Crime Scene: TANA FRENCH Broken Harbour. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
Tana French’s Irish Gothic noir delivers more than the average crime novel. This is the fourth in Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series. Each novel stands alone, but takes a character from the previous one and is told from his or her point of view. The...Crime Scene: IAN RANKIN Standing in Another Man’s Grave. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
Rebus is back, as individual and interesting as ever. After five years out in the cold of retirement (literally: he’s been working cold cases as a civilian) Rebus has managed to wangle his way back to CID as a semi-official investigator in Standing in Another...Crime Scene: LEE CHILD A Wanted Man. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
In 1997 Killing Floor crashed Lee Child onto the thriller scene as a major new talent. A Wanted Man is the 17th Jack Reacher novel. Reacher is a macho super-hero, an ex-army cop, who is now a transient. His appeal for me lies in the fact that, unlike most American...Crime Scene: DEREK B MILLER Norwegian by Night. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
Simply one of the best crime novels of the year. Transcending genre, and blending genres, Norwegian by Night is partly a getaway/chase/escape thriller; partly a police-procedural; partly a social novel about family, displacement, guilt, grief and war, and, throughout,...ALISON MOORE The Lighthouse. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
This much-talked-about novel was an outsider selection for the 2012 Booker shortlist. Futh (his only name) takes a ferry to Europe for a week’s walking holiday in Germany after the break-up of his marriage, to ease his transition from the marital home to his new flat....LIZ JENSEN The Uninvited. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
Do we need to be afraid? Liz Jensen’s vision of the near future is terrifying. The Uninvited is a near-future dystopian novel that also taps into the category of ‘weird’ fiction some critics have recently noted in the contemporary English novel. Liz Jensen...Crime Scene: S J BOLTON Dead Scared. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
A sinister series of student deaths ignites this gripping thriller. In Cambridge, unprecedented numbers of students seem to be killing themselves, or attempting to; more of them than could be expected from peer-emulation cluster suicides. There is clearly something...Crime Scene Shorts: Jean Bedford reviews six recent women’s crime novels
Åsa Larsson The Black Path, Kathy Reichs Bones Are Forever, Karin Slaughter Criminal, Camilla Lackberg The Drowning, Tess Gerritson Last To Die, Anne Holt The Blind Goddess. Åsa Larsson’s The Black Path is the fourth in the Rebecka Martinsson series to be...EVELYN JUERS The Recluse. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
The search for Newtown’s Miss Havisham. There are several urban myths about Newtown’s famous reclusive spinster, Elizabeth (Eliza) Emily Donnithorne. The most persistent, and attractive, is that she was one of the models for Miss Havisham in Great...RACHEL WILLIAMS and PETER WARRINGTON The Stripey Street Cat. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
Cats, Newtown, street art … this charming book has everything. It was my seven-year-old grandson who first spied The Stripey Street Cat with his beady eye and insisted we buy it, but it’s also a novelty book for adult eyes. Cat-lovers, Newtown-lovers and...Crime Scene: ARNALDUR INDRIDASON Black Skies; QUENTIN BATES Cold Comfort. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
Iceland’s economic crash gives texture to two crime novels. Arnaldur Indridason is a well-known and best-selling Icelandic author, many of whose novels have been translated into English. His books are police-procedurals, usually featuring detective Erlendur Sveinsson...
Recent Posts
2025 Readers’ Favourites8 January 2026With the new year barely begun, take a look back at our top ten reviews of [ … ]
Tributes to Jean Bedford18 December 2025Writer and editor Jean Bedford died after a long illness on 11 December 2025. [ … ]
LYN DICKENS Salt Upon the Water. Reviewed by Ann Skea11 December 2025Lyn Dickens’s award-winning debut novel of an independent woman in colonial [ … ]
STUART EVERLY-WILSON The Maskeys. Reviewed by Catherine Pardey10 December 2025Set in a small Australian town dominated by a family of drug dealers, Stuart [ … ]