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Le bureau des affaires occultes - Éric Fouassier

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One of the attractions of the historical crime thriller is that it has to rely on old-school methods and hands-on involvement, and you don't have to go too far back in time for that. What's interesting about Éric Fouassier's Le bureau des affaires occultes - apart from the intriguing title of course - it that it takes us right back to the earliest days of the police investigation in France. So in addition to the old-school police procedural investigation, we also have all the colour of a fascinating historical period as well to work through. Set in France in 1830, much of the history of this period will be largely unknown to a non-native French person, although some names will jump out, not least Vidocq, who founded the police force in France around this time and who does indeed make an appearance here. 1830 is significant because of the unstable political situation of the time. Charles X has replaced by Louis-Philippe as King, but there are still many secret groups of con...
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My Effin' Life - Geddy Lee

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They say never meet your heroes, but maybe that should also apply to reading their autobiographies. Not that there is anything a Rush fan is going to find particularly upsetting and disappointing about Geddy Lee's My Effin’ Life . When you like/worship a band for its music over decades, seeing the person or persons behind the curtain for good or ill, isn't going to change that. I'm not sure why though, but I always had the impression of Canadian rock band Rush as a very serious and sophisticated band of committed musicians, who didn't have time for the usual rock star high-life lifestyle. Maybe it was Neil Peart’s literate lyrics and the elevated subjects they dealt with far from the rock anthems of other bands of the time; maybe it was the musicianship of all three members of the band, each of them rated as among the very best in their respective fields of drums, guitar and bass, always pushing their collective sound to new limits, each song meticulously arranged with ...
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Clown Town - Mick Herron

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Mick Herron often bases his Slough House stories on some form of real-world political and intelligence activity. Not just for realism but partly because it's hard to make something up for satire when the real world these days is going to come up with something even more absurd and unbelievable than you can make up. Besides, the plot and its believability aren't really the point of the books, or at least not for me, but rather just a framework to hang his characters, the humour and style on. (A lot of which I'm sure must be lost in the hit TV series adaptations). Sometimes the real world can be too awful to satirise and the prologue for Herron's latest, Clown Town is horribly gruesome, but a reminder - we shall see - that there is a price to be paid for acts of bad faith and unknown consequences down the line. For a while at least, there doesn't appear to be anything particularly troublesome arising out of the historic prologue, and instead in the novel proper we f...
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The Drowned Girl - David Mark

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I've reviewed a lot of David Mark's books:  twenty on this blog in fact. That fact alone should say something about what I think about the quality of his writing, but the flipside of that is that you worry that it becomes more difficult to find the words to do him justice, as he is not yet near as famous, rich and celebrated bestseller writer of crime thrillers as he deserves to be. It’s almost as if I am a powerless blogger who has little influence over the tastes of the genre and literary world! David Mark on the other hand never stops or repeats himself, so there is  no reason for me to give up either, particularly as his latest book, The Drowned Girl , demonstrates all of the qualities that make his writing so thrilling; so let's try again and hope that maybe just a few more people will take notice. The qualities that are evident in all aspects of his writing are right from the outset in The Drowned Girl , which as principally a literary thriller writer (I think I migh...
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Blood Crazy: Aten Unbound (Blood Crazy: Book 4) - Simon Clark

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At the start of Blood Crazy Book 4, there is a warning to the reader from one of the principal characters in the series that "what happens to Nick Aten during his journey may well have a powerful effect on you". That might sound a little like hyperbole, but as soon as you find yourself reacquainted with Nick Aten just a few pages later in Aten Unbound , you feel the sheer weight of the memory of the horror of the what has come before suddenly hit you. There is no immediate shock event to provoke this feeling, just Nick packing to undertake the next stage of his journey "the first step of a journey I did not want to make", but the accumulation of events that have taken us here seems to re-emerge in a frightening flashback. There are a lot of scenes from those first three books that remain vividly etched in my mind. Not least the shock opening of the original book that started it all off (and there are spoilers here only if you haven't read the first three books)...
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Massif - Garth Nix

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Better known as a fantasy writer, Garth Nix's first science fiction novel initially feels a little tentative in its approach to what appears to be the space opera field. Rather than take the time to build up to how the people of Earth find a means to travel in space and explore other planets, the author explains it all in the brief prologue before seeming to settle down into rather more mundane aspects of military life aboard one of these spaceships that gets caught up in a skirmish with an enemy fleet. For quite a while you have no idea where it's going, but there is a larger scheme building in the background around the mystery of the Massif. The origins of the Massif are laid out in that prologue, so I'm going to do the same. The first Massif appeared on Earth in 2097, arising into orbit out of the Marojejy massif in Madagascar, leading to the discovery of otherspace travelling Massifs, each with an enigmatic avatar entity. Visits and investigations to the MirinahRakoto M...
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Alva in the Dark - Aksel Studsgarth and Daniel Hansen

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" Okay, this just got interesting ". Yep, you have to agree with that statement when it comes through just on page 21 of the 263 page graphic novel Alva in the Dark . It's been beautifully illustrated up to now in dark shadowy black and white, introducing a pair of burglars, Mini and Morten who have been given a tip where to find an apartment owned by a old man with a supply of gold. They are going to need Alva for this job, the young woman something of an acrobatic cat burglar, and she duly obliges for a cut. Maybe they should have thought more about it when a page earlier Alva says " Morten, I have a bad feeling about this place ", and you wonder why they haven't questioned earlier why an old man lives in a dump of a place when he apparently has a substantial hoard of gold. Realistically though, the lure of gold means a sign on the door of a concealed room saying LEAVE NOW is unlikely to be taken as a warning and more as a sign of ...well, isn't that i...
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