To The Last Page

What is wonderful about The Detection Club is that it is based on a real organisation founded in the 1930s that included some of the most important figures in literary crime fiction. Meeting on a regular basis in London, between them they discussed and formulated theories about writing, and considering the diverse range of authors taking part in this club, you could imagine they might have had a few disagreements. Jean Harambat’s delightful graphic novel pulls these real-life figures together in a murder-mystery situation that proves to be as entertaining as you might imagine, but it’s also genuinely in the spirit of classic crime fiction. In Harambat’s The Detection Club , G K Chesterton (the real first president of the club), Dorothy L Sayers, Agatha Christie, A E W Mason, Baroness Emma Orczy, Ronald Knox and the recently inducted American author John Dickson Carr are gathered to witness what appears to be the crime of the century, something more terrifying than even some of the mos...

Set in a small remote poor farming community in Butangen in the frozen far north of Norway around 1880, The Bell in the Lake is the first book of a proposed trilogy that it would appear is going to develop into a grand family saga. There’s no need for any reader concerned about committing themselves to a long drawn out tale, as this first book is simply wonderfully absorbing and complete on its own terms, but the likelihood is that you will be entranced by the world the Mytting depicts so lovingly and be enchanted and intrigued to see where he takes it next. Gerhard Schonauer is an apprentice architect and an accomplished draughtsman who has been sent to a remote Norwegian village that has a superb example of one of the few remaining medieval wooden stave churches in the region. The new parson Kai Schweigaard wants to build a more modest church that can better serve the people of the village and has sold the old church for it to be transported and reconstructed in the German city of D...

The Holdout has a great premise that draws you quickly into an intriguing situation. And it’s not just the opening introduction where you are introduced to Maya Seale, a defense lawyer defending a woman who was arrested driving around with her husband’s decapitated head in the glove compartment. Before she became a respected partner in a law firm Maya was on the jury of a notorious court case that acquitted black schoolteacher Bobby Nock of kidnapping and murdering a 15 year-old child, Jessica Silver. 10 years later the jury members are having a kind of reunion. It’s not really the kind of thing you do and Maya is obviously reluctant to take part, but there’s a reason for the reunion, a reason that Netflix true crime series addicts will recognise. They’re making a documentary serial Murder Town and one of her fellow members believes that evidence which wasn’t available at the original trial has turned up and it points to Bobby Nock’s guilt. There’s another reason Maya doesn’t want to ...