This is a crime novel that has some fine deadpan humour, a poignant romance – Ryan falls for a young woman who has problems with the bottle – and also has elements of the Western. Ryan is a kind of latter-day bounty hunter.
Category: Mystery Reviews
A review of Cripple Creek by James Sallis
There are echoes of crime fiction of the past – one wonderful minor character, Doc Oldham, could have stepped off the pages of at least two William Riley Burnett novels – and a gamut of genre pleasures. The greatest pleasure, though, is in how the story unfolds. It is an exercise in enchantment.
A review of Murder in Memoriam by Didier Daeninckx
Murder in Memoriam is a police procedural that is entertaining, suspenseful and thought-provoking. There is a clandestine feel to much of the story, a sense that there are espionage agencies working in the shadows, and it is similar to Michael…
A review of Upstaged by Aaron Paul Lazar
The interaction of the student performers and stagehands is brilliantly described and there is shrewd observation in the treatment of the sexual predator Armand Lugio, the witchy stage-mother Agnes Bigelow and the gay youngster Nelson Santos who explores the world…
A review of The Italian Secretary by Caleb Carr
Carr is a fine writer and his pastiche of Conan Doyle’s prose perfectly captures the voice of Holmes and Watson. One might say (entering into the spirit of things a little) that the particular singularities of Carr’s mimesis are most…
A review of Double Forté by Aaron Paul Lazar
Although described as a mystery, Double Forté is more properly described as an action thriller. There is no detection as such, the climax of the book resulting from a gratuitous confession. Gus LeGarde, a professor of music and head of…
A Review of Iain Pears’ The Dream of Scipio
Pears is a powerful historian and his research is impeccable. The links between the three stories are handled well, and it is very interesting to watch a similar drama simultaneously playing itself out in very different contexts, albeit on the…
A Review of Death in Holy Orders by PD James
The story is straightforward, and the mystery unfolds with the right pace, and the right amount of suspense, but James is much more than a simple genre writer. Her characters are complex and well drawn, and while the story reads…