Reviews: Alaux & Balen, Bauer, Bilal, Fowler, Hannah, Judd, Shepherd, Todd, Whitney

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

Please welcome new reviewer Ewa Sherman who makes her debut today.

A reminder that FriendFeed is being withdrawn on 9 April, so our crime and mystery group has new home on Facebook - Petrona's Crime and Mystery Friends. It's a closed group but there are admins in all time zones so you won't have to wait long to be approved. Do join us - new members are very welcome!

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 Jean-Pierre Alaux & Noel Balen's Deadly Tasting tr. Sally Pane the fourth in their cozy Winemaker series;

Michelle Peckham reviews Belinda Bauer's The Shut Eye;

Lynn Harvey reviews Parker Bilal's The Burning Gates, the fourth in his Makana series set in Egypt;


Mark Bailey reviews Christopher Fowler's Bryant & May - The Burning Man, the twelfth in this series which features London's Peculiar Crimes Unit;

Amanda Gillies reviews Mari Hannah's Killing for Keeps the fifth in the Detective Chief Inspector Kate Daniels series;


Ewa Sherman reviews Alan Judd's Inside Enemy which is the fourth in the Charles Thoroughgood series;

Terry Halligan reviews Lynn Shepherd's The Pierced Heart, the fourth in the Charles Maddox series;

Terry also reviews Charles Todd's A Fine Summer's Day a prequel in the Inspector Rutledge series

and Susan White reviews Rebecca Whitney's debut, The Liar's Chair.

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

New Reviews: Chatterton, Craig, Hannah, Holt, Lawton, Leather, Rickman, Shepherd, Yates

This week's set of reviews, added to the Euro Crime website today, is a mixture of new reviews and a catch-up of those posted directly on the blog in the last two weeks, so you may have read some of them before if you're a regular :).

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

New Reviews

JF reviews Down Among the Dead Men by Ed Chatterton, the second in the DCI Frank Keane series, set in Liverpool and this time also LA;

Geoff Jones reviews James Craig's The Circus, the fourth in the DI John Carlyle series set in London;

Amanda Gillies reviews Monument to Murder by Mari Hannah, the fourth in the DCI Kate Daniels series set in Northumberland;

Lynn Harvey reviews Anne Holt's Blessed Are Those Who Thirst tr. Anne Bruce, the second outing for Oslo's Detective Inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen;

Norman Price reviews Then We Take Berlin by John Lawton, a non-Troy book which "...certainly meets the Troy standard of eccentricity, humour, meticulous historical research and readability";

Terry Halligan reviews Stephen Leather's True Colours, the tenth in the "Spider" series;

Rich Westwood reviews The Magus of Hay by Phil Rickman, the twelfth book in the Merrily Watkins series;

Terry also reviews Lynn Shepherd's A Treacherous Likeness the third in the Charles Maddox series, this time involving a mystery around the Shelleys

and Amanda also reviews Christopher J Yates's debut Black Chalk, starting her  review with: "Oh this book is seriously good".


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.

Cats in Crime Fiction

My other half is currently reading Tom-All-Alone's by Lynn Shepherd (which I got for him as he likes his Dickens) and he is regaling me with quotes about the main character's cat.

"The cat wakes, stretches languorously on the bed then turns himself slowly upside-down, inviting adulation."

(As demonstrated by Foxy.)

Read the Euro Crime review by Terry.

New Reviews: Blake, Creed, Garnier, McNeill, O'Connor, Rowson, Russell, Shepherd, Varenne

Here are 9 new reviews which have been added to the Euro Crime website today:

Rich Westwood reviews Nicholas Blake's third Nigel Strangeways mystery There's Trouble Brewing which was reissued earlier this year with three other titles;

Geoff Jones reviews Adam Creed's fourth DI Wagstaffe book Death in the Sun set in Spain;

Earlier this week I reviewed Pascal Garnier's How's the Pain? tr. Emily Boyce a most unusual short crime story;

Susan White reviews the debut from Fergus McNeill, Eye Contact set in Severn Beach;

Maxine Clarke reviews Niamh O'Connor's Too Close for Comfort, the third in her DI Jo Birmingham series set in Dublin;

Lizzie Hayes reviews Pauline Rowson's Death Lies Beneath the eight in her Portsmouth based series featuring DI Andy Horton;

Amanda Gillies reviews Leigh Russell's fourth DI Geraldine Steele outing Death Bed set in London;

Terry Halligan reviews Lynn Shepherd's Tom-All-Alone's (apa The Solitary House), set in the milieu of Bleak House

and Lynn Harvey reviews Antonin Varenne's Bed of Nails tr. Sian Reynolds set in Paris and Lynn writes that it is "a powerful and original debut crime story, definitely one for Vargas fans".

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.

Snippets about some publishing deals

These are very brief today. From Publishers Lunch email, news that a publishing deal has been struck for:

Lynn Shepherd's TOM-ALL-ALONE'S, a mystery that runs parallel to and in the "space between" two masterpieces of mid-Victorian fiction: Bleak House and The Woman in White.

Lynn Shepherd is the author of Murder at Mansfield Park.

And on twitter today, this from Severn House:

Just signed up 2 new novels in Fiona Buckley's Tudor mystery series featuring Elizabeth I's lady-in-waiting & part-time spy, Ursula Blanchard.

I'm not sure if these are new books or new to UK books. Fiona Buckley has so-far written eight books in the Ursula Blanchard series.

New Reviews: Fuentes, Lennon, McGilloway, Rees, Shepherd, Tremayne

This month's competitions:

Win the complete Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson on Unabridged Audiobooks (UK & Ireland) (closes 16 April)
Win a copy of Daisychain by G J Moffat (UK only)

Here are this week's new reviews:

Maxine Clarke gives a 5 star rating to Eugenio Fuentes's At Close Quarters, tr. Martin Schifino;

Terry Halligan enjoyed the page-turner that is Cut Out by Patrick Lennon;

Maxine also says that Brian McGilloway is in top-form with The Rising the fourth in the Devlin series;

Laura Root says that Matt Rees maintains the same high quality even when his sleuth leaves Palestine for a trip to New York in The Fourth Assassin;

Michelle Peckham has mixed views on Lynn Shepherd's Murder at Mansfield Park though she enjoyed it overall

and Amanda Gillies starts her association with Sister Fidelma in the latest paperback - The Dove of Death by Peter Tremayne.

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

Murder at Mansfield Park - cover opinions

A review of Murder at Mansfield Park by Lynn Shepherd will appear on Euro Crime in due course. The UK and Australian editions are both published in April with the US edition out in July. Which cover would entice you to pick it up or is the title alone enough?

UK left, Australian right
















(US cover left)
Murder at Mansfield Park is a witty and clever reimagining of Jane Austen's much-loved novel Mansfield Park. But in this Mansfield Park, things have changed...Formerly Austen's meekest heroine, Fanny Price has become not only an heiress to an extensive fortune but also a heartless, scheming minx. Hiding her true character behind a demure facade, Fanny is indeed betrothed to Edmund, now Mrs Norris's stepson; but do the couple really love each other? Henry and Mary Crawford arrive in the country ready to wreak havoc with their fast city ways, but this time Henry Crawford is troubled by a suspicious past while his sister, Mary, steps forward in the best Austen style to become an unexpected heroine. Meanwhile, tragedy strikes the safe and solid grand house as it becomes the scene of violence. Every member of the family falls under suspicion and the race begins to halt a ruthless murderer.

Murder at Mansfield Park (publishing deal)

From The Bookseller:

The deal for Murder at Mansfield Park, by Lynn Shepherd, was negotiated via Ben Mason at the Conville Walsh Agency for an undisclosed sum. The title will be published as a B-format paperback next April, and will include reading group discussion points.

In contrast with the original story, the character Fanny Price is "ambitious, scheming and relentlessly focused", while Mary Crawford "suffers great indignities from her mean neighbour". Shepherd explained: "What intrigues me about Mansfield Park is how unlike Jane Austen it actually is. One of the reasons so many readers are dissatisfied with the novel Austen did write is that they find her heroine at best insipid, and at worst, downright irritating."

Simon Petherick, managing director of Beautiful Books, described the book as "fantastic" and "tremendous fun". He added: "The really good thing about it is that linguistically, it's very accurate, and she picks up on all the key themes that appeared in the original . . . But whereas Fanny is quite a pain in the arse in Austen's version, Lynn's Fanny is an outrageous gold-digger."

When a murder takes place, mid-way through the story, the novel turns into a "literary version of Agatha Christie." Petherick said: "You cannot work out which character would, or could, commit the murder – everyone who has read it so far has failed to guess who did it."

Read the rest of the article here.