New Reviews: Brett, Costantini, Martin, Seymour, Weeks, Womersley

Six new reviews have been added to Euro Crime today:

After a sixteen-year break, Charles Paris returns in Simon Brett's A Decent Interval, reviewed here by Mark Bailey;

Susan White reviews Roberto Costantini's The Deliverance of Evil tr. N S Thompson, the first in the Michele Balistreri trilogy, set in Rome;

Laura Root reviews the eighth in the historical Jim Stringer series by Andrew Martin: The Baghdad Railway Club;

Terry Halligan reviews Gerald Seymour's The Outsiders, now out in paperback;

Amanda Gillies reviews Lee Weeks's Dead of Winter the first in a new series featuring Detective Constable Ebony Willis

and Lynn Harvey reviews Australian writer Chris Womersley's noir The Low Road.


Previous reviews can be found in the review archive.

Forthcoming titles can be found by author or date or by category, here along with releases by year.

Going Underground...

If you enjoyed Christopher Fowler's Bryant & May Off the Rails (my review) and/or are interested in knowing more about the London Underground then you might want to pick up train enthusiast and crime writer Andrew Martin's recently published Underground Overground:

Official blurb: This is an entertaining and enlightening social history of the world's most famous underground railway. Why is the Victoria Line so hot? What is an Electrical Multiple Unit? Is it really possible to ride from Kings Cross to Kings Cross on the Circle line? The London Underground is the oldest, most sprawling and illogical metropolitan transport system in the world, the result of a series of botch-jobs and improvisations. Yet it transports over one billion passengers every year - and this figure is rising. It is iconic, recognised the world over, and loved and despised by Londoners in equal measure. Blending reportage, humour and personal encounters, Andrew Martin embarks on a wonderfully engaging social history of London's underground railway system (which despite its name, is in fact 55 five per cent overground). Along the way he attempts to untangle the mess that is the Northern Line, visit every station in a single day - and find out which gaps to be especially mindful of. "The London Underground" is a highly enjoyable, witty and informative history of everything you need to know about the Tube.

I haven't read it yet as the library's sole copy has a long waiting list but I do plan to one day.

New Reviews: Chapman, Hall, Hayder, Jones, Leon, Martin, Nesser, Sigurdardottir, Toyne, Villar, Watson, Winslow

Now two competitions for April:
Win a set of 5 Van Veeteren novels by Hakan Nesser UK only new
Win a copy of Apostle Rising by Richard Godwin UK & Europe only.

I've published a double set of reviews today as, due to family visits, I'll be taking the next two weekends off. The reviews will be back in May and today I have chosen reviews of very recently published books and those due out in the remainder of the month.

Here are this week's reviews:

Lizzie Hayes reviews Jean Chapman's A Watery Grave, the second in this Fenland-set series;

Maxine Clarke reviews M R Hall's third outing for Coroner Jenny Cooper, The Redeemed;

Michelle Peckham reviews Mo Hayder's Hanging Hill which departs from her recent series;

Laura Root reviews the second in Tobias Jones's Northern Italy set PI series, White Death;

Still in Italy, Maxine reviews Donna Leon's new hardback, the twentieth in the Brunetti Series: Drawing Conclusions;

Terry Halligan reviews the latest in Andrew Martin's railway detective series which brings Jim Stringer into the War in The Somme Stations;

Lizzie is introduced to Swedish humour in Hakan Nesser's The Inspector and Silence, tr. Laurie Thompson which is now out in paperback (and can be won - see above);

I review Yrsa Sigurdardottir's third outing for lawyer-PI Thora, in Ashes to Dust, tr. Philip Roughton;

Amanda Gillies reviews Sanctus by Simon Toyne, the first part in a trilogy, which seems to be as good as the advertising suggests;

Maxine also reviews Domingo Villar's Death on a Galician Shore, tr. Sonia Soto (I was due to review this but I was ill in the week so I'm very grateful that Maxine donated her (superior) review) ;

Lizzie also reviews Before I Go to Sleep the debut from S J Watson which has also been garnering a lot of buzz and Lizzie was very impressed

and Amanda also reviews Satori by Don Winslow a prequel to Trevanian's Shibumi and she doesn't think fans of the original author should be disappointed.

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

New Reviews: Baraldi, Black, James, Kerr, Martin, Rubenfeld & New Competition

One competition for November and it is open to UK & Europe residents and closes on 30th November:
Win the Ellis Peters Award shortlist (6 books)

Here are this week's reviews:

Maxine Clarke reviews Barbara Baraldi's The Girl with the Crystal Eyes, tr. Judith Forshaw which unfortunately wasn't to her taste;

Amanda Gillies reviews the third in the Gus Drury series by Tony Black which is available in paperback now: Loss calling it a "storming success";

Terry Halligan reviews the paperback release of Peter James's newest Roy Grace book, Dead Like You;

Laura Root reviews the recently released 'Bernie Gunther' outing from Philip Kerr: Field Grey concluding that it is "an outstanding addition to a very impressive series";

Rik Shepherd reviews Andrew Martin's Death on a Branch Line which is the fifth in this "excellent but not flashy series" which is soon to number seven

and Michelle Peckham reviews Jed Rubenfeld's follow-up to The Interpretation of Murder - The Death Instinct.

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

New Reviews: Airth, Bolton, Cleeves, Gardner, Martin, Nesser, Ramsay

May's competition is now up and running - win a copy of Suffer the Children by Adam Creed. (There are no geographical restrictions on entrants.) Enter here.

The following reviews have been added to the review archive over on the main Euro Crime website:

New Reviews:

Mike Ripley reviews the eagerly awaited third book in the 'John Madden' series from Rennie Airth, - The Dead of Winter - and answers the question as to whether it can live up the stunning first part, River of Darkness?;

I review the audio book of Sacrifice by S J Bolton, (review posted on this blog);

Maxine Clarke reviews Ann Cleeves' third part of her 'Shetland Quartet' - Red Bones - and calls it "an excellent, absorbing, slow-burn of a book";

Paul Blackburn reviews John Gardner's Moriarty which fills in some of the back-story to Holmes' famous nemesis;

Geoff Jones reviews the latest in the "steam detective" series from Andrew Martin - The Last Train to Scarborough;

Maxine also reviews the paperback edition of The Mind's Eye by Hakan Nesser saying she "cannot recommend this book highly enough"

and Pat Austin reviews Caro Ramsay's follow-up to Absolution - Singing to the Dead.

Previous reviews can be found in the review archive and forthcoming titles can be found here.

Andrew Martin on BBC4

Andrew Martin who writes the Jim Stringer railway series set in the early part of the twentieth century is presenting a programme on BBC4, Between the Lines: Railways in Fiction and Film:

Novelist Andrew Martin presents a documentary examining how the train and the railways came to shape the work of writers and film-makers.

At the beginning of the railway age, locomotives were seen as frightening and unnatural - Wordsworth decried the destruction of the countryside, while Dickens wrote about locomotives as murderous brutes, bent on the destruction of mere humans.

Martin traces how trains gradually began to be accepted - Holmes and Watson were frequent passengers - until by the time of The Railway Children they were something to be loved, a symbol of innocence and Englishness. He shows how trains made for unforgettable cinema in The 39 Steps and Brief Encounter, and how when the railways fell out of favour after the 1950s, their plight was highlighted in the films of John Betjeman.

Finally, Martin asks whether, in the 21st century, Britain's railways can still stir and inspire artists.

The first showing is 9pm Thursday evening but there are several repeats and presumably iplayer if you don't get BBC4.

I've also discovered an interview with Andrew Martin on his publisher, Faber & Faber's site.

New Reviews: Mike Ripley's Crime File, Hill, Krajewski, MacBride, Mills and Tursten

Here are this week's new reviews and details of an extra competition:

Latest Reviews:

In Mike Ripley's latest crime file he reviews: The Death Maze (aka The Serpent's Tale) by Ariana Franklin, Inspector Ghote's First Case by H R F Keating, Spider by Michael Morley and Death on a Branch Line by Andrew Martin (to win the latter see the competitions below);

Maxine Clarke reviews the newest in the Simon Serrailler series by Susan Hill, The Vows of Silence - a book which put her through the wringer, but was worth it;

Norman Price reviews Marek Krajewski's Death in Breslau writing that Krajewski is "a master at recreating an atmosphere of fear, darkness, creepiness and foreboding";

Pat Austin reviews the new offering from Aberdeen's Stuart MacBride Flesh House which manages to be both gruesome and funny;

Karen Chisholm was hooked by Crow Stone by Jenni Mills which is set in Bath

and Maxine has the highest of praise for Helene Tursten's Detective Inspector Huss (which I'm pleased about as I recommended her via my review of The Torso) saying that "this book is as near to perfection as you can get in this genre".


Current Competitions:

Win a copy of Death on a Branch Line by Andrew Martin*

* no restrictions on entrants


NEW: Win a copy of Blood Lines by Grace Monroe**

** UK/Europe only