To The Last Page

Maybe it’s the title or the back-cover blurb, but the impression you might have of Death of a Ladies’ Man is that of a lot of laddish humour, smooth patter and pickup lines and plenty of explicit sex scenes, with the protagonist getting his come-uppance at the end. You’d be right to think that, but you also couldn’t be more wrong. There’s a lot more going on in Bissett’s powerfully compelling novel than that. It’s not that the book has any great narrative storyline - the main character is a 30 year-old teacher who lives with his mother after a painful divorce, but has started recently dating one of his colleagues at the school, a more mature 41 year-old woman. Charlie however just can’t help himself when it comes to women - he’s worked out all the tricks a long time ago, knows what he wants and knows how to get it. Could his ladies man reputation prevent him from a more mature and loving relationship - or is that even what he really wants? Plot-wise there’s nothing here to get too exc...

Not in any chronological order, but acting all the same as a fine introduction to Maurice Leblanc’s master criminal, the short stories in this earliest Arsène Lupin collection commence with his arrest, followed just as quickly by his miraculous evasion from justice. The remainder of the other stories lack the ingenuousness and incredible twists of the longer works, but there are some hints here of what would follow; Lupin’s run-ins with Inspector Ganimard and his first encounter with his most capable adversary, the great English Detective Herlock Sholmès (Conan Doyle none too impressed by this character); his daring burglaries and his solving of great mysteries. No safe is secure, no locked room inaccessible and no house is without a secret passage in Lupin's world, his romantic adventuring and his boastful relationship with the press, L’Echo de France, making him a figure of legend, setting the tone for what would become one of the most thrilling creations in French pulp crime fic...

Prefiguring Chekhov’s theatre work, Turgenev in dramatic form can perhaps seem to lack the precision and beauty of his prose work. On the page, A Month In The Country seems to offer little more than the romantic complications of Russian ladies and gentlemen in a setting isolated from the rest of the world with little in the way of any defining national or social characteristics, but its openness necessarily allows much more to be drawn from it in a stage setting. Despite the lack of any real drama - the romantic entanglements are almost entirely verbal, the complications and realisations agonised over in soliloquies - structurally the drama and the interaction between the various players of differing ages and classes is purposefully and powerfully achieved, reaching a conclusion of complete devastation of almost everyone involved without anything actually seeming to have occurred.

Set around 1587, the historical period of Martyr is a fascinating and important time in English history, a turbulent period that would see the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, Sir Francis Drake preparing to go to war against the Spanish Armada, and the widespread anti-Papist sentiments and witch-hunt of Jesuits creating an appropriate environment of fear and suspicion in which to set an exciting thriller. It’s in this setting that John Shakespeare, chief intelligencer in the secret service of Sir Francis Walsingham, is trying to uncover the perpetrator of the gruesome murder of one of the Queen’s cousins, a man he suspects might be linked to a plot to assassinate Drake. The novel is filled with relevant period detail, descriptions of the seamier side of London and authentic characterisation, with religious differences and political intrigue colouring the actions of those who continue to practice the Catholic faith and those who want to see it outlawed. The conflict of interests comes...