New Reviews: Carrisi, Durbridge, McCreet, Mackay, Sharp, Zouroudi

Here are six new reviews and a reminder of the competition:
Win the 'Nikki Heat' novels by Richard Castle (UK only).

Here are the new reviews:

Lizzie Hayes reviews Donato Carrisi's follow-up to The Whisperer - The Lost Girls of Rome tr. Howard Curtis;

Geoff Jones reviews Francis Durbridge's A Game of Murder which is now available as an ebook;

Amanda Gillies reviews James McCreet's third Newsome novel, The Thieves' Labyrinth set in Victorian London;

Susan White reviews Malcolm Mackay's debut, The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter;

Terry Halligan reviews the paperback release of Zoe Sharp's Fifth Victim

and Lynn Harvey reviews Anne Zouroudi's The Whispers of Nemesis which is also now out in paperback.

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.

New Reviews: Bayard, Cotterill, Durbridge, Hannah, McDermid, Neville, Ohlsson & New Competition

New Competition: Win a copy of Strangled in Paris by Claude Izner (UK only)

Here are this week's new reviews:

Amanda Gillies reviews Louis Bayard's The School of Night set in modern day, and Elizabethan England;

Lynn Harvey reviews Colin Cotterill's Killed at the Whim of a Hat which is now out in paperback and she makes an unexpected comparison with a well-known US series...;

I review the audio version of Francis Durbridge's Tim Frazer Again read by Anthony Head;

Susan White reviews Sophie Hannah's Lasting Damage which is now out in paperback, and which reminded her of Barbara Vine's earlier work;

Maxine Clarke reviews the new Tony Hill-Carol Jordan from Val McDermid, The Retribution;

Terry Halligan reviews Stuart Neville's debut, The Twelve aka The Ghosts of Belfast (US) which he thought was brilliant and original

and I also review the debut from Kristina Ohlsson: Unwanted, tr. Sarah Death which is gripping despite being a bit predictable.

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 Declan Burke, Patrick Conrad, David Hodges, Arlene Hunt, Eva Joly & Judith Perrignon, J D Mallinson, Zygmunt Miloszewski, Harri Nykanen, Sam Ripley and Norman Russell have been added to these pages this week.

Review: Tim Frazer Again by Francis Durbridge (audio book)

Tim Frazer Again by Francis Durbridge read by Anthony Head (AudioGO, September 2011, ISBN: 9781408469682, 2 CDs (2hr 20 mins))

I've previously reviewed an audio book featuring Francis Durbridge's famous creation Paul Temple: Paul Temple and the Madison Mystery in which a writer turns sleuth in the upper end of society. Tim Frazer's isn't quite so high-brow.

Frazer is an engineer who has recently begun working for a secret police/Government department. In this, his second case, he is sent to Amsterdam to shadow Barbara Day. Barbara Day recently ran over and killed a British agent, Leo Salinger, on one of her regular trips to Amsterdam. Was it an accident of something more sinister?

Frazer carries out his assignment and makes an impression. So much so, that when he is back in London he gets embroiled in Barbara's personal and professional life, and when he finds a dead body in her living room, things become quite tricky for him. Even when Frazer has completed his task of finding out whether Salinger was involved in shady dealings or not, he can't let the mystery rest and carries on to the bitter end risking his heart and his life...

This is a complicated story with many twists and turns which kept me hooked. It's action-packed with fights, dangerous men, and a hidden baddie who instils mortal fear in his underlings. Written in the 1960s we see the quaint use of telephone boxes rather than disposable mobile phones. I really enjoyed Tim Frazer Again and Buffy and Merlin's Anthony Head narrates very well with a variety of convincing accents and a low breathy voice for Barbara Day. He also plays Tim Frazer in 2010's The World of Tim Frazer and I'll be looking out for his Paul Temple audio books too.

New Reviews; Burdess, Durbridge, Nesser, Rayne, Simms, Sjowall & Wahloo

Here are this week's new reviews and a reminder of this month's competition:

Latest Reviews:

Terry Halligan reviews Wendy Burdess's The Unaccomplished Lady Eleanor concluding that the author "has a real gift in her writing with uncanny descriptive detail and highly imaginative plots" (this title has recently been published in the US);

I had the pleasure of reviewing the full-cast dramatisation of Francis Durbridge's Paul Temple and the Madison Mystery released as part of the 70 year anniversary of Paul Temple;

New reviewer Michelle Peckham debuts with her review of the paperback of The Return by Hakan Nesser writing that it is "an intelligently plotted crime novel";

Amanda Gillies is very enthusiastic about Sarah Rayne's The Death Chamber which sounds very spooky;

Geoff Jones reviews Shifting Skin by Chis Simms which is set in Manchester

and Maxine Clarke continues with her odyssey through Sjowall and Wahloo's Martin Beck series, this time she reviews The Fire Engine That Disappeared which is as good as the previous four.


Current Competition:

Win a copy of Nemesis by Jo Nesbo*

* no geographical restrictions on entrants (ends 30 September)