To The Last Page

"Family matters" The story is a simple one, or rather two simple ones. In one of two alternative strands running through the book, a girl called Latha is a servant for a rich Sri Lankan family, but is sent away to a convent in disgrace when her wilfulness and sense of outrage at the injustice of her position leads her to getting herself pregnant. In the other strand, Biso is a mother of three children who has run away from her abusive husband from an arranged marriage after he murdered the man she is really in love with. Both are heading in the same direction, away from the city towards the tea-growing hills of Sri Lanka, on separate parallel paths, but different time-lines. Within these simple stories however there is much detail - not unnecessary descriptive passages, background detail or over-elaborated backstory (although the sense of location, customs and class distinctions in the society are well covered and I particularly liked the authenticity in the references to old...

There's a lot of high praise going around for this book, but for a number of reasons it just doesn't seem justified to me. Primarily and perhaps crucially, it's not all that exciting as an espionage thriller. Bequest is certainly political on a large scale, relating to a race between Ukrainian and Russian agents to find records pertaining to a legendary reserve of Ukrainian Cossack gold deposited in a London bank by Nationalists in keeping for their country when it achieves independence. Additionally the novel takes in different time periods relating to the attempts by various agencies and descendants to recoup the quite extraordinary amount that has been sitting in a London vault for almost 300 years. Even so, there's little initially here to advance the story other than weeding through old documents, legal papers and even diary entries – nothing that is going to provide anything in terms of elements of surprise or tension to keep the reader involved. What passes for ...

"Confident early-James” One of Henry James' earlier works, Confidence (1879) is set in the familiar territory of young rich Americans on extended trips in Europe, making friendships and romantic acquaintances with other Americans in the expatriate society that has been established in the glamorous settings of Italy, Germany, Switzerland and France. Less melodramatic than his previous novel, The American  and therefore showing less of the influence of European writers, Confidence rather establishes familiar Jamesian themes and explores ideas that contrast European Old World and American society, albeit in a style that is rather more light-hearted that his more notable later works, with the advantage however that it is still entertaining and more readable than some of the latter-day novels. The story is centred on Bernard Longueville, a young man travelling freely around Europe, sketching and painting, who meets two fellow Americans in Siena - a Mrs Vivian and her daughter Ang...

“Outstanding writing, superb observations” Hugo Hamilton, relying to some extent perhaps from his own Irish-German background, uses a traditional but still no less effective means to examine modern Western society, lifestyles and attitudes through fresh eyes, by using an outsider alien to the culture and the finer points of language and behaviour - specifically here through the means of Vid Cosic, a Serbian immigrant looking for work and the chance to start a new life in Ireland - as a means to examine the less edifying attitudes that they often hide. The book's opening line observation that " You have a funny way of doing things here " proves then to be an accurate one, with potential misunderstandings leading to some humorous incidents as well as more serious ones, pinpointing the fine dividing line between camaraderie and enmity, between joking and seriousness, between word and intent that lies at the heart not only of the nature of the Irish – although its observation...

Originally published as Almost Home , the title of Pam Jenoff's latest novel has been renamed The Officer's Lover for its UK paperback edition. The new title it transpires is meaningless (not that the original title is much better), changed undoubtedly to capitalise on the recognition factor of Pam Jenoff's previous thriller-romance novels The Kommandant's Girl and The Diplomat's Wife . I haven't read either of those books to know how well they fit their descriptions or their remit as thriller-romances, but in this case there is no officer (though there is a diplomat), there is no lover (he's been dead for 10 years) and there's not a great deal of either romance or thrills. Jordan Weiss, a diplomat for the US State Department in Washington, asks for a transfer to London in order to be with a sick friend. She hasn't been back in England since finishing her studies at Cambridge ten years ago, still traumatised by the accidental death of her lover Jar...

Tolstoy’s 1886 drama is true to the nature of his later works that were inspired by Christian teachings and his interest in educational reform, but, typically for Tolstoy, that doesn’t mean that there is anything at all comforting or idealised about the events that take place in The Power of Darkness , a drama that recounts the corrupt and depraved activities of one godless family. The wife of the family, Anisya, has been carrying on with one of the servants, Nikita, who is a bit of a ladies man. Nikita’s father knows however that his son has been seeing a girl who works as a cook at an inn, and wants to marry him off to do the decent thing and “cover the sin”. Nikita’s mother however knows of his dealings with Anisya and knowing that there is money and a rise in position if her son can take the place of her husband. Knowing Anisya’s weakness for Nikita, she provides her with some powders to add to his tea to clear the way towards this end. There are however worse horrors to be enacted...

I should mention upfront that Roger Keen is a friend – at least in the Facebook sense if not of the "inner circle" type that he refers to in his book – and I have met him a couple of times. This is not as an excuse for giving his book a favourable review, which it richly deserves on its own merits (I purchased it myself and didn't not receive it as a gift or with the expectation of a review), but to point out that Roger, as anyone who knows him or has perhaps even read one of his film reviews on the internet will testify, is ever inch the perfect gentleman. Quiet, polite, soft-spoken, gracious and congenial with an intelligent and positive outlook, reluctant to criticise when there are favourable points that can be made – Roger is nothing, in other words, like the paranoid, LSD-tripping, dope-smoking, alcohol-fuelled aggressive, surrealist, hippy dopehead artist of the 1970s that he writes about in The Mad Artist , a fictionalised memoir of a past that I suspect that few ...

Cold case investigator for the Fife Police DI Force Karen Pirie is called upon to deal with a case that goes back to the troubled period of the 1984 Miner's Strike, when it is discovered that a man believed to gone with five other workers who left the Newton of Wemyss twenty years ago wasn't a scab like the rest of them looking for work in England, but rather Mick Prentice has simply disappeared. At the same time a journalist makes an incredible discovery while on holiday in Italy that reopens another twenty year old case - the kidnapping and murder of the daughter of one of Scotland's richest and most prominent businessmen by a group of anarchists and the disappearance of her son. McDermid's work is among the very best in crime writing, drawing the reader immediately into the complexities of two linked cases through strong, realistic characterisation, tying the circumstances into real-world events, both historical (the '84 Miners' Strike) and current (the Madel...

Heedless of the fate that has befallen his predecessor, Captain Maxime d'Aulnay bravely takes his seat on the Académie Française, makes his inaugural speech and promptly drops dead. The curse of the Haunted Chair has struck again!  Both deaths could be rationally explained where it not for the extraordinary coincidence of their timing on the very day if not the exact moment of their inauguration to the 40th position in the Academy, each of them following the delivery of a mysterious, vaguely threatening letter believed to have come from the enigmatic Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox, occultist, cabbalist, expert in ancient Egyptian lore, the author of 'Surgery of the Soul'. Blackballed by the Academy, rumours abound that Eliphas has used the secrets of Toth to seek revenge, placing a curse on anyone who dares to take the Chair in his place. Who will dare to put themselves forward for a position that could mean almost certain death? Leroux's Le fauteuil han...

Aside from the negligible thriller elements reminiscent of Le Carré and Buchan promised by the publisher and the circumstances of the novel - Baxandall's only novel being first published now after the author's death - there is an intriguing historical premise nonetheless behind A Grasp of Kaspar that seems an appropriate exploration for a renowned historian, but it's one unfortunately that comes to overwhelm any drive behind the story or genuine exploration of the characters. The mystery of former Nazis now running a textile business involved in a mysterious operation across the border to Switzerland in the immediate post-war years doesn't really establish itself as a purposeful or indeed a credible investigation. Briggs, a writer and historian, has been asked by an American friend interested in his business investments to follow up on some financial rumours and find out some information about a textile company being managed by Kasper Leinberger.  With not a great deal...

Although it does deal to some extent with the profound changes in Indian society and their reflection in the national and individual psyche, Aatish Taseer writes in a way that is very different from the familiar writing from India of epic coming-of-age stories. The modernism in Taseer’s writing is appropriate then, because The Temple-Goers depicts a post-colonial society that has other new challenges to face in the modern age, and there’s an unsettling clash between this modernism and old attitudes towards tradition, class, religion and caste that is reflected in the figure of the narrator himself - called Aatish Taseer - a writer who has returned to Delhi having lived abroad for a number of years to revise a novel he is working on. The values, in relationships, career prospects and even body image - where even the traditional Gods are now depicted with slimmed-down forms and six-packs that can only be achieved from extensive gym training - are now more recognisably those of the weste...