7 November 2022
The more the merrier as twenty-five thousand heads COP it sweet
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

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
2 December 2021
Snowbound Siberia, oligarchs and shamans

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

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
28 October 2021
Teen waif a heart-breaker hero of gripping crime tale

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

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

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

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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7 November 2022
The more the merrier as twenty-five thousand heads COP it sweet
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