New Reviews: Billingham, Franklin & Norman, Jungstedt, O'Byrne, Spencer, Wilkinson

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

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

New Reviews

Craig Sisterson reviews Mark Billingham's Rush of Blood, a stand-alone from a couple of years ago;

Terry Halligan reviews Winter Siege, begun by Ariana Franklin and completed by her daughter Samantha Norman, which is now out in paperback;

Michelle Peckham reviews Mari Jungstedt's The Dangerous Game tr. Tiina Nunnally;


Amanda Gillies reviews The Crime Writer's Guide to Police Practice and Procedure, Second Edition by Michael O'Byrne;

Rich Westwood reviews I Nearly Died by Charles Spencer


and Susan White reviews Kerry Wilkinson's Scarred for Life, the latest in the Jessica Daniel series.



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

Poster Frenzy

This was taken a few days ago (before the new Jenny Colgan book took over - pink everywhere). It's at Four Oaks station in North Birmingham. Mark Billingham's Good as Dead bracketing Jo Nesbo's Phantom and the film of (his) Headhunters:

Good as Dead - Cover & Title Opinions

This week's selection for "cover opinions" is the US and UK covers and titles for Mark Billingham's Good as Dead which is being published in the US as The Demands in June 2012.

So what are your thoughts on the US (LHS) and UK (RHS) covers and titles? Which would entice you to pick the book up if you were not familiar with the books of Mark Billingham? One has a quote from Lee Child, the other from the Daily Mail.

If you have read it, how well do the covers/titles match the story?

Read the Euro Crime review by Geoff of Good as Dead.

New Reviews: Billingham, Burke, Chance, Christie, Larsson, Magson, Rayne, Sharp, Stark & Competition

And the reviews are back! A slightly longer break than I'd anticipated due to family matters but 9 new reviews follow below plus a very short-term competition to win tickets to meet actors from The Killing (Danish version) at The Scandinavia Show next Sunday. I have 4 tickets to giveaway, just enter a few details in this form.

Here are this week's (globe-trotting) reviews:

Geoff Jones reviews the tenth in the Tom Thorne series by Mark Billingham, Good as Dead;

Laura Root reviews Down These Green Streets: Irish Crime Writing in the Twenty-First Century edited by Declan Burke an "anthology of essays and short stories centred on Irish crime writing";

Lynn Harvey reviews Alex Chance's second thriller, now out in mass market paperback Savage Blood which she describes as "Denis Wheatley meets Dan Brown";

I review the audio version of two recently unearthed Hercule Poirot stories by Agatha Christie: The Capture of Cerberus & The Incident of the Dog's Ball which are read by David Suchet;

Maxine Clarke reviews the long-awaited fourth book in translation by Asa Larsson: Until Thy Wrath Be Past, tr. Laurie Thompson which Maxine sums up in one word: "brilliant";

Terry Halligan reviews the second in Adrian Magson's 1960s France-set DI Rocco series, Death on the Rive Nord and he hopes for more in the series;

Amanda Gillies praises highly Sarah Rayne's latest psychological thriller, What Lies Beneath now out in paperback;

The first of two books set in the US written by UK authors is Alex Sharp's Driver: Nemesis, set in New Orleans; it's based on a computer game and written pseudonymously by an "English thriller writer" and reviewed here by Rich Westwood

and the second is Oliver Stark's 88 Killer, his second book set in New York City and which Michelle Peckham found "absorbing".

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

Win: From the Dead by Mark Billingham

Euro Crime has 5 copies of the paperback of From the Dead by Mark Billingham to giveaway. To enter the draw, just answer the simple question* and include your details in the form below.
*The answer can be found in the Bibliographies section.

This competition is open to UK & Europe residents and will close on 31 March 2011.
Only 1 entry per person/per household please.
(All entries will be deleted once the winner has been notified.)

The hardback edition is reviewed on Euro Crime, here.

It has been a decade since Alan Langford's charred remains were discovered in his burnt-out car. His wife Donna was found guilty of conspiracy to murder her husband and served ten years in prison. But just before she is released, Donna receives a nasty shock: an anonymous letter containing a photo of her husband. The man she hates with every fibre of her being - the man she paid to have murdered - seems very much alive and well. How is it possible that her husband is still alive? Where is he? Who sent the photo, and why? DI Tom Thorne becomes involved in a case where nothing and no one are what they seem. It will take him much further from his London beat than he has ever been before - and closer to a killer who will do anything to protect his new life.

New Reviews: Billingham, Black, Campbell, Ellory, Harper, MacBride

One competition for October and it is open internationally closes 31st:
Win one of five copies of Someone Else's Son by Sam Hayes

Here are this week's reviews (in all but once case the author or the reviewer is Scottish, and in one case both! Plus two of the non Scottish authors are Brummies (where I live)):

The tv series Thorne, starts tonight with the adaptation of the first Thorne book, Sleepyhead. Geoff Jones reviews the ninth in this series, written by Mark Billingham: From the Dead;

Paul Blackburn reviews the fourth Gus Dury from Tony Black - Long Time Dead set in Edinburgh;

Maxine Clarke is in Glasgow with Karen Campbell's Anna Cameron in her third outing: Shadowplay;

Pat Austin is impressed with R J Ellory's latest standalone: Saints of New York;

Amanda Gillies enjoys Tom Harper's latest thriller, which involves the Holy Grail: The Lazarus Vault

and Craig Sisterson reviews Stuart MacBride's most recent DS Logan McRae book: Dark Blood set in Aberdeen.

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

Apps for Martina Cole & Mark Billingham

I haven't got an i-anything but I've stumbled across mentions of apps for Martina Cole and Mark Billingham recently:


For the first time, MARTINA COLE: THE EXTRAS iPhone app gives you exclusive access to Martina Cole’s world and the inside scoop on her bestselling novels.

This is the definitive guide to Martina and is perfect for all her fans and those of you who are just discovering her fantastic writing. Covering all of her bestselling novels from DANGEROUS LADY to HARD GIRLS, the app allows you to:

Watch Martina talk about her novels
Read the first chapter from each of her bestselling books
Find out more about Martina in an exclusive extended biography
Have instant access to buy the books you haven’t read

Find out more here.

And it was recently announced in The Bookseller that a Mark Billingam/Tom Thorne app would be released on 7 October:

Little, Brown will be launching an app for Mark Billingham's DI Tom Thorne crime novels, in what it is calling an "unprecedented partnership" with Sky and Trade Mobile.

The app will be available free for users of iPhone and Android handsets from 7th October, coinciding with a new six-part TV series, "Thorne", broadcasting on Sky 1 HD.

The publisher said the app would "act as a companion to the Thorne series of novels and the TV series thorne, offering exclusive material including author videos, images, an interactive map of Thorne's London, a playlist, as well as stills, trailers and interviews from the new Sky 1 series".


Readers of Billingham's novels Sleepyhead and Scaredycat (re-issued by Little, Brown as TV tie-in editions on 7th October) will also be able to use the App to go "BeyondTheStory", with Trade Mobile's searchable page technology providing extra detail relating to characters, locations and plots.

New Competition - Win From the Dead by Mark Billingham (world-wide)

Euro Crime has three copies of From the Dead (hardback) by Mark Billingham to giveaway. Just answer the simple question and include your details in the form below.

This competition is open internationally and will close on 30 September 2010.
Only 1 entry per person/per household please.
(All entries will be deleted once the winners have been notified.)

When Donna Langford receives a very recent photo of her ex-husband in the post, she gets the shock of her life. Because she's just spent ten years in prison for organising his murder. When her daughter goes missing, Donna believes there can only be one man responsible and hires Anna Carpenter, a determined young private investigator, to find him. DI Tom Thorne worked on the Alan Langford case, so when Carpenter brings the photo to him, he refuses to believe that the man whose body was found in a burned-out car ten years before can still be alive. But when a prison inmate that he and Anna interview is viciously murdered, Thorne starts to understand that Langford is not only alive, but ready to get rid of anyone who could threaten his comfortable new life in Spain...

Review: The Sounds of Crime Anthology (audio book)

The Sounds of Crime Edited by Maxim Jakubowski with stories by Lawrence Block, Mark Billingham, Christopher Fowler, Peter James and Val McDermid, read by multiple narrators (Whole Story Audio Books, September 2010, CD ISBN: 978 1 40743 572 5)

The Sounds of Crime is a collection of especially commissioned short stories on the theme of "audio". The stories are not available in print. Each story is about 30 minutes long and there is a short introduction from editor Maxim Jakubowski at the beginning of the collection.

Dolly's Trash and Treasures by Laurence Block narrated by Buffy Davis
This is probably my favourite of the set. Set in America, Dolly a compulsive hoarder is visited by a series of officials with the story conveyed almost completely through dialogue between Dolly and her visitors. An atmospheric and very creepy story in which my sympathy switched as the tale progresses.

Meet Me at the Crematorium by Peter James narrated by Eve Karpf
Fed up with her bullying husband Trevor, Janet travels to Germany to start a new life with a man she's recently met over the internet. But the story doesn't go the way you'd expect from such a description...

Happy Holidays by Val McDermid narrated by Mike Grady
This is a mini Tony Hill-Carol Jordan outing as they are faced with a case of murders being committed on festive days such as Bonfire Night. Tony fears a Santa will die at Christmas. This is a good sampler of this series which is well known, at least in the tv version Wire in the Blood, for its unpleasant methods of murder and this one includes a couple of memorable descriptions.

The Walls by Mark Billingham narrated by Eric Meyers
Best known for the London Tom Thorne series (soon to be on SkyOne), Mark Billingham writes this unsettling tale in America. A man and woman arrive at the same hotel. The man says he's a contractor, the woman's there for a family reunion of sorts, but one them is lying. Attraction and necessity takes its course - giving a new meaning to the phrase "you'll hate yourself in the morning".

The Deceivers by Christopher Fowler narrated by John Hasler
This has a Tales of the Unexpected feel to it. Presented as a monologue, the young narrator tells of how he and a friend relieved the boredom of living in a small town on the Devon-Cornwall border and the unforeseen consequences.

I enjoyed The Sounds of Crime. The stories are well written, as you'd expect from these top crime authors. Each story held my interest throughout. Stories of this length are very suitable for commuters or those who struggle a bit to fit in a full length audio book or for someone to just sample the audio book experience. The narrators are very good with special credit to Buffy Davis who made Dolly very memorable.

Thorne - teaser trailer

I've been seeing this trailer for Thorne on SkyOne and have found it at the Little, Brown website:



David Morrissey is playing DI Tom Thorne from Mark Billingham's series. The first two books, Sleepyhead and Scaredy Cat are being televised and are due to be shown in August.

Bits and Pieces (2)

One or two things I've discovered this week:

July 2010 is looking good for fans of Scandinavian crime fiction with new series entries from Yrsa Sigurdardottir and Karin Fossum plus a debut novel from Camilla Ceder. More 2010 Scandinavian crime fiction can be found on my amazon list.

Richard Armitage is filming Chris Ryan's Strike Back. The six part series is due to be broadcast in spring 2010 on Sky.


David Morrissey is to play Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne. Mark reports on Facebook that "the TV series is in production and will probably be on screen in late Autumn next year..."

Reviews: Billingham, Blake, Bolton, Cotterill, Fitzgerald, Parot & New Competitions

Three new competitions for August, prizes are: The Third Pig Detective Agency by Bob Burke, Relics of the Dead by Ariana Franklin and Blood Law by Steven Hague (some restrictions apply).

Here are this week's reviews:

Tom Thorne is back in Mark Billingham's Blood Line, which reviewer Craig Sisterson calls a "taut tour de force";

Rome in AD 608 is the setting for Conspiracies of Rome by Richard Blake reviewed by Terry Halligan who found it to be "one of the most atmospheric historical novels I've read in years";

Amanda Gillies calls S J Bolton's Awakening "superb" despite her snake phobia;

Michelle Peckham reviews Dagger Winner Colin Cotterill's fourth Laos mystery Anarchy and Old Dogs concluding it's "an entertaining read that is thoroughly recommended";

Maxine Clarke has mixed views on My Last Confession by Helen Fitzgerald

and Laura Root has another enjoyable excursion into pre-revolutionary France in the third of the Nicolas Le Floch series by Jean-François Parot, The Phantom of Rue Royale.

Previous reviews can be found in the review archive and forthcoming titles can be found here.

New Reviews: Alvtegen, Billingham, Black, Kristian, Marr, Schenkel

The following reviews have been added to the review archive over on the main Euro Crime website:

Maxine Clarke reviews Betrayal by Karin Alvtegen concluding that "this novel is psychological suspense at its finest";

Craig Sisterson reviews Buried by Mark Billingham writing that the protagonist Tom Thorne is "arguably the best-written detective in British crime fiction today";

Paul Blackburn reviews Gutted by Tony Black saying that it's "a superb second book - roll on book number three";

Amanda Gillies reviews Raven: Blood Eye by Giles Kristian which is "every bit as good as the glowing reviews on its back cover";

Terry Halligan reviews The Director by Chris Marr and finds it "very entertaining and a real page turner";

and Laura Root reviews The Murder Farm by Andrea Maria Schenkel and she "would highly recommend this unusual, thought-provoking book".

Previous reviews can be found in the review archive and forthcoming titles can be found here.

..to change a lightbulb...

The Chemistry of Death by Simon Beckett is reviewed here and The Intruders by Michael Marshall is reviewed here. Any advance on 3 covers?
UPDATE: A fourth cover has been spotted by Fiona.

Death Message - TV Advert

Mark Billingham's seventh DI Tom Thorne book, Death Message, is out in paperback today.

Synopsis from amazon.co.uk:

The first message sent to Tom Thorne's mobile phone was just a picture - the blurred image of a man's face, but Thorne had seen enough dead bodies in his time to know that the man was no longer alive. But who was he? Who sent the photograph? And why? While the technical experts attempt to trace the sender, Thorne searches the daily police bulletins for a reported death that matches the photograph. Then another picture arrives. Another dead man ...It is the identities of the murdered men which give Thorne his first clue, a link to a dangerous killer he'd put away years before and who is still in prison. With a chilling talent for manipulation, this man has led another inmate to plot revenge on everyone he blames for his current incarceration, and for the murder of his family while he was inside. Newly released, this convict has no fear of the police, no feelings for those he is compelled to murder. Now Tom Thorne must face one of the toughest challenges of his career, knowing that there is no killer more dangerous than one who has nothing left to lose.

Watch a sneak preview of the tv advert:



The eighth Tom Thorne book, The Life Thief, should be out in 2009 but a standalone, In The Dark, will be out in August.