7 November 2022

The more the merrier as twenty-five thousand heads COP it sweet

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TWENTY-FIVE thousand? Really? Did I read that correctly? Surely someone with stuttering fingers has been clicking the head-counter at Sharm-al-Sheikh. Or perhaps Rishi has seconded a number-cruncher from the Treasury (you know how good they are with numbers) to lend a hand with collating the stats at Cop27. Whatever the answer, it seems staggering beyond… Continue Reading

7 November 2022

The more the merrier as twenty-five thousand heads COP it sweet

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TWENTY-FIVE thousand? Really? Did I read that correctly? Surely someone with stuttering fingers has been clicking the head-counter at Sharm-al-Sheikh. Or perhaps Rishi has seconded a number-cruncher from the Treasury (you know how good they are with numbers) to lend a hand with collating the stats at Cop27. Whatever the answer, it seems staggering beyond… Continue Reading

15 August 2022

Choose your spook: chaotic, methodical or brutal

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It is catch-up time . . . . . . and therefore time to continue an already long overdue review of recent reads with this triple treat of works from some of the best in the crime fiction business. Go-to authors who you know will always deliver the goods. Endlessly inventive with their plotting and… Continue Reading

5 January 2022

Bauer’s romp provides giggles amid the gore

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EMERGENCY service workers are well known for their macabre sense of humour; for having a giggle with the gore.  It is, as they will attest, the only way they can cope with the scenes that daily confront them.  The dead and dying, the mortally mangled, bodies broken almost beyond repair. Situations that have to be… Continue Reading

2 December 2021

Snowbound Siberia, oligarchs and shamans

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IT has been a while – far too long, in fact – since I was last in the moody company of Arkady Renko, the rebellious investigator who is a perennial thorn in the side of Moscow prosecutor, the devious Zurin. Back then, in 1981, Arkady’s creator, Martin Cruz Smith, was announcing his arrival on the… Continue Reading

24 November 2021

Lets eat Grandma and to hell with punctuation

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WAR has been declared.  It has long been simmering with spasmodic outbreaks of invective hurled across the Great Grammatical Divide separating the two sides. But now it is out in the open. Apostrophe or no apostrophe, that is the question (as the greatest source of precise English would likely have defined it). It is no… Continue Reading

31 October 2021

So easy to be spooked in these scary times

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BE prepared to be afraid. Very afraid, for these are scary times. There are frighteners everywhere; and that’s not counting the heavy brigade and their standover mates. Those black-clad steroids on legs, eyes permanently hidden behind Ray Bans. The grunters and mumblers  who feature so large not only in real life but also in the bloodier… Continue Reading

28 October 2021

Teen waif a heart-breaker hero of gripping crime tale

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THE joys of reading are many and varied. Too many delights exist to be contained within a strictly defined list. And always they are dependent on time, place, purpose and  numerous further variables. It’s a statement clearly not made to broadcast some newly discovered truth. But uttered in the hope of spreading light into dark… Continue Reading

15 October 2021

Chilling mystery among Sweden’s forest-dwellers

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A BOOK with a cover claiming the contents are “eerie, unnerving and buckets of fun” presents a puzzle before a single page is turned. Unnerving and fun? Such an odd mix. Especially for what is also billed as “a thriller”, and involves “one kidnapping, one liar, one chance”. Where are “the buckets of fun” going … Continue Reading

17 September 2021

Fishy feelings over dubious delights of national dish

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WHAT is so damned special about fish and chips? The question has to be asked after again foolishly succumbing to the fiction that a chunk of lukewarm battered cod and a heap of pale limp would-be chips is the food of the gods. An endlessly desirable feast for a nation. A national treasure even. Allegedly… Continue Reading

29 August 2021

Devious mix of students, spies, voyeurs and fishermen

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Val McDermid book cover

CATCH-up time, trying to reduce the pile of recent reads that have provided a mixed bag of distraction, intrigue, twisting plot-lines and unreliable narrators. Two old favourites and one comparative newbie among a clutch of authors with an unfailing ability to grip and taunt with narratives that leave you guessing to the very end. The… Continue Reading

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