To The Last Page

The recent boom in Netflix true crime documentary series has perhaps led to certain expectations for shock revelations and finger-pointing, even if in reality of such cases in The Staircase and Making of a Murderer can never answer the basic questions of the unexplained deaths at the heart of their true-life crime dramas. Anyone expecting a definitive answer in Mikita Brottman’s investigation into the mysterious unexplained death of one man in her home town of Baltimore is going to be disappointed then, but just as those Netflix series throw a fascinating light on the American legal system and processes and reveal underlying social issues and prejudices, so too Brottman’s An Unexplained Death likewise has other worthwhile avenues of interest to explore. Not everything can be explained, particularly when it comes to the motivations and state of mind of a man who leaves home unexpectedly one evening in 2006 and doesn’t come back. His body is found eight days later in the annexe to a tal...

Although many of the basic impulses and methods remain the same - lust, greed, power, revenge - the nature of crime changes all the time. You’ll know that if you watch the news on any given evening, but there aren’t as many variations of the subject in crime fiction as you might think. David Mark on the other hand seems to be more creative with the world of crime in the modern age in his DS McAvoy series, and perhaps the setting of Hull and the investigations of the Humberside Police have something to do with it. What is clear however is that Mark is often as strong on the mindsets and motivations of his main characters as he is on the criminals they run up against. That originality in purpose and style is immediately apparent in David Mark’s latest DS McAvoy book, Scorched Earth . The book opens with the seemingly motiveless killing of a Sudanese refugee at the Jungle camp near Calais by another asylum seeker from Mozambique, followed by a kidnapping in rural Lincolnshire on a horse r...

The world of Peter McLean’s Priest of Bones is a harsh and brutal one and there aren’t too many good people to be found there. Thomas Piety might be a priest but that doesn’t mean much here, and the first few pages alone quickly make it apparent that he can be as ruthless and quick to use his swords as any man. And he’s going to need to be. Piety, his brother Jochen and his small band of soldiers have just returned from the wars and he has business affairs to take control of again back home in Ellingburg. And it’s not God’s business. Not to put too fine a point on it, the family’s business involves running whorehouses, taverns and a protection racket for the small businesses in the district of Ellingburg known as the Stink. The ‘Pious Men’ are gangsters. Much has changed since they went off to fight in the war, changed in relation to the horrors they witnessed during the war, but also in Ellingburgh where the families ‘interests’ now lies in the hands of others. That’s not a good comb...