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**First book spoiler warning** This is Nick Harkaway's second book in the Titanium Noir series, so while there are no spoilers here for Sleeper Beach , it does reveal at least one significant event that took place in the first book . ** Cal Sounder, in his capacity as a Private Investigator rather than as part of the important Tonfamecasca family, is called in to look into the death of a woman on Sleeper Beach in the costal town of Shearwater. A formerly thriving town, it's now something of a backwater, but still the centre of operations for the Erskine family who practically own the town. It's not uncommon to find dead bodies on Sleeper Beach. People often come there to lie on one of the many sunbeds laid out and stay there; those suffering from what the local police pathologist calls 'spontaneous dysphoric and psychogenic cognitive atrophy', a fancy way of saying that they feeling discarded by the world and have given up on life. The dead woman Alisa Lloyd doesn...

For a fantasy novel, The Raven Scholar starts out relatively low key. There is no epic battle, the land has been at peace for centuries, the only recent rebellion quickly put down before it even got started. There is a minor hangover from that rebellion still to be mopped up, but while even that seems relatively insignificant, you know how it goes with fantasy novels. This is just the beginning of a trilogy, so you can be sure there will be ramifications down the line, and sure enough these events already come back to bite before the end of book one.  So what kind of a fantasy world does Antonia Hodgson delve into in her Eternal Path Trilogy? It's close enough to a Game of Thrones style fantasy, where there are powerful rival families in Orrun and there are religious and militaristic powers. The difference here is that you can choose which 'family' or anat of the Eight Guardians you wish to follow. There is the Way of the Bear, the Ox, the Raven, the Monkey, the Hound, the...

Having come to Thilliez and Sharko via the more common route of the later Le Syndrome [E] and subsequent follow-ups with Lucie Hennebelle in  [Gataca] and Atom[ka] , I knew a little about what happened in Thilliez's first Sharko thriller Train d’enfer pour ange rouge , or at least one significant outcome. I also had a good idea of the dark tone that the book would take as that is characteristic of the author's writing and certainly the traumatic experience of this case in the first book has an outcome that marks Sharko deeply and is felt throughout the rest of the series. I'm not sure how much more of this I can say without giving away what might be considered a spoiler, but sure the book has been out for a number of years now and Thilliez has not yet had anything significant published in English, so it should be safe enough. I'll tiptoe around it just in case. So I had some idea what to expect in Train d’enfer pour ange rouge (literally, Hell Train for Red Angel). W...

If you read a lot of David Mark’s writing (I'm counting 17 reviews so far on this blog), you'll notice that there are some common features that crop up now and again. There are a few here in Cages , notably a rather seedy but talented writer or journalist who has hit hard times ( Still Waters , Darkness Falls ) seeking another shot at success (which sounds like it is based not so much on a self-deprecating self-image as self-flagellating one). Pit this journalist or similar flawed character up against a criminal who exhibits the worst impulses of humanity and you have a very dark and volatile situation, the kind that David Mark revels in, but without repeating himself, just plunging deeper. Which doesn't make his crime thrillers an easy read, but there are still few to match his insights into those dark places. A flawed but inquisitive character running up against a rather disturbing killer is there in Cages and the balance is a good one, with a slight variation on the th...

Some people are just magnets for trouble and Dylan Dog is definitely one of them, thankfully I suppose, as otherwise there wouldn't be an adventure for us every month. It wouldn't be entirely correct then to say that what happens in Il sonno della ragione (The Dream of Reason) is the strangest thing to happen to him (you need only look back at Dylan Dog 153 - La strada verso il nulla for example), but with the Edvard Munch inspired cover (why not Goya?) you have to consider that there is something in Il sonno della ragione that pushes him to the limit this time. It all starts when Dylan discovers an extremely thin entirely naked woman lying in an alley close to his home. It looks like a case of a drug overdose, but something strange passes through Dylan when he lifts her up to take her to the hospital. Even stranger is what Dr Oldbright discovers when the woman is put through a CT scan. The entire left hemisphere of her brain has been removed, and not recently either. As wel...

The original story for Dylan Dog 153, La strada verso il nulla (The Road to Nowhere), was developed by Italian crime writer Carlo Lucarelli ( Commissario De Luca ), the final script adapted by the creator of the series, Tiziano Sclavi. It's a classic horror tale, following the logic of a nightmare that feels impossible to escape from, touching on the usual horror movie references, but fully retaining the character of Dylan Dog with a self-referential tone not uncommon in Sclavi’s series. It's a classic Dylan Dog story, working in multiple levels, dark and reflective, touching and humorous, recognising the conventions and playing with them, and it's brilliantly illustrated. Dylan has just been dumped by his latest girlfriend, Louanne, despite Dylan believing they have had an ideal relationship for the whole month they were together (the maximum allotted time for a romantic relationship in this monthly series). It's an acrimonious breakup, the end of the road for them as...