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Jo Spain used to work as a party advisor for the Irish Parliament, and she clearly brings her awareness of Irish social issues to bear on her crime writing. In her Tom Reynolds novels much of the criminal activity in Ireland tends to have its roots in the country’s social background where the Roman Catholic Church has had a major influence on morals, attitudes and behaviours. There’s a sense of moral outrage in the series at the impact that this has had on ordinary people, on young people, on anyone who doesn’t ‘fit in’. This has resulted in abuse, in hiding away problems, the sins compounded by cover-ups that only allow other abuses and crimes to be committed. As the title indicates, The Darkest Place refers to another national scandal that is gradually being brought to light, but this time I’m not entirely convinced that Jo Spain’s writing really does the subject justice. The subject of historical scandal and abuse alluded to in The Darkest Place is similar to the one of the Magdal...

Before he became a famous film critic for television and radio, Mark Kermode enjoyed – or persevered with – a budding but never quite blooming career as a rock star. How Does It Feel? is Kermode’s memoir of a little known underground music scene of almost-ran bands from the 80s and 90s, a book that the publisher describes as ‘self-deprecating’ and anyone who has listened to Mark Kermode, knows that he doesn’t take himself too seriously. The impression he gives of himself in his memoir however is of an attention-seeking individual with enough nerve and gumption to bluff his way through whatever barriers are traditionally placed in the way of a struggling musician, particularly one with no discernible talent or originality. Harsh words, and that might sound unfair, but Mark Kermode would be the first person to admit it, and indeed he does, at least in as far as his attempts go to be a famous musician adored by the masses. As a film critic, his credentials, encyclopedic knowledge and his...

Evidently with it being a new Kim Stanley Robinson novel you're in another world here, an alien environment in the future, but the nature of that new environment will always be shaped by and dependent upon who does the colonisation. Contrary to our usual preconceptions about such matters, Robinson takes the realistic view in this particular case that based on where we are now, it's just as likely to be the Chinese who will become the dominant power on the Moon in 2048. Red Moon indeed. What kind of impact with this have? What kind of tensions and issues will arise between the Chinese base on the south pole of the Moon and the USA and rest of the world on the north pole? And not just on the Moon but the nature of influence and domination on the Moon could also have consequences on Earth as well, or vice versa. Well, the beauty of Kim Stanley Robinson is that he takes those questions and projection about our possible future in a direction that we don't often take the time to...

Susanne Jansson's creepy thriller feels a bit like it is trying to have its cake and eat it. It relies on tried and tested shocks and revelations, it has a properly creepy location, it hints at mystical forces at work, but it also tries to bring some kind of rational and even scientific response to the the events that take place in the forested wetlands and quagmire of Mossmarken in the west of Sweden. Jansson actually does this rather well in her debut novel, delivering a good crime thriller with hints of underlying darkness and her restraint is something of a virtue, but in the end it does also feel a little bland. What The Forbidden Place has going well for it though is very definitely its Scandinavian character for location and personality  Biologist Nathalie Strom has rented a cottage in Mossmarken to study greenhouse gas emissions. The bog is a mysterious place with different natural properties, including preserving dead bodies. One recovered body, the Lingonberry Girl is be...

George Pelecanos is the writer behind The Deuce , The Wire and Treme , so you can have few doubts that he knows the subject he writes about, which is inner city crime, race issues and the moral battles that have to be confronted by individuals on all sides of the divide. Not having the luxury of a full season to develop some characters and ideas, The Man Who Came Uptown nonetheless deals with many of those matters in a brilliant condensed form in a short novel that is barely more that 200 pages, although inevitably it suffers a little from compression down to what amounts to a double-length TV episode. The novel centres around two main characters on either side of the divide in the Washington DC region who operate in that dangerous shadowy area between doing what it right from them and their families and getting entangled in criminality. One is Private Investigator Paul Ornazian who gets things sorted but to do that you sometimes have to operate not strictly above board. His clients ...

The thing about voluntary mutism and dissociative amnesia, which is basically being unable or unwilling to speak or unable and unwilling to let thoughts focus, is that it’s usually associated with trauma and shock. Catherine Elliott has been silent for four months despite efforts by her family and doctors to get her to come back to them. One technique is to get the victim to hold on to a single important event or person that will bring everything back together, and for Catherine that important person is Lucian Wilkes. The other thing about voluntary mutism and dissociative amnesia is that you need to be patient, because it’s going to take a while to find out what it is about Lucian that has caused Catherine to fall into this condition. Catherine met Lucian 15 years ago at university. He’s the kind of boy who makes an immediate and unforgettable impression on everyone; intelligent, witty, handsome, rich, artistic, a little bit wild and impulsive. Not like Catherine who lives a sheltered...