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Suspicion is a short work by Seicho Matsumoto, but one characteristically filled with intrigue and potential in how it explores crime and its impact on individuals and society. In one respect it's a familiar subject, a court case, or at least the build-up to a court case that is already causing concern and speculation even before it reaches trail. The accused is believed to be guilty because of her past record and, to be fair, the case against her doesn't look good. Typically however - as noted in Inspector Imanshi Investigates ), Matsumoto considers the wider social context as well as certain cultural issues, but the focus is primarily on the intrigue of the crime mystery. Kumako Onizuka is accused of murdering her husband Mr Shirakawa for insurance and is being defended by a notable lawyer called Harayama. A journalist who has been following and reporting on the case, Akitani, can't understand why the lawyer is bothering himself with such an open and shut case. Onizuka h...

This Brutal Moon takes off right where it left off at the end of On Vicious Worlds , the second book in the Kindom trilogy . Which is where everything, or almost everything, is in a bit of a mess, and when I say mess, I'm not referring to the plotting or its complexity. That is easy to pick up even if you read the last book like I did a year ago. I won't give a summary of where we are now or how we got here. If you've read the first two books you'll know, if you haven’t it won't make any sense, but as a reviewer you still want to keep a review as free from spoilers as possible. So when I say mess, I of course mean a good mess, with the Kindom in turmoil, the fate of some of its characters unknown, the Treble facing rebellion and promising a brutal put down. Those most at risk from the vengeance of First Cloak Seti Moonback, the self-styled Kess, are of course the Jeveni refugees on Capamame. Betrayed from within by spies working for the Kindom, Seti has the key to ...

Tomás Nevinson opens, as you might expect in a novel by Javier Marías, with a long preamble to set the scene. It's not an uncommon subject that he contemplates, but one that has been thought about and speculated upon by many others. What if someone has taken one of the many opportunities or been successful in an attempted assassination of Hitler before he became responsible for the deaths of millions of people? But how could anyone have known what he would become?  There is a good reason why this subject might be of interest to the narrator of Tomás Nevinson - who is Tom himself - and the reason you could say was already proposed by a longer preamble to this book, although I doubt there is any way that anyone could consider the author’s previous novel (which would turn out to be his penultimate work), Berta Isla as merely a preamble. As far as Tomás Nevinson is concerned however - the book and the husband of Berta Isla that is - his activities as an undercover operative, spy, ag...

The Whisper of Stars is an ambitious work of fantasy fiction that lays its fantasy elements onto real-life history and even real-life historical figures. That's not entirely new of course, but what is impressive is in how convincing Cristin Williams makes it, building a folk-like legend around a particularly dark moment in world history without making light of the horrors surrounding it. The events of the novel are set in 1923 in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, where the Bolshevik forces under Lenin are hoping to use the skills of a select group of citizens to serve the needs of the state: those with the ability of witchcraft. There are three individuals in particular in the novel with striking and different abilities. Yekaterina Efremova, comes from a family of anarchists, Katya the daughter of the famous Svetlana Efremova. Katya is volshevniki , born with magic powers, her speciality as a charovniki is in the casting of spells. After some experiments to try to control ...

Alastair Reynolds has been known to dip his toes into other genres besides the space opera science fiction he is known for. When I say dip into, that means literally just flirting with the conventions of crime fiction and historical adventure, but always within the science-fiction world. Sometimes more obviously than others - Eversion had me confused for a while - although to my mind those have all been successful ventures. Although Halcyon Years flirts with noir then - more parodies than flirts with really - it's clear nonetheless right from the outset, when we find out that we are dealing with private investigator called Yuri Gagarin, that this is another genre-with-genre exercise - and again a fairly entertaining one, very much on the pulp side of his SF writing. Future noir is nothing new either, but it needs to work hard not to fall into parody. Reynolds doesn't seem like he is too concerned with that, creating Gagarin Investigative Enterprises, a small time operation wi...

Although she is known for her work is the SF/Fantasy genre (and has lately taken to Greek mythology), Slow Gods is the Claire North's first genuine work in the space-opera SF genre. Her approach however is familiar, drawing from the world around us now, finding a different perspective or way to express all the things humanity is getting wrong and where it might lead. 84K , an updating of 1984, was a good example of that. Similarly, the concerns in Slow Gods can be seen to critique authoritarianism and the failure of capitalism, as well as contemporary concerns and attitudes towards nationality, racism, gender politics and asylum seekers. In space of course. Unfortunately, while its heart is in the right place, this time the treatment feels rather heavy-handed and mired in tired prose and invented SF terminology that never seems to get to grips with the scope and scale of the issues that the novel attempts to raise. The characteristics and experiences of the central figure in the ...