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Mick Herron often bases his Slough House stories on some form of real-world political and intelligence activity. Not just for realism but partly because it's hard to make something up for satire when the real world these days is going to come up with something even more absurd and unbelievable than you can make up. Besides, the plot and its believability aren't really the point of the books, or at least not for me, but rather just a framework to hang his characters, the humour and style on. (A lot of which I'm sure must be lost in the hit TV series adaptations). Sometimes the real world can be too awful to satirise and the prologue for Herron's latest, Clown Town is horribly gruesome, but a reminder - we shall see - that there is a price to be paid for acts of bad faith and unknown consequences down the line. For a while at least, there doesn't appear to be anything particularly troublesome arising out of the historic prologue, and instead in the novel proper we f...

I've reviewed a lot of David Mark's books:  twenty on this blog in fact. That fact alone should say something about what I think about the quality of his writing, but the flipside of that is that you worry that it becomes more difficult to find the words to do him justice, as he is not yet near as famous, rich and celebrated bestseller writer of crime thrillers as he deserves to be. It’s almost as if I am a powerless blogger who has little influence over the tastes of the genre and literary world! David Mark on the other hand never stops or repeats himself, so there is  no reason for me to give up either, particularly as his latest book, The Drowned Girl , demonstrates all of the qualities that make his writing so thrilling; so let's try again and hope that maybe just a few more people will take notice. The qualities that are evident in all aspects of his writing are right from the outset in The Drowned Girl , which as principally a literary thriller writer (I think I migh...

Absent from the second book in the series while Élise Duromain undertook a solo adventure - definitely going out on her own in À bout de souffle  - Lucas Lievens returns for his own solo investigation in the third book in Alex Sol's series, but going solo is the only option for Lievens. Already retired from the police even before the start of the series, he is still unable to shake off his own personal loss, Lucas now operates a Private Investigator service with only one real purpose; to find missing children. Yes, it seems like the missing person theme is continuing after the previous two books in the series, but as you would expect there is a subtle difference in each investigation that expands into something entirely different. Lucas Lievens operates to his own rules then, and in the case of his investigations, he only helps find abducted children: hopefully alive but it's more often the case that after several days of police investigation without result, he is searching fo...

Jérémie Claes makes very clear - even brutally clear - the source and nature of the conflict at the heart of his second novel, Commandant Solane ; immigration. The scene is set by the shock opening section detailing the brutal killing of a Muslim shop owner in Belgium, but it's the border between Italy and France that is to become the centre of attention when forty-two bodies are washed up on a French Mediterranean shore. Former police officer Bernard Solane, who has retired to the Provence region, is shocked at the state of the carbonised dead bodies, many of them children, washing up on La Bocca beach in Cannes. Solane's instinct is to fish the bodies out of the sea, but the inaction of the horrified holidaymakers sunning themselves on the the beach is just as shocking. Despite a similar unusual reticence on the part of the local politicians and police force to investigate, he is determined to find out what happened. The conflict that arises out of this incident then is not d...

Frédéric Paulin is a French writer of romans noirs , a different kind of policier from the more common police-detective crime thriller, one more involved in current affairs and geopolitics. I'm not familiar with this genre, the only other one I can think of that I've read in French is Jean-Patrick Manchette whose works date back to the 1970s and the world has moved on since then ...and not necessarily for the better. I'm not aware of many notable authors writing in this genre in English. The closest I can think of - and he is a writer I greatly admire for his knowledge and insights into the human within state affairs - is Gerald Seymour.  La nuit tombée sur nos âmes (literally 'The Fallen Night on Our Souls' or perhaps 'Dark Night of the Soul'?) deals with the events surrounding the protests and riots at the G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001, a blend of real life political figures on the fringes and fictional characters involved in the central conflict betwe...

One thing you will have noticed about the writing of Seichi Matsumoto if you've read any of his work before, is his attention to detail. Character traits and intuitions are interesting but can not always be trusted when it comes to investigating crime. Exploring the fine details of the process is more revealing, and my goodness in Tokyo Express the author's attention to detail is never more meticulous as his lead police detective investigator probes the smallest details of railway timetables in the most precise detail, certain that the answer to the mystery he faces lies somewhere in them. Tokyo Express opens with the death of a couple found on Kashii beach in the Kyushu region in what - despite the unusual choice of location and the unseasonable weather - has all the characteristic appearances of double suicide. Veteran Hakata police officer at Hakata, Jutaro Torigai finds a few unusual features at the scene however that lead him to investigate further. None of them really a...

Alan Parks' first crime thriller Bloody January started out inspired by a real life incident and extended into a much wider view of criminality (and associated social deprivation) in his Harry McCoy series set in Glasgow in the 70s. It looks like true historical events connected to the bombing raids on Glasgow during WWII were also the inspiration for Park's Gunner , the first book in his Joseph Gunner series. Inevitably, with Deception coming as the second book in the series, that world is also going to be similarly expanded; and it is - just not in the way I might have expected. It's no great surprise that a second Gunner book has surfaced while Parks takes a sabbatical mid-way through his Harry McCoy series (much as I was hoping for a quicker return to the 70s Glasgow police thriller), as it clearly had the potential to be a series and the sub heading 'A Joseph Gunner Thriller' suggested as much. What is a surprise however is that in Deception Parks has locat...

The directness of the title ('Mathilde has disappeared' or 'Mathilde is missing') is reflected in the style of the opening chapters of Leno Solveig's Mathilde a disparu , even in the chapter titles which lay out which person's testimony we are getting, the time and the place. Everything is clearly outlined. Apart from the opening chapter ' Fin de l'histoire ', which sets up the conclusion (see what I mean?), the narrative in the main takes a direct procedural approach of the 26-year-old Mathilde being reported missing and the police investigation as it interviews friends, family and co-workers trying to find out what has happened to the young woman. The frantic phone call to the police station in Carvin (north France) comes from Mathilde's worried parents, and as brigadier-chef Rémy interviews the young woman's neighbours, work colleagues and former boyfriend Théo, it quickly becomes apparent that there is indeed good reason for concern. Abdu...

I have to say I was surprised that Alex Sol chose to follow up the epic disappearance-on-a-subway-train mystery of her first Les enquêtes d'Elise Duromain et Lucas Lievens thriller À la vue de tous with the mystery of another disappearance on a moving train. There's no Lucas Lievens this time and Police Commissioner Élise Duromain is actually off-duty when she is witness to what appears to be a live abduction on the train she is on travelling back to Paris. She is even actually sitting in the seat in front of the lady Barbara, who is distraught when her 6 year-old son Gabriel disappears within a matter of minutes while she looked for an unoccupied toilet. No, you think, it can't be another case like the last one, and even Duromain tries to convince herself, but it does sound more like a case of trying to convince the reader that this one is different. While it might be related to an extent in terms of the author having another thought or variation on a theme, as the case d...

There is a lot of anthropomorphism in the world of cartoons and comics, and it's a style we are familiar with now from Disney and Pixar movies. That's not surprising, as Jim Steranko notes in the introduction, since long before Disney there has been a tendency to associate humans with animals behaviours and characteristics. It seems less of a cliché or shortcut then than natural for a comic like Blacksad to lean on those stereotypical characteristics, a silverback gorilla as a bodyguard, a lithe lizard as a silent cold blooded assassin. You're going to find weasels and rats in the expected places too. In Blacksad it seems natural also that a private Investigator who snoops around and has lightning reflexes is portrayed as a cat. A pretty tough cat in a trenchcoat. That's because Blacksad - initially at least  - is set in the 1950s period also draws heavily in its style from classic detective cinematic noir. Not so much in the artwork of Juanjo Guarnido, which is less ...

We've arrived at book three-of-three in David Mark’s Sal Delaney series and there is one issue that surely every reader is eagerly looking to see resolved in Vale of Tears . Not will Wulf Hagman finally have his name cleared and his reputation restored in the realm of public opinion; not will Sal patch things up with her former lover who is still recovering from injury but maybe not recovered from his fling with Magda Quinn; not will we find out where Sal's twin brother Jarod has disappeared to and why; not even what is the story and his connection with Dagmara, who appears to be back to her old tricks as trailed at the end of book two ( Don't Say a Word ). Well, we expect answers to all those questions obviously, but paramount for me at least is will Magda Quinn get her comeuppance? So there are a few things to tie up, and obviously the concluding episode in a trilogy is not a good place to start reading the series - so reading a review of it makes even less sense - but an...

Having read the first two Inspectora Elena Blanco novels by Carmen Mola, I knew to expect to be prepared for some dark scenes of horrific crime, but the authors (Mola a pseudonym used by a collaborative team of three male authors - Jorge Díaz, Agustín Martínez and Antonio Mercero) still manage to shock with the extreme violence and twisted actions that take place early in the first few chapters of La Nena ('The Kid'). Without wanting to get too deeply into it, the prologue ends with a horrific scene involving a newly married woman entering a family that raise pigs to discover that some of the family members appear to be closely related to the animals, but it doesn't take long into the novel proper for another even more shocking event to surpass it. And it's a very surprising one at that. That's because the victim is someone readers of the series will already know. Chesca is one of Elena Blanco’s specialist murder investigation BAC team (Brigada de Análysis de Caso...

It's a great title for a thriller, but The Secret Lives of Murderers' Wives promises more than it delivers. The impact on families of convicted killers is something not often considered and for which there is little in the way of help or support. Certainly not in the 1960s, which is the setting of Elizabeth Arnott's novel. How do you survive being the wife of a convicted serial killer? Beverley Lightfoot, wife of serial killer Henry James Lightfoot, who murdered seven women in the Bay Area of California between 1957 and 1963, feels a certain amount of guilt for not questioning her husband's suspicious behaviours. She takes little comfort from a small group of other women with similar experiences, and relating her experience in public events doesn't really seem to be enough. Her friend Margot, whose husband was a prominent politician and also a serial killer however tells her " We can't keep bad people from doing bad things ". Or can they? Beverley, Ma...

First published in 2023 at around 650 pages long Alex Sol's À la vue de tous ('In Plain Sight') is the first book in the author's Les enquêtes d'Elise Duromain et Lucas Lievens series, which she has somehow managed to follow up in quick succession with three further investigations. You get the impression that Sol must be able to write as quickly as you can read her books, and they are certainly designed to be read at a pace. Thankfully, at least on this first opening book in the series, it's clear that there has been no compromise in the quality of the writing. À la vue de tous certainly has you gripped from the intriguing opening incident. Laura has gone to the police with a report that her pregnant sister Marie has simply vanished between two stations on the Paris metro. It might not sound worrying, but it's surprising how many people wander off everyday and sometimes turn up again soon later, so the police understandably don't take the matter too se...

Jack Parlabane, as anyone who has previously come across Chris Brookmyre’s most loved character (and something of an alter-ego, I suspect), has always been something of a cynic. Which is why we love him. First introduced in 1996 in Quite Ugly One Morning , Parlabane has aged along with the sporadic publication of the series and now, 30 years after being introduced to him, you'll find that happily he hasn't mellowed with age. Well, not that much anyway. He's just become an old embittered cynical journalist unable to fathom the latest trends of the modern age of social media influencers, to say nothing of his thoughts about how a certain US president has shown just how much further into the depths politics has sunk than he could ever have imagined even back in those heady post-Thatcherite years. That said, while the world is in a sad state now, Parlabane is not one to look back fondly on (relatively) more innocent times, but a combination of occurrences, including going it al...