New Reviews: Beaton, Dahl, Lennon, Rygg, Sjowall & Wahloo and Wells

Here are this week's new reviews and details of the latest competition.

Latest Reviews:

I get to review the latest in the Hamish MacBeth series, Death of a Gentle Lady by M C Beaton, which is the 24th in the series but Constable are reprinting all the earlier ones at quite a rapid rate for those who have yet to become addicted;

Norman Price reviews the newly translated The Man in the Window by K O Dahl who like his fellow Norwegian Jo Nesbo has had his fifth book (The Fourth Man) translated before his third... Norman writes that Dahl is "one of the ever growing group of excellent Nordic crime fiction authors available in English";

Amanda Gillies reviews the second in the Tom Fletcher series by Patrick Lennon, Steel Witches, who, like Jim Kelly, sets his books in Cambridgeshire and both authors also appear to incorporate extremes of weather in their plots. Amanda calls it "a very fine piece of work";

Back to Norway and Maxine Clarke reviews the first of two books featuring Igi Heitmann, The Butterfly Effect saying that it "is a wonderful book;

Karen Chisholm helps out with Euro Crime's quest to review all ten of the Martin Beck books by Sjowall and Wahloo by reviewing the fourth (and some say the best) in this classic series, The Laughing Policeman

and Maxine provides a second opinion on Shirley Wells' Into the Shadows a book I enjoyed immensely and which Maxine says is "perfect for whiling away a wet Sunday afternoon".


Current Competition (closing date 31 May):

Win a signed copy of Spider by Michael Morley*

* UK/Europe only

February's first reviews and competitions

Here are this week's new reviews and details of February's competitions:

Latest Reviews:

In Mike Ripley's January crime file, he reviews Death in Hellfire by Deryn Lake, The Templar by Paul Doherty, Death at Dawn by Caro Peacock and The Garden of Evil by David Hewson;

Fiona Walker reviews The Patience of The Spider by Andrea Camilleri which has just been published in the UK;

Maxine Clarke was relieved that Asa Larsson's The Savage Altar (aka Sun Storm) was every bit as good as she'd hoped;

Laura Root enjoyed last month's competition prize - Bad Traffic by Simon Lewis;

Maxine finds Sjowall and Wahloo's third Martin Beck book, The Man on the Balcony to be a "lean and compelling novel"

and I review the first in a new series: Into the Shadows by Shirley Wells - set in a small Lancashire village where the hunts for a domestic murderer and a serial killer collide.


Current Competitions (closing date 29 February):

Win a copy of A Vengeful Longing by R N Morris (no geographical restrictions)

Win a copy of Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn (UK & Europe only)

(geographical restrictions are in brackets)