New Reviews: Bale, Dunn, Hall, Jardine, Ridpath, Smith & a New Competition

It's March and here's a new competition plus reviews of 6 more books...

Win Carnage by Maxim Chattam (UK only).

Here are this week's reviews:

Maxine Clarke reviews the new Joe Clayton thriller from Tom Bale, Blood Falls, now out in paperback;

Terry Halligan reviews the twentieth appearance by Daisy Dalrymple in Carola Dunn's Gone West;

Coroner Jenny Cooper is back in M R Hall's The Flight reviewed here by Sarah Hilary;

Susan White reviews Quintin Jardine's new Primavera Blackstone adventure, As Easy as Murder;

Lynn Harvey supplies the third glowing review on Euro Crime for Michael Ridpath's 66 Degrees North the second in this series set in Iceland, now out in paperback

and fans of Alexander McCall Smith's Mma (Precious) Ramtoswe won't want to miss her first case Precious and the Monkeys which I reviewed last week on the blog.

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 David Belbin, Fiona Buckley, N J Cooper, David Downing, Gillian Galbraith, Dolores Gordon-Smith, Tessa Harris, Cora Harrison, Veronica Heley, Diane Janes, Meurig Jones, Margaret Mayhew, Susanna Quinn, Jean Rowden, EV Seymour, John Gordon Sinclair and Simon Toyne have been added to these pages this week.

CrimeFest - Cosies

I have shrunk these photos down somewhat so people can view them on phones etc but unfortunately they are a bit fuzzy.

The opening panel on "Cosies" featured from left to right:

Deryn Lake, Dolores Gordon-Smith, Lauren Henderson, Carola Dunn and Frances Brody.


Here are some random jottings and thoughts from the panel:

Frances Brody's third book in the series will be out in September and her books should be published in the US next year. Deryn Lake's historical novels (as Dinah Lampitt) will be reissued under the Lake name. (I first knew of this author as Dinah Lampitt and devoured her Pour the Dark Wine about the Tudor Seymours which I read in 89 or 90). The Mills of Gold is the first in a new series and there is a new John Rawlings, Death at the Wedding Feast, published in July. Carola Dunn's Anthem for Doomed Youth is the darkest in the Daisy series so far.

There was some discussion of what the term cozies/cosies mean eg between people who know each other well. Cozies more of a US term? Usually used as a pejorative term. The murder methods may not be cosy (at one point Deryn Lake rattled off her book titles and the murder methods in them) but the level of detail would be low and no forensics involved.


The panelists agreed about enjoying house hunting for their characters. Another thing that identified cosies was that the killer didn't take trophies!


Lauren Henderson (whose crime books I wouldn't describe as cosies!) is currently writing YA and bonk-busters (as Rebecca Chance). She commented that her YA (clean) was not selling in the UK as not gloomy enough.

Flapper sleuths = pretty covers

This gorgeous cover for the paperback of Nicola Upson's An Expert in Murder caught my eye. Shame I've already read it. This is the first in the proposed series starring Josephine Tey and was reviewed on Euro Crime, here and here. The paperback is out in February. Though AEIM is set in the 1930s, the following series are set (or at least begin) in the 1920s:

Carola Dunn's Black Ship is out any day and is the 17th of the Daisy Dalrymple books.

Australian Kerry Greenwood has finally got a UK publisher (Orion) for her Honourable Phyrne Fisher series which saves me from importing them any more. Murder in the Dark is the 16th in the series and was published earlier this month (in the UK).

The Winter Ground is the fourth in the Dandy Gilver (society sleuth) series by Catriona McPherson and is due out next month. (Cover shown is from January's paperback edition.)

Carola Dunn blogs at Moments in Crime

Expat British author, Carola Dunn, is blogging this week at Moments in Crime. Her series features 1920s journalist Daisy Dalrymple who is of an aristocratic family but is trying to make her own way in the world. The 17th book in the series, Black Ship, is out in September.

Synopsis from amazon.co.uk: It is 1925 and the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple, her husband Alec Fletcher and their recent twins move to a new, large house on the outskirts of London. Set in a small circle of houses with a communal garden, it seems like the idyllic setting - that is, until a murder victim turns up under the bushes of the communal garden. Now rumours of bootleggers, American gangsters and an international liquor smuggling operation via black ships turn everything upside down. Alec, in his role as Scotland Yard detective, has been assigned to ferret out the truth behind the murder - but it is up to Daisy to find out who the dead man is, what his relationship with her new neighbours was, why he was murdered - and who it was who did him in!