To The Last Page

Olivia Wolfe is one tough investigative journalist. She's an expert in martial arts and she's hot stuff in the bedroom arts as well, to judge by one particularly steamy scene where all is subsequently revealed in an exclusive newspaper article about her. No, Olivia Wolfe is not the type of journalist to be found sitting at a desk in an office, but rather more likely to be generating the headlines as reporting them. Wolfe is just back from Afghanistan, battered and bruised, somewhat shocked at the death of a young woman who was providing information for her about the activities of Isis. Shot dead in front of her eyes, the dying words on the lips of the young woman warn of an imminent terrorist attack on London by Da'ish. Her boss at the Post however thinks that this is a matter for the intelligence authorities - you can imagine that Olivia Wolfe thinks differently - and he has another assignment he wants her to look into, one as far away from Afghanistan as you can get. A Br...

Jean Giraud, also known as Moebius, was certainly a major figure in the European comics world, but his legacy since his death in 2012 remains uncertain. In his native France new editions of the bulk of his work were still being published up until the time of his death, but in the UK and the USA, despite the support of Marvel/Epic who published much of his earlier work, some serialisation in Heavy Metal and publication of his more recent works by Dark Horse, Moebius seems to be better known on this side of the channel for his concepts and designs for the films Tron , The Fifth Element and Alien and for his association and collaborations with Alejando Jodorowsky. It will be interesting to see whether this deluxe publication by Dark Horse of the complete The World of Edena  as the first volume of a 'Moebius Library' will improve the artists standing in the English-speaking world. There is a feeling however that Moebius's surreal science-fiction fantasies are very much the pr...

A Death at Fountains Abbey is the third of Antonia Hodgson's Thomas Hawkins novels, and in these books she's created an intriguing character and a fascinating blend of historically informed crime fiction. For anyone coming new to the series here, it takes a while to warm to Hawkins or really work out what his role and position is, but this just makes figuring things out a little more interesting and it certainly doesn't detract from reading the novel as a standalone historical crime thriller. The colourful backstory to Thomas Hawkins is enhanced by his recent escape from death, presumably in the previous book, The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins .  Having survived execution on the gallows, he has acquired an even greater mystique and reputation, known to many as Half-Hanged Hawkins. Set in 1728, Hawkins is in service to Queen Caroline in some unofficial capacity, who in this latest novel uses some leverage she has over him to send him to Fountains Abbey, where former Cha...

Jane Harper's The Dry  makes great use of its remote Australian farming community locations as the place for a tense thriller. Taking place during one of the worst droughts in the region's history, making life difficult for everyone and adding to existing community tensions, the murder of a young family on a farm in Kiewarra and the return of a former resident run out of town some time ago, could potentially be a spark that could set the whole community ablaze. Except, there's something not quite right about the circumstances of the killing of the Hadler family. To all outward appearances it seems like the father Luke Hadler has returned home, shot his wife and son, leaving only the youngest baby daughter alive, before returning to his car and shooting himself in the head. Luke's mother and father invite their son's old friend Aaron Falk to the funeral, hoping he might look more deeply into the background of their son's death. An investigator of financial crime ...