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A Trade of Blood - Robert Jackson Bennett

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As with the previous two Ana and Din mysteries in the Shadow of the Leviathan series, they are called upon in A Taste of Blood to deal with a serious case that threatens the security and stability of the Empire, which as we are starting to realise, has more than giant sea beasts to contend with. Despite being a loyal and skilled Iudex officer of the Empire, Immunis Ana Dolabra is less than pleased with being sent out in charge of what appears on the surface to be nothing more than a tawdry murder investigation of the young daughter of the head of a high gentry family. When they visit the scene of the murder in Lacanthim in the canton of Sapirad in the third ring of the Empire, they find much that is strange in the nature of the killing and in the family history that surrounds it. The young woman is Zansay, daughter of Buritis Butav, the prime father of the Burav gentryclan, and the accused is a young man called Castus Armenta, the prime son of the equally important Armenta family, se...
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A Drop of Corruption - Robert Jackson Bennett

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The second Ana and Din mystery in Robert Jackson Bennett's Shadow of the Leviathan series, as you would hope, extends our view and understanding of how the Empire of Khanum works, revealing more about its realms and about the dark corruption that takes place there - corruption of the human kind as well as that caused by the extracts taken from the vast sea monsters that threaten its outer edges. Not that there was anything lacking in the first book The Tainted Cup , but you could see there was potential for further development. There are a few interesting developments that come up early here in A Drop of Corruption . As is part of their procedure now, Assistant Iudex Investigator Signum Dinios Koi arrives ahead of his chief Immunis Anagosa Dolabra to do an initial investigation. Their latest case takes him to Yarrow, to probe a report of the murder of a Treasury Officer there. Yarrow is a unique and unusual realm in the Empire; it's not officially part of the Empire, but actua...
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The Tainted Cup - Robert Jackson Bennett

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Maybe I just haven't read enough fantasy novels - I know I haven't - but other than one book I've come across (Justin Somper's Allies and Assassins ), it strikes me that no-one has really exploited the idea of an investigative team within a fantasy realm. It's all the more surprising as Robert Jackson Bennett shows how much fun this can be when you have to imagine the kind of crimes that can take place in a world that doesn't conform to the one we are familiar with. There are endless possibilities that are laid out well in the first of his Shadow of the Leviathan  series, one that will be built upon in subsequent books.  The Tainted Cup , book one of the series, introduces us to the Empire of Khanum. It's a dangerous place, constantly under threat from leviathans, unimaginably huge sea creatures that in the wet season approach the Outer Rim of the Empire and threaten to breach the sea walls built for protection. There is another immediate and unusual problem...
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Among Communists - Sinéad Morrissey

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Sinéad Morrissey’s memoir certainly presents an upbringing that is very unusual and uncommon in Northern Ireland, growing up in a family with middle-class parents who are diehard North Belfast Communists, but it reflects a more universal experience that I'm sure many have had. On the one hand there's the embarrassment of being different and wishing that you belonged to a 'normal' family who did normal family activities like holidays (and even meals) rather than being taken to the Fête de l’Humanité event where a prominent Soviet official is making a guest appearance. On the other hand there's nonetheless a recognition that there is something special about being part of a close-knit family who have real values and believe in something meaningful, something that they truly believe is about making the world a better place. Having read Anna Burns’s Milkman (not memoir but as close to lived (un)reality here as it gets) and having grown up in Belfast myself in the period...
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Rituals - Danielle McLaughlin

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We all have our odd individual quirks and daily rituals, some we probably aren't even aware of or consider as anything out of the ordinary. Some routines around the home are comforting, reassuring, even precautionary, making sure things are switched off, closed, locked up. Some habits however are just strange and don't mean anything to anyone except ourselves. It's only when something changes, like another person coming in and upsetting the routine, that you might realise that they aren't always rational or easily explained to outsiders, but also bring an awareness that the motivations behind the behaviours might have deeper implications than you might think. Since it's entitled Rituals , and since Joan's little quirks, customs and habits are detailed at the outset, you expect that to be a significant and interesting theme to explore in this short novel, but there is a lot more to derive from this simple domestic situation that Joan finds herself in when as a si...
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À l'abri des regards - Alex Sol

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Absent from the second book in the series while Élise Duromain undertook a solo adventure - definitely going out on her own in À bout de souffle  - Lucas Lievens returns for his own solo investigation in the third book in Alex Sol's series, but going solo is the only option for Lievens. Already retired from the police even before the start of the series, he is still unable to shake off his own personal loss, Lucas now operates a Private Investigator service with only one real purpose; to find missing children. Yes, it seems like the missing person theme is continuing after the previous two books in the series, but as you would expect there is a subtle difference in each investigation that expands into something entirely different. Lucas Lievens operates to his own rules then, and in the case of his investigations, he only helps find abducted children: hopefully alive but it's more often the case that after several days of police investigation without result, he is searching fo...
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Commandant Solane - Jérémie Claes

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Jérémie Claes makes very clear - even brutally clear - the source and nature of the conflict at the heart of his second novel, Commandant Solane ; immigration. The scene is set by the shock opening section detailing the brutal killing of a Muslim shop owner in Belgium, but it's the border between Italy and France that is to become the centre of attention when forty-two bodies are washed up on a French Mediterranean shore. Former police officer Bernard Solane, who has retired to the Provence region, is shocked at the state of the carbonised dead bodies, many of them children, washing up on La Bocca beach in Cannes. Solane's instinct is to fish the bodies out of the sea, but the inaction of the horrified holidaymakers sunning themselves on the the beach is just as shocking. Despite a similar unusual reticence on the part of the local politicians and police force to investigate, he is determined to find out what happened. The conflict that arises out of this incident then is not d...
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