To The Last Page

In the spirit of Nick Aten, the protagonist from the first Blood Crazy book who is back again for the third (and final?) installment of the series and isn't afraid to make a pun, mix a metaphor or state the obvious, Blood Crazy: Aten Present starts out in an explosive fashion as Nick meets up with Jack Ranzic from Book Two: Aten in Absentia . It's an appropriate way for the leads of the first two books to meet up and Nick's forthrightness and down-to-earth qualities are appreciated, but otherwise neither of the two young survivors of the crisis that has overwhelmed the planet are in a better place by the time they unite in the third book in the series. Well, the Creosotes weren't going to disappear overnight, were they? Creosotes is the name that the groups of young survivors have given to adults over age of 19 who three years ago all turned overnight into shambling bloodthirsty monsters. It's a constant struggle for survival and despite some theories about the na...

Looking back at children growing up in a more innocent time half a century ago (how quickly things change!), it's hard not to draw comparisons, at least initially, between All the Colours of the Dark and works like Stand by Me or even Stranger Things without the dark fantasy and horror. Chris Whitaker certainly captures something of the warmth and magic of childhood around this mid-seventies period, a time when the world felt grander, was more diverse, exciting and unknown, where imagination replaced Instagram. But it's not an idealised depiction by any means, nor is it steeped in nostalgia. There is nothing innocent about what happens in the lives of a number of children growing up around this time in Monta Clare, Missouri. In fact, All the Colours of the Dark opens with hope dying. On a morning in 1975 the day that her bees went missing, 13-year-old Saint finds out that her friend Joseph 'Patch' Macauley has been stabbed, abducted and, as time passes, is now in al...

Essentially, Louise Mey's La deuxième femme ('The Second Wife', or 'The Second Woman' as the English language edition prefers to name it) appears to be one of those exploitative thrillers where a vulnerable woman begins to suspect that she doesn't really know the man she is living with, that he keeps secrets from her and that she may become a victim. That's not to say that the situation is not a very real one, or at least the underlying sentiment is real and relatable even if not every woman lives with a murderer or would-be murderer. The strength of this one however is in the level of detail, the writing conveying the whole complexity of feelings and realisations not just about the present situation, but to the backgrounds that give rise to how people behave and react. Moved by a television appeal by a man who she refers to for most of the book only as “ l’homme qui pleure ” (the crying man) Sandrine joins in the search for his missing wife. She sees in hi...

Have you ever wondered what would happen when when a cosy crime Miss Marple-style sleepy village murder mystery runs up against a gritty LA crime drama with a maverick police detective who plays it as hard as the criminals? No, me neither. That unlikely scenario however is what Chris Brookmyre proposes in his latest crime thriller. Obviously though with Brookmyre, there is going to be a postmodern twist on this and presumably some knowing humorous tongue-in-cheek playing with the conventions, but that doesn't entirely redeem the fact that you have to read what amounts substantially on both sides to a work of standard crime fiction by numbers. To be fair however, even if you have a good idea where it is headed, Brookmyre manages to keep this enormously entertaining throughout. It's always been joked about that you would never invite Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple to your country home or go on holiday with Hercule Poirot, as you're practically certain of having a murder on you...