New Reviews: Brett, Camilleri, Connor, Griffiths, James, Robertson, Russell, Webster, Zeh

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

Plus a new competition - win an iBook of Invisible by Christine Poulson (no geographical restrictions).


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

New Reviews

Mark Bailey reviews the new Charles Paris mystery from Simon Brett, The Cinderella Killer;

I review the Judges anthology, which contains stories by Andrea Camilleri, Carlo Lucarelli and Giancarlo De Cataldo (tr. Joseph Farrell, Alan Thawley and Eileen Horne);

Amanda Gillies reviews The Caravaggio Conspiracy by Alex Connor;

Michelle Peckham reviews the latest in Elly Griffiths's Norfolk-based Ruth Galloway series, The Outcast Dead;

Geoff Jones reviews Want You Dead, the tenth in Peter James's Roy Grace series;

Terry Halligan reviews Craig Robertson's The Last Refuge, set in the Faroe Islands;

Amanda also reviews Fatal Act by Leigh Russell, the latest in her DI Geraldine Steel series;

Lynn Harvey reviews Jason Webster's Blood Med, set in Valencia

and Laura Root reviews Juli Zeh's Decompression tr. John Cullen which is set in Lanzarote.

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: Blake, Booth, Granger, Hayder, Indridason, Miller, Peterson, Robertson, Zeh

I'm back after a few days in the Lake District. It was very wet!

Here is a new set of 9 reviews:

(NB. Don't forget to vote in the International Dagger Polls.)

Several of Nicholas Blake's Nigel Strangeways titles have just been reissued by Vintage and we'll be reviewing them, starting with The Beast Must Die reviewed here by Amanda Gillies;

Susan White reviews Stephen Booth's twelfth Cooper & Fry novel, Dead and Buried set in Derbyshire;

Rich Westwood reviews the fourth in Ann Granger's Victorian series: A Particular Eye for Villainy;

Sarah Hilary reviews Mo Hayder's standalone Hanging Hill which is now out in paperback;

Maxine Clarke reviews Arnaldur Indridason's Black Skies, tr. Victoria Cribb in which Sigurdur Oli takes the lead role;

Terry Halligan reviews Danny Miller's follow-up to Kiss Me Quick, The Gilded Edge set in 1965 London;

Lizzie Hayes reviews Mark Peterson's debut Flesh and Blood set in Brighton and introducing DS Minter;

Please welcome Waterstones bookseller and reviewer JF to the Euro Crime review team. Here she reviews Craig Robertson's Cold Grave, the third in his Glasgow-set series

and Lynn Harvey reviews Juli Zeh's intriguing The Method, tr. Sally-Ann Spencer which is not a crime novel as such but "a "what-if" novel".

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: Cameron, Child, Grace, Hilton, Macken, Zeh

This month's competition:
Win a copy of Daisychain by G J Moffat (UK only) - closing very soon (look out for a new competition to replace this one shortly)
and a new one for May (open now):
Win a copy of Bad Penny Blues by Cathi Unsworth (UK only).

This week's reviews are mostly a mixture of thriller and science based crime fiction:

Pat Austin reviews Kenneth Cameron's The Second Woman set in 1900s London;

Maxine Clarke reviews 61 Hours by Lee Child;

Amanda Gillies reviews globe-trotting thriller Quantum by Tom Grace;

Michelle Peckham reviews the paperback edition of Matt Hilton's second Joe Hunter novel, Judgement and Wrath, set in Miami;

Terry Halligan reviews the fourth in the GeneCrime series from John Macken: Control

and Maxine also reviews the "philosophical thriller", Dark Matter by Juli Zeh, translated by Christine Lo.

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

Juli Zeh's new book - cover/title opinions

Until I received an email from a US publicist I hadn't appreciated that Juli Zeh's Dark Matter, tr. Christine Lo is to be published as In Free Fall in the US. So this time, which cover and/or title might attract you to the book? I've also included the two different blurbs below.

UK on the left, US on the right



UK Blurb

Sebastian and Oskar have been friends since their days studying physics at university, when both were considered future Nobel Prize candidates. But their lives took divergent paths, as did their scientific views. Whenever Oskar comes to visit from his prestigious research post in Geneva, there is tension in the air, and it doesn't help their friendship that he feels Sebastian has not lived up to his intellectual capacities, having chosen marriage and fatherhood as an exit strategy. A few days after a particularly heated argument between the two men, Sebastian leaves his son sleeping in the back seat while he goes into a service station. When he returns, the car has disappeared without trace. His phone rings and a voice informs him that in order to get his son back he must kill a man. As Sebastian's life unravels, the only person he can safely reach out to is Oskar. Then Detective Schilf comes on the scene, with a most unorthodox method of uncovering the truth. With intelligence, wit, precision, and grace, Juli Zeh crafts a philosophical thriller which uses the clash of the ideal and the material worlds, the bending of reality, and the search for a definition of time to explore the ideas of guilt and innocence and the infinite configurations of love.

US Blurb

A child is kidnapped but does not know it. One man dies, two physicists fight, and a senior constable falls in love. In the end, everything is different . . . yet exactly the same.” —Prologue

A rising star who has garnered some of Europe’s most important literary prizes, Juli Zeh has established herself as the new master of the philosophical thriller. With In Free Fall, she now takes us on a fast-paced ride through deadly rivalry and love’s infinite configurations.

Against the backdrop of Germany and Switzerland, two physicists begin a dangerous dance of distrust. Friends since their university days, when they were aspiring Nobel Prize candidates, they now interact in an atmosphere of tension, stoked by Oskar’s belief that Sebastian fell into mediocrity by having a family. When Sebastian’s son, Liam, is apparently kidnapped, their fragile friendship is further tested. Entrusted with uncovering the truth, Detective Superintendent Schilf discerns a web of blackmail, while at the same time the reality of his personal life falls into doubt. Unfolding in a series of razor-sharp scenes, In Free Fall is a riveting novel of ideas from a major new literary voice. With the recent success of works in translation, such as Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire, Zeh is poised to take off.