To The Last Page

When I read Steve Cavanagh’s last Eddie Flynn novel I noted how the author always managed to continually raise the stakes and see them. The ride he took us on in Thirteen was incredible and looked forward to the next one, confident that he could take it even further, even if I couldn’t imagine how. Well, one way you could look at Twisted is that Cavanagh has pulled back, writing his first standalone thriller outside the Eddie Flynn series. The other way of looking at it is that he’s raised the stakes again by blindsiding expectations and heading in a different direction. He certainly knows how to keep the reader on their toes. Anyone who knows a Steve Cavanagh thriller knows that it’s all about the twist. Maybe not all about the twist, because he takes the reader on an amazing ride before they get there. In a novel called Twisted , well he’s obviously going to pull out all the stops and you better believe he carries it off. The twist in Twisted is that the twist comes at the start an...

There may be a metaphorical meaning to his account of the Newman family living on an island, but William Wall’s Grace’s Day doesn’t push that idea too hard, leaving it up to the reader to decide whether the work has individual meaning for them or whether it might have something to say about wider concerns. There’s probably a bit of both, but what there is for sure in Grace’s Day is a fascinating tale about family and some beautiful poetic observations about life. In fact the opening of the book it does just seem to be a reflection on Grace Newman’s childhood experiences living on an largely uninhabited island off the west coast of Ireland. You get a sense of an unconventional childhood, one shaped by the impressions of nature and the wild, but from the general tone of her descriptions you slowly begin to feel that Grace’s life has been shaped by other family events that have created bigger problems and divisions that outweigh any notion of this being a memoir of an idyllic childhood....

Obsession, betrayal, paranoia, madness, murder, mystery; there’s a lot going on within the first few chapters of The Silent Patient . Not content with it using these elements to be a just a run-of-the-mill female-in-distress thriller, Alex Michaelides layers in references to Greek mythology, Freud and psychoanalysis into the novel. What this suggests is that there are subconscious elements at play here with the unsuspected secrets and troubled personal histories lying beneath the surface hiding dark motivations that are capable of springing unexpected twists. There’s definitely nothing ordinary about this murder case. It’s not going to be easy to get to the truth of the murder of photographer Gabriel Berensen however, because his wife Alice hasn’t spoken a word since his violent death in their home, having apparently shot him in the face five times while he was strapped into a chair. Alicia, a painter of some renown, has remained silent and impassive throughout her trial, leaving the c...

The Corsairs of Alcibiades has all the essential ingredients for a thrilling and successful comic-book adventure series. It has a classic 19th century steampunk setting, where there are mysterious secretive societies developing plans to overthrow or at least completely transform the social order. The revelations of how they plan to do this are gradually revealed through a diverse group of individuals who have been recruited, but who first have to pass a series of dangerous tests to prove their abilities. A cursory glance at the detailed fantastical artwork also makes this a very attractive package indeed. The execution of the plotting however, at least in this first volume of the series, suggests that perhaps it’s even trying to pack too much into a single opening episode. When I say recruited, obviously mysterious underground organisations don’t advertise in the papers, so it’s more a case that the latest potential recruits are abducted and not given much choice in the matter. The si...