New Reviews: Brett, Dugdall, Jaquiery, Kavanagh, Miske, Thorne, Vallgren, Wilson

Here are nine reviews which have been added to the Euro Crime website today, six have appeared on the blog since last time, and four are completely new.

Plus, in case you missed them, here are a few recent links that might be of interest:

The winner of The Petrona Award & the announcement in pictures

Lee Child interviews Maj Sjowall

CrimeFest panel writeups: Euro Noir & Nordic Noir

The International Dagger 2015 shortlist

You can keep up to date with Euro Crime by following the blog and/or liking the Euro Crime Facebook page.

New Reviews

A collection of mini reviews (by me) of recent Scandi-crime novels;


Mark Bailey reviews Simon Brett's Mrs Pargeter's Principle, the eponymous lady returns after a 17 year gap;

Susan White reviews Ruth Dugdall's Humber Boy B;

Terry Halligan reviews Anna Jaquiery's Death in the Rainy Season, set in Cambodia;

Michelle Peckham reviews Emma Kavanagh's Hidden, which revolves around a shooting in a hospital;

Lynn Harvey reviews Karim Miske's Arab Jazz tr. Sam Gordon, which has been shortlisted for the International Dagger;

Amanda Gillies reviews Nothing Sacred by David Thorne, which is the second in the Essex-based Daniel Connell series;

I also review Carl-Johan Vallgren's The Boy in the Shadows tr. Rachel Willson-Broyles

and Terry also reviews the reissue of The Mystery of Tunnel 51 by Alexander  Wilson.

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

New Reviews: Enger, Fowler, Kavanagh, Learner, Lipska, Macbain, Sutton, Tuomainen, Walker

Here are nine reviews which have been added to the Euro Crime website today, three have appeared on the blog over the last couple of weeks and six are completely new.

In another of my occasional feature posts, I recently put together a list of vegetarian detectives and sidekicks.

NB. You can keep up to date with Euro Crime by following the blog and/or liking the Euro Crime Facebook page.

New Reviews

Laura Root reviews Thomas Enger's Scarred tr. Charlotte Barslund, the third in the Henning Juul series set in Oslo;

Mark Bailey reviews the latest in the Bryant and May series by Christopher Fowler: Bryant & May and The Bleeding Heart;



Michelle Peckham reviews Emma Kavanagh's debut, Falling;

Terry Halligan reviews T S Learner's third thriller, The Stolen;

Geoff Jones reviews Anya Lipska's Death Can't Take a Joke the follow-up to the well-received, Where the Devil Can't Go;

Susan White reviews The Bull Slayer, the second in Bruce Macbain's Pliny series;

Terry also reviews Lawless and the Devil of Euston Square by William Sutton, set in Victorian London;

Lynn Harvey reviews Antti Tuomainen's The Healer tr. Lola Rogers which is now out in paperback

and Amanda Gillies reviews Martin Walker's The Resistance Man the latest in the Bruno, Chief of Police, series set in rural France.


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.

Review: Falling by Emma Kavanagh

Falling by Emma Kavanagh, March 2014, 336 pages, Century, ISBN: 1780892020

Reviewed by Michelle Peckham.
(Read more of Michelle's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

An experienced pilot, Oliver Blake, takes to the skies on a snowy night in dangerous but manageable conditions. Shortly after take-off, something goes wrong and the plane crashes. Many die, but there are a few survivors and one of these is the air steward Cecilia. Just before the flight Cecilia had decided to leave her husband Tom and two-year-old son Ben, and had already packed her belongings. Lying in hospital, recuperating, Tom comes to visit, and the crash appears to be the start of Cecilia re-assessing their relationship.

Tom is a detective constable, and just after the crash, he is asked to look into the whereabouts of Libby, a police community support officer and the daughter of Jim, a retired detective superintendent. Jim has discovered that Libby is missing from her house, and there is a trail of blood in the kitchen.

In the third strand of the story, Freya, the daughter of Oliver Blake, becomes obsessed with finding out why the plane crashed. She forms an uneasy alliance with Ian, a local reporter, who tells her that the crash may have been deliberate. Is that true? Why would her father want to crash the plane?

Slowly but inevitably, the connections between the three apparently separate stories begin to show themselves. There is some nice character development that helps to explain why and how the events unfold as they do. A good mix of 'discoveries' - discoveries of past lives and how they influence the present, and of secrets and cover-ups that cannot stay hidden for ever. A little rough around the edges, but FALLING is a confident first book with an interesting set of intertwined plot lines. Hopefully a new author that is off the starting blocks, and has more to come.

Michelle Peckham, March 2014