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Sergio Bonelli's editorial for Dylan Dog, Color Fest 1 , published in August 2007, highlights it as the start of a new direction, the original creator Tiziano Sclavi stepping back from writing duties and giving other writers and artists - some new, some familiar with the character of Dylan Dog - some fresh new ideas and interpretations. And that's what we get in a great variety of styles and artwork in the first Color Fest, a 130 page issue containing four new stories, some of which work well, others not so much, but all very definitely in the established character of the London based Investigator of Nightmares and his sidekick Groucho. Dylan in Wonderland Story, script -  Giovanni Gualdoni Art -  Bruno Brindisi The opening story in the collection is a simple one that nonetheless operates on different levels, as you would expect to be the case of someone who often delves into the dark places between this reality and the one of nightmares. This childhood nightmare takes place i...

Regular readers of Dylan Dog will know that he doesn't have much luck with women. Hold on, let me rephrase that: Dylan manages to hook up with a beautiful woman almost every month, but they don't last any longer than the gap between monthly episodes. The beauty he loses in issue 175 is however perhaps more painful than any of the others. At the start of Il seme della follia (The Seed of Madness) Dylan is not only in despair at having lost another girlfriend even before the episode had really started, one moreover that seemed to be perfect for him in every way, but the way Amber has been taken from him is truly horrendous. Stopping off for a quick canoodle in the woods, Dylan and Amber are beset for no apparent reason by a group of youths wearing horror masks. Dylan is badly beaten and tied to a tree where he witnesses Amber tied to another tree in front of him, petrol poured over her and set alight. The doctor treating Dylan's wounds recommends he sees a psychiatrist, and ...

Winning the lottery doesn't exactly seem like the stuff of nightmares, but up to the moment that his number is called out Clarence Clough has had his share of misfortunes, but perhaps no more so than anyone else. There is the loss of both his parents in a car accident while he is a child, but luck is on his side when as a young man he meets up with Brittany, the girl he has dreamed of since college, they marry and have two children. True, they are separated now after Brittany found Clarence in a compromising position with the glamorous Gloria, but that's life. When he has a stroke of luck ( Un colpo di sfortuna ) and wins £5 million in the national lottery, true to form for Clarence, there's a downside, as he discovers soon after the win that he has a serious illness and only two months to live. There is certain a hand of date or just misfortune in Clarence's situation, but where does Dylan Dog, the investigator of nightmares, come into the picture? Well, aside from tha...

Back before I had even read any of her work, I nonetheless had the impression, mainly based on the accounts of The Gathering , that Anne Enright wrote mainly about women and difficult family situations. Despite the acclaim and awards, that didn't strike me as a subject that I would find interesting and when I finally got around to reading The Green Road it turned out to be a mostly accurate view of her typical subject matter but it was also clearly just a brilliant piece of writing. Having got past the inaccurate impression of it being an off-putting subject then, Actress seemed a more approachable book. A fictional account of a writer's memories of her mother, a once famous Irish actress who caused a scandal at the end of her carer by shooting a film producer in the foot, it seems again like the familiar territory of women in difficult family relationship, but in the hands of Anne Enright it's also much more than that. The story focusses on this as a central point, as if...

We all know about cosy crime, but I don't know if there is a recognised category of cosy fantasy. If there is, one recognisable characteristic that I would think contributes to the definition would be that it has a magic bookshop. As with Gareth Brown's previous novel The Book of Doors , books are of course a source of wonder, imagination and escape - as well as having an obvious attraction to readers who of course love books - so they are an ideal starting point for adventure. Nothing too threatening, just a little disorder that needs someone to tidy things up a little bit when the magic goes out of control. If that’s the criteria for cosy fantasy, then The Society for Unknowable Objects is classic cosy fantasy. As long as the magic doesn't get too out of control. If there is danger to come in the magic adventure it is laid out in the prelude of the book where Imelda Sparks, on a kind of treasure hunt but one for rare objects identified in the Atlas of Lost Things, is cur...

Although little known today and undoubtedly somewhat old-fashioned in his style of writing, John Creasey was a prolific and popular crime fiction writer in his day, writing more than 600 novels under a variety of pseudonyms. Among several popular character series, the most famous being perhaps The Toff, Creasey published 62 books in The Baron series between 1937 and 1979 under the pen name Anthony Morton. The Baron is a kind of Arsène Lupin figure, a notorious jewel thief who became a kind of folk hero for stealing from the rich to help out the poor. At the start of A Case for the Baron however, that life is all in the past, as John 'the Baron' Mannering adjusts to a quiet domestic life with his wife in their new cottage in the Hampshire countryside. He hasn't entirely left his secret life behind him of course. Superintendent Bristow of Scotland Yard knows a little of Mannering's past dealings with stolen jewels and even suspects he might be the notorious jewel thief, ...

As someone who hasn't previously read a Mike Hammer book or indeed anything by Mickey Spillane before, the first short opening chapter of I, the Jury (and possibly that title) looks like it tells you all you need to know about his famous PI creation. Hammer has just walked into the scene of the murder of his friend Detective Jack Williams, where someone has killed him with a snub nosed bullet shot from a .45 into the lower stomach. Williams saved Mike's life in the war, losing an arm in the process, and whoever shot him apparently just sat and watched him helplessly suffering an agonising death. Hammer is incensed and swears that he will see justice done. Not police justice, he tells his police detective friend Pat Chambers, but with himself acting as judge, jury and executioner. It might sound like emotive talk, but Hammer soon puts any doubts about his methods behind, telling us the next day that people think he is a " kill-crazy shamus ". " I shoot them like ...

I remarked in my earlier review of La novia gitana , the first book in Carmen Mola's Inspectora Elena Blanco series, that possibly the least convincing aspect of the book - which nonetheless was quite a brilliant thriller - was the characterisation of the inspector Blanco herself. Chief of the specialist murder investigation team BAC, Brigada de Análysis de Casos, The Case Analysis Brigade, the characterisation seemed sensationalist and superficial. She drives a Lada, likes grappa, singing Italian karaoke songs and likes having sex with strangers in SUVs in the underground parking of the plaza Mayor in Madrid, where she has an apartment. The revelation that these quirks were just her way of combatting the pain and guilt over the disappearance of her son eight years previously didn't make that any more human. It still felt like cheap, lazy characterisation. Over the course of La novia gitana , Blanco was rounded out more and that novel brought that trauma back to the fore at it...

With more than a million copies sold, translated into 15 languages (but not English), La novia gitana is the first in a series of thrillers featuring inspector Elena Blanco. Initially the author Carmen Mola was considered a pseudonym for an author who wanted to remain out of the picture and avoid publicity, a sort of Elena Ferrante, but while it is indeed a pseudonym, Carmen Mola is actually a collaboration between three writers, none of them female. However they choose to work, there is no denying the success of the series and the reasons for this success are not hard to discern in this first book made up of short sharp chapters, spiky characters and a bizarre murder mystery, but that's only the start of it. The gypsy bride of the title is Susana Macaya. She is murdered two weeks before her wedding in the most shocking and macabre manner while sensibly returning home from her hen party in Madrid just before it all got out of control. She has been killed by someone who drilled thr...

Rogue Dragon take place on Prime World, formerly known as Earth before the arrival of the Kar-chee, the origin world of humankind before it spread out into the galaxies. Whether there were dragons on Prime before the Kar-chee is unknown for sure. Some say that the Kar-chee used them as hunting dogs against the local population, others that the dragons are actually the Kar-chee or descendants of that mysterious vanished race. In the near feudal world of Prime however the exotic creatures are now trophies to be hunted down by visitors from the Confederation of Out-worlds.  Jon-Joras is an outworlder. He has arrived on Prime World as private man to King Por-Paulo of M.M. beta, preparing for the king's hunting visit. While there he begins to gain some awareness of the social stratification on Prime, witnessing the execution of a local man of the pleb-people. He has been summarily executed for killing a Gentleman in a dispute over his party trampling down his potato crop, and the event...

Having recently read Carlo Lucarelli's Carta Bianca , a thriller set in the dying days of Mussolini's Fascist Italy, and looking for something to follow on in my Italian reading, I thought the next stage might be an idea to go back and read one of the originals, an author of crime thrillers who was actually writing during this period. Written in 1935 Augusto De Angelis's first novel Il banchiere assassinato (The Murdered Banker) features his most famous creation Commissioner Carlo De Vincenzi, who would go on to feature in some 20 novels. Despite the popularity of his work, De Angelis found his books banned by the Fascists, was arrested by the authorities in 1943 and died soon after his release from a beating he received while held there. De Angelis's treatment wasn't unique. It's not as if the first Commissioner De Vincenzi investigation ( la prima inchiesta ) could be considered politically motivated or anti-Fascist. The Fascist party objected to all crime fi...