Natasha Cooper's A Greater Evil the eighth in the Trish Macguire series, now out in paperback;

Maxine also reviews the recently Theakston's long-listed The Risk of Darkness by Susan Hill calling it the most exciting of the three;

Laura Root heaps yet more praise on the Bernie Gunther series by Philip Kerr with her review of the paperback of The One from the Other which she recommends to "all fans of historical and noir fiction";

Moving out of Europe (though the author currently lives in London), I review the first of Diane Wei Liang's Beijing set series, The Eye of Jade which I found fascinating

and Terry Halligan reviews the debut novel from Chris Marr, The Lady of the Manor, set in London in the early 1900s.


Current Competitions (closing date 30 April):

Win a copy of The Trophy Taker by Lee Weeks*

Win a copy of The Death Maze by Ariana Franklin**

Win a copy of An Expert in Murder by Nicola Upson**

* UK/Europe only
**No geographical restrictions on entrants