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Aside from Asterix , some of the best and most popular classic European comics translated to English have actually been of Belgian origin. Tintin is the Belgian series that has evidently made the biggest impact, but some might have been fortunate to come across translations of Lucky Luke (created by Belgian cartoonist Morris). Other greats that are less know here than in Europe are Blake and Mortimer (by Belgian creator Edgar P Jacobs) and Spirou , created by a French writer Robert Velter for the Belgian publisher Dupuis. All these long-running series, with the exception of Tintin , continue to be revived and reinvented. The Adventures of Spirou and Fantasio made their most lasting impression through the dynamic art of André Franquin between 1947 and 1969. It was Franquin who introduced the character of Marsupliami (who went on to have his own Disney cartoon series) but I personally also have a soft spot for the hyper-cartoony style and humour of the Tome & Janry’s run on the s...

It starts with a murder, as it often does in a crime thriller, or to be precise – since precision is important to DS George Cross – The Cyclist starts with the discovery of a body found wrapped in plastic sheeting on the site of a plot of garages due for demolition. Like Tim Sullivan’s first DS Cross thriller, The Dentist , the clue to the identity of the victim is in the title, Alex Paphides supposedly on his way to take part in a cycling competition. Is that factor perhaps something to do with his death? Well, the route to that is an investigation that will have many of the characteristics, stages, climbs and breakthroughs of a cycle race. Breakthroughs, Breakaways? I’m stretching the metaphor a bit there, but when it comes to crime investigation, DS Cross – a keen cyclist himself – is very much methodical and focussed on taking everything a stage at a time, certain that he will get to the finish line with a win if he sticks to procedure. DS Cross, as we discovered in The Dentist , ...

Antti Tuomainen isn't one to hold back or afraid that the reader might think he's taken things too far. Start out with a bang and keep it going. It may be set in a small village in the frozen East of Finland, but things heat up considerably in Little Sibera from a somewhat explosive and incredible opening. A former rally racing driver, banned now from racing after an accident killed his navigator, is on a 240kph drink-fuelled suicide run when a meteorite crashed to earth through his car. Well, that's one way start off a thriller. And start as you mean to go on. The meteorite becomes hot property, if I can put it that way, its rare minerals placing a value on it of 1 million euros. It's being kept in a nearby museum while they wait for a team from Helsinki to come and collect it. They're taking their time because it's already attracted some menacing Russians from over the border to Hurmevaara and there are quite a few people in the village who see the prize as t...

Opening up any David Mark thriller is a bit like opening up a mausoleum or rooting around in a cemetery. A fresh body might be closer to the surface, but as you dig a little deeper you find that it's only the latest in a long history of death. That’s perhaps not the nicest imagery you could come up with to describe a book, a little bit morbid and unpleasant, but if you’ve read any of this author’s books before you’ll know that far more grim events are described therein. In the case of The Burying Ground it's particularly appropriate, as that’s literally what happens when a storm destroys a mausoleum in a cemetery in the north of England close to Hadrian’s Wall. It uncovers not just a fresh corpse, but the bones of those long dead come tumbling out with it. Metaphorically speaking. That grim discovery of an unexpectedly fresh dead body in an old mausoleum is revealed to Felicity Goose and Cordelia Hemlock, an usual pair of unlikely friends who had been visiting the cemetery whe...

Setting up a colony on Venus, as you might imagine, would be something of a challenge and its harsh sulphuric atmosphere would undoubtedly affect anyone trying to live and work there. There are consequently a lot of hard bitten characters among the Venusian colonialists in Derek Künsken’s The House of Styx , the first a new series of SF books set in this hostile environment. Although this first book has a good intriguing hook to keep you reading, the tough nature of this environment and the characters provide some developments that could be just as challenging for the reader. Ideally, if you make an important scientific discovery in a place like this, one moreover that gives the first indication of intelligent alien life, you would imagine it would be carefully investigated and treated as a subject of close careful study. In reality however the truth is that any important knowledge or discovery like this is likely to be exploited for financial gains. That’s Künsken's strong point i...

Coming across like a demented Beatrix Potter Polansky's short adventure fantasy novella is typically unique and not just for it being a novella rather than a three-volume epic. There's no shortage of action either in The Builders , for all its brevity. The Captain is gathering the old team together again for one last adventure that might be their last. In fact it's lucky that they are still alive after being betrayed during the war between two brothers to rule the kingdom of the Garden that saw their side defeated. Some, like the bartender Reconquista, have suffered noticeable life-changing injuries, others like the Underground Man, have prospered in ...well, underground criminal activity, being a mole and all that. Literally a mole, just as Requita is a rat (well, half a rat) and the Captain a mouse. A pretty fearsome and formidable one at that. The Captain is gathering his crew, that include a stoat, a dragon (salamander), an oppossum, a badger and an owl. Definitely no w...

Once again, with her latest Commissioner Adamsburg novel L'armée furieuse Fred Vargas shows why she is in a league of her own when it comes to French crime writing, or indeed in simply just in a league of her own. If there's a distinctly French character to her work, it's probably in the nature of Adamsberg, or perhaps more in the various types of characters Adamsberg meets in his cases. Not surprisingly, there are more than a few unusual types that come up in L'armée furieuse . How do these people seem to find Adamsberg? Mythology and the supernatural increasingly plays a part in the cases investigated by Adamsberg, some of which turn out to have human agent behind the strange events, others (like the previous Un lieu incertain ) are somewhat more ambiguous. Here, Adamsberg is sought out by Valentine Vendemot, from a small village called Ordebec in Normandy. A man has gone missing, Michel Herbier, but she's not particularly concerned about him, as he's not wel...

If you haven’t read M.R. Mackenzie s previous two Anna Scavolini crime thrillers ( In The Silence and Cruel Summer ) both are highly recommended. You won’t need to have read these books however to delve into The Library Murders as it’s a standalone thriller, but does help to see the unique place in Scottish crime fiction that Mackenzie is developing for himself and how this latest book adds another facet to his writing. It’s not just the Glasgow setting and locations, although those are quite colourfully depicted, as much as how Mackenzie continues to take a wider view on crime as a whole in his books. So far in his first two novels (and one free download short story The Girl Who Wasn’t ) M.R. Mackenzie has covered common gang related violence, the abuse of power by politicians and law enforcement authorities and the crimes enacted by men on women in the form of rape, domestic violence and psychological abuse. In many cases all these crimes are interrelated and Mackenzie covers them ...