Despite the title, this is NOT part of the American Lucas Davenport ‘prey’ series, penned by John Sandford. Think instead of a contemporary version of the Hunger Games. But more deadly. With adults. Chained together in pairs. Being chased by bad guys with sniper rifles. Set in the Spanish hinterlands. Plus snakes. OK, so nothing like Hunger Games really… The protagonist Leon Cazador is cut from the same cloth as the genre’s well-known knights in tarnished armour. He has the moral certainty of Earl Swagger; the penchant for a lost cause that motivates Travis McGee, and a skillset to match that ..read more

The clue is in the title. This is Frank Westworth’s tenth JJ Stoner prequel short story, which has been eagerly awaited by fans of his hard man, Stoner. Essentially, these prequels fill in a few blanks in the story related in the Killing Sisters trilogy of novels, A Last Act of Charity, The Corruption of Chastity and The Redemption of Charm. Tense Commandment is the missing link between the Stoner stories and A Last Act of Charity. For those who haven’t made his acquaintance yet (and why not?), Stoner is an assassin, infrequently employed by The Hard Man who works in London’s Whitehall. This ..read more

It takes real talent to find something fresh in the ‘American police procedural’ genre, but that’s just what author Kris Lackey does in Ten Acre Rock. County Deputy Hannah and First Nation police officer Maytubby share overlapping jurisdictions and a powerful sense of moral indignation. When the rulebook says they should look the other way and mind their own law-enforcement business, their compulsion to genuinely protect and serve the local people comes to the fore. We’re back in rural Oklahoma, kicking up dust after dark, tracking bad guys who thrash their black trucks on the byways of the Bi ..read more

From the blurb – female FBI agent takes over a new field office in Ohio, discovers a new designer drug, bumps heads with her boss, sizes up a jailbird snitch, people get dead all around her – you’d think this is a run-of-the-murder-mill, modern American crime thriller. Think again. Seldom do you find such unspeakable subjects as the themes in Full Tilt Boogie being described with the near-poetic precision of Robb White’s acid prose. This novel is not for the faint-hearted nor the lily-livered. There’s blood and there’s butchery and there’s absolutely nothing pretty to see here. Yet it’s almos ..read more

Top marks for that ingenious title, which effortlessly evokes the hazy shades of the sultry Floridian Keys where this murder (maybe?) mystery takes place. At the same time, that clever phrase rings big bells with readers of my era who cut our crime fiction fangs on pulp-fiction detective stories like the John D MacDonald novels from the 1960s and 70s. The Travis McGee mysteries were similarly set in Florida, where the drop-out protagonist champions lost causes and hopeless cases, and the first was titled The Deep Blue Good-by. This surely can’t be coincidental… Liquid Shades definitely delive ..read more

Despite the title, most of the nine stories in this collection are better if you don’t over-think them. They are modern morality tales which consider some of the more challenging aspects of 21st century life in the light of long-established ethical principles. The majority are short and sweet and fairly straightforward; few contained any great surprises. Not sure why the cover art features an android. Spoiler alert: low robot content! The author frequently leans on paranormal possibilities to illustrate her point, and the pendulum swings between the light and the dark. Social isolation, victi ..read more

Some stories are as much about place and people as they are about plot. This is one such story: a love-letter to the Alaskan wilderness and to the people who comprise its variegated population. There’s a genuine threat prowling the backwoods, of course there is, but the author devotes many more words to exploring the awe-inspiring landscape than she does to the darkness of men’s souls. All of which makes Not The Ones Dead hard to sum up in a single sentence. It’s not really a fast-paced thriller, nor a high-stakes investigation – it’s more like a densely textured rendering of this unique plac ..read more

There were a few good things to come out of the pandemic, and this delightful confection is one of them. Anyone nostalgic for Narnia’s warm cosy glow should be suitably charmed by the author’s deft juxtaposition of sentimental childhood touchstones and the cripplingly ridiculous mid-life crisis of a third-rate actor. A thoroughly unlikeable fellow, protagonist Harry Brodie is losing his grip on a miserably mediocre TV career. Soon even documentary voice-overs and daytime TV will be unattainable achievements. So he signs up for one of those ‘uncover your ancestry’ shows… …and the next thing yo ..read more

Who needs a plan anyway? Everyone on the planet must already be aware of the vast line of Jack Reacher novels, from the very first – Killing Floor – right up to the present day, with authorship duties split between Lee Child (not his real name) and his brother Andrew Child (possibly not his real name). Totting up the claims of the publisher suggests that at least everyone on the planet has bought one of these books at least twice – or something. And this book, No Plan B, is a good one. Make a plan to read it. Right now. No looking back. Enter the exciting world of short sentences… Jack Reacher ..read more

I’ve been a John Sandford fan since the Prey series started in the late 1980s. Back then, Lucas Davenport tracked down gruesomely grisly serial killers and brutally despatched them with grim efficiency – before falling onto bed with any attractive woman who could be extracted from her underwear. Since then Lucas has aged almost gracefully into a seasoned manhunter with rather less graphic gore and rather more fidelity towards his spouse, and author Sandford has successfully spun off another character – Virgil Flowers – into his own series. The Prey books went seriously wobbly for a while but ..read more