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As varied as they are, and as extremely evil as some of the villains he encounters are, you know where you stand with the dividing line between good and evil in David Mark's DS McAvoy thrillers. On the other hand, you don't really know what you will come up against when you open a book under the author's D.L. Mark moniker, one of his standalone works that often have an element of supernatural horror about them.  Twist of Fate certainly promises madness and murder in its opening chapters, but there is or may be a more common element to what drives people to dark unspeakable acts of violence, against themselves as well as against others. One thing perhaps is relationships; relationships that go wrong or were perhaps wrong to begin with. Someone has to pay somewhere down the line, perhaps not quite as immediately and violently as the ends that meet Sam and Marguerite in the prologue, the two of them having an illicit romp in a cemetery (well, that's just asking for troub...

A novel about another life-threatening epidemic spreading panic and death among the population is probably the last thing you want to read now. Or the next to last thing maybe. The last thing you probably want to read is a novel about an epidemic resembling catatonic depression spreading among the Millennial generation. You might think that, but really you should be intrigued and Hanna Jameson does a terrific job of ensuring that she handles it in an exciting way, showing how there are many other ways that life can suddenly and totally unexpectedly come off the rails. It seemed like a typically raucous end to a wedding reception when Yun meets Emory; everyone is drunk, taking full advantage of the free bar, a fight has started and the DJ is not quite hitting the right notes to hold the happy occasion together. One person however has a more violent reaction that no-one is expecting when she sits down on the dancefloor and appears to fall into an unresponsive catatonic state, but screams...

A French language thriller set in the southern states of the USA, Jacques Guival certainly works hard at setting the scene for a southern Gothic crime thriller. And not just setting the scene, but builds on it in a distinctive way and carries it through unexpected path to a truly horrific conclusion. And it's the setting up that is of course critical to where Animality ends up. Each chapter opens with a lot of background description, from FBI agent Matt Anderson trying to find his way through a featureless but muddy landscape in the middle of a deluge in chapter one, to the history and character of Charles Camden and the town's decadent high society going on a hunting party at the beginning of chapter two.  It all seems a little overwritten but it does actually serve a purpose and the method of the murders described in those two opening chapters. Gothic certainly in its overwrought literary style, but also thoroughly cinematic in how it establishes mood and detail. There is ce...

The painting of a Reclining Nude by Modigliani is a bold choice for the cover of Graham Swift's Mothering Sunday , but painted in 1917-18 it's contemporaneous and appropriate for the approach Swift takes to his female subject. Set in Berkshire in 1924, the world is changing, both for society in England and particularly for Jane Fairchild, a maid for the Niven family. Many of the more privileged families have felt the impact of recent years, have lost sons in the war and have seen the war and the changing times reduce the class status they have enjoyed up to now.  "And the house was not any more, let's face it, as in the old days, a firmly governed, a strictly regimented house. Look where regimentation had got the world". Viewed from the perspective of 22-year-old Jane/Jay who, along with the cook Milly are the only remaining servants for the Niven family, the novel opens with Jane lying naked in bed with Paul Sheringham, the Sheringhams being close friends of the ...

You've got to hand it to Mick Herron. It can't be easy trying to satirise UK government when there have been three PMs in the position since the last book only a year ago. Another way of looking at it is that the Slough House author is spoiled for choice, but without making him a main player (or bad actor), he sticks with the one resembling the self-interested buffoon who " preferred the public to believe that his ineffectual blustering was a stage act ', probably still the incumbent at the time of writing actually. You know, the one with a self-important dodgy SPAD enforcer and disruptor (" gnome-in-residence ") running the show and doing his best to break down the established order of the service. He's up against some stiff if unwitting competition in Herron's world with the crew at Slough House. One of the targets of the PM's Special Advisor Anthony Sparrow is someone with possibly more power and influence than himself, or perhaps he just like...

Guillaume Musso is one of the bestselling crime fiction writers in France, but up until recently I have remained resolutely loyal to the classics, from Gaston Leroux and Maurice Leblanc to George Simenon and Fred Vargas, not trusting contemporary bestselling as any indicator of quality. Having heard good things about his latest book, L'Inconnue de la Seine (to be published later this year in English translation as The Stranger in the Seine ), and having already impressed with two other prolific contemporary French writers (Olivier Norek, Franck Thilliez), I thought it worth giving this one a go. And yes, based on this one, I'd have to say that Guillaume Musso is up there with the best of modern crime writers anywhere in the world.  What sets L'Inconnue de la Seine out as great here is perhaps the plotting more than the characterisation, but I don't have too many complaints about the latter. As far as plotting goes, while the introduction of police officer Captain Roxa...

Ludovic Deblois has previously shown an interest in exploring the dangers of environmental hazards and climate change, and those concerns are present in his latest novel, Inversion . There are however other ways that society can be destroyed and Deblois takes account of some of the most dangerous and immediate threats facing us in this futuristic thriller. It successfully extrapolates on situations that we can recognise around us today and, like the best SF, he considers the worst case scenario where we could conceivably end up if we aren't careful. It takes some leaps and could be accused of heading down conspiracy theory territory, but there is nothing here in Inversion  that is beyond possible. And, as the author notes, he is writing this in the hope that if we are more aware of the dangers now, we can take steps to ensure that it doesn't actually happen. In the year 2041, Thot, an information and social networking system has come to dominate in Europe, a single source of in...