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.

New Reviews: Dawson, Griffiths, Lackberg, MacBride, Pastor, Sigurdardottir & a New Competition

One new competition (so far) for January and it is open to UK residents. It closes on 31st January:
Win Assassins of Athens by Jeffrey Siger

Here are this week's reviews:

Terry Halligan reviews Adrian Dawson's Codex which took him a bit of getting into it, but worth it;

Maxine Clarke reviews the third in this increasingly popular series by Elly Griffiths, set in North Norfolk: The House at Sea's End;

I recently reviewed the audio book of Camilla Lackberg's The Stonecutter, tr. Steven T Murray;

Pat Austin reviews the new Stuart MacBride DS Logan McRae outing - Shatter the Bones writing that it's "definitely not for the faint-hearted, this one";

Norman Price reviews Lumen by Ben Pastor and writes that is is an example of "how the crime fiction novel can be used to address historical, religious, and moral questions" (and it's published by Bitter Lemon Press - say no more...)

and also over the Christmas break I reviewed Yrsa Sigurdardottir's My Soul to Take, tr. Bernard Scudder and Anna Yates also on the blog.

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