To The Last Page

I guess the English language title of Cyril Pedrosa’s Les Coeurs Solitaires (literally ‘lonely hearts’) should have given me a clue, but Pedrosa creates a little world so suggestive of home comforts and routine that it doesn’t seem like his main character Jean-Paul is going anywhere, so it’s a surprise when you turn a page of Hearts at Sea and find him on-board a ship ready to set sail off into the Mediterranean. But such an effect is undoubtedly intentional and the results are also a little jarring but necessary for Jean-Paul. Up to that point, Jean-Paul’s life seems to be going nowhere. Living in a place where not much happens, somewhere between Paris and Basel, Jean-Paul works in the family business, which is designing traditional quality hardwood toys. He’s very much under the influence and watchful eye of his mother, a bond that seems impossible to break now that his father is dead. As the anniversary of his death approaches, it’s clear that Jean-Paul is dissatisfied with the wa...

Polish artist, writer, independent game developer and graphic novelist Mateusz Skutnik inhabits a quite singular world in his graphic novel Revolutions . Based on reading just part 1 (Parabola) of the five part series, it's difficult to summarise or do it full justice, but it's such a bizarre and unique worldview that I'm not convinced that reading further episodes will clarify matters greatly, and may even perhaps just add further to the confusion.  The world in Mateusz Skutnik's Revolutions only has a passing resemblance to our own, and its characters only have a passing resemblance to human. Rather than a straightforward linear narrative, the story seems to develop a number of situations that cross one another, each one rapidly taking a turn towards the surreal. It reminds me of David Lynch's approach to stream of consciousness narrative and indeed its figures often look like something out of Eraserhead . The art style is very distinctive, lovely clean lines and...

There's not a lot of originality in Lina Bengtsdotter's debut thriller set in the backwoods of Sweden.  Charline Lager - 'Charlie' Lager - the hard drinking lead detective with family issues is a bit of a walking cliché but she certainly has character and, with her background outside of the normal career ladder, you can see how she got where she is and how she has the potential to add a different perspective in future cases. The investigation into a missing girl in For the Missing might be a little straightforward then but there's some degree of insight in Bengtsdotter, and its this insight into how social backgrounds can lead to crime without the perpetrator even having the awareness that they are committing a crime that is what the novel really has going for it. It's the disappearance of Annabelle Roos, a seventeen year old girl living in Gullspang, a small manufacturing town of some 6,000 inhabitants that brings Charlie back to the neighbourhood where she gr...

Perspective is perhaps the most important factor in any crime novel, since you’re completely dependent on what the narrator tells you, which is why many crime fiction novels have multiple perspectives from different characters. It’s a literary device, and it’s one that any crime writer will be aware of and use to their advantage, not so much to provide a wider view as provide conflicting views that add to the mystery and tension. Take this far enough and you have Elly Griffiths' The Stranger Diaries , where literary references and creative writing techniques all play a part in the construction and purpose of the crime, creating a little masterclass of crime writing, as well as being a clever little crime fiction mystery in itself. The Stranger Diaries even opens with a little bit of literary trickery that sets the tone quite effectively. A man sits down in a train carriage on a presumably dark and stormy evening and proceeds to tell the person sharing the carriage the strange even...

At a time when mankind is continually extending their view of the solar system and the universe, Steven Erikson considers the possibility of First Contact in rather more down to earth terms. If a technologically superior alien intelligence were ever to make its presence known, why considering the mess we are making of things would it bother going anywhere with Earth? Might it have its own reasons? Might its intentions be hostile? Might it simply think that humanity needs a bit of a helping hand to get it through a “difficult phase”? The first thing an alien intelligence has to do of course is make contact and how it does it is going to be an important indicator of its nature and intentions. In Rejoice they decide to make their presence known in a fairly dramatic and yet at the same time a bit of an unexpected way by having a UFO abduct science-fiction writer Samantha August in broad daylight. Why (other than perhaps the hubris of an author) choose a science-fiction writer as a mediato...