To The Last Page

There's a definite Blade Runner vibe to Titanium Noir , but that's probably only to be expected. It's going to be hard to avoid comparison to a work as influential in the science-fiction world as that when a movie or book adopts the style of the noir genre, is futuristic and somewhat nihilistic in outlook. There is still plenty of room for originality here however, particularly for an author like Nick Harkaway, and while there are some obvious and probably unavoidable similarities and correlations with Ridley Scott's influential take on Philip K Dick, Titanium Noir succeeds to some extent in putting its own stamp on the material, or at the very least manages to be a hugely entertaining dark futuristic science-fiction noir thriller. Cal Sounder is not an official on the police force but a 'specialist' they call upon when it comes to dealing with any crime or incident that involves individuals known as Titans. Much like Rick Deckard when it comes to dealing with...

Death on the streets of Glasgow in the 1970s isn't an unusual circumstance, as you will know if you are familiar with any of Detective Inspector Harry McCoy's dealings in Alan Parks' series. With the degree of poverty in the city and the amount of down-and-outs on the streets, death by natural causes - if you include drinking yourself to death as natural causes - is not uncommon either. That certainly seems to be the likely verdict on the cause of death of Jamie MacLeod, "Govan Jamie" when he is found on waste ground in May 1975 not far from Argyle Street. It had to happen sooner or later, and there's not much chance that anyone would have a reason to kill him. A witness however tells McCoy that he saw both Jamie and another down-and-out die after drinking from what appears to be tampered hooch in a bottle of Irn Bru. Still, the deaths of two homeless alcoholics doesn't seem like grounds that will warrant any further investigation by the police, and McCoy ...

What is interesting about Pétronille Rostagnat's J'aurais aimé te tuer ('I Would Have Loved to Kill You') is that it's a thriller that proposes a variation on the idea of the 'perfect crime', where it's the act of a criminal overturning another perfect crime and having moral justification for it that becomes the perfect crime. But why even stop there? A perfect crime thriller however needs to provide a credible rationale, a clever twist and an airtight plot and I'm not convinced that Rostagnat succeeds. She certainly gives it a go however and provides plenty of mystery to keep you guessing along the way. Commander Damien Deguire of the Crim' de Versailles ( brigade criminelle ) is certainly challenged with a unique situation when Laura Turrel presents herself at the police station claiming to have killed a man, Bruno Delaunay. A waitress at a local restaurant, Laura had also been working part-time as a cleaner for Delaunay, who was one of its re...