Crime Scene: ANN CLEEVES The Glass Room. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
Murder and malice at a writers’ retreat. This is the fifth novel in a series featuring Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope of the Northumberland police. Like many of the more successful English crime series, these books depend heavily on a sense of continued character...Crime Scene: CAROL O’CONNELL The Chalk Girl. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
‘Before Lisbeth Salander, there was Kathy Mallory.’ So it says on the front cover of The Chalk Girl, and so it is. Set in New York, the first Mallory novel was Mallory’s Oracle, published in 1995; The Chalk Girl is the tenth. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was...The Godfather: Peter Corris on the bookshops of Newtown
I doubt there is any precinct in Sydney better supplied with new and second-hand bookshops than Newtown. There are hundreds of thousands of second-hand books at Gould’s bookshop in King Street. Going south, Berkelouw’s Books is just 50 metres off the main drag in...ROBIN HOBB City of Dragons, Book Three of the Rain Wild Chronicles. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
The dragons and their attendants have found Kelsingra, but can they keep it? Robin Hobb’s The Rain Wild Chronicles series began as a one-off novel, Dragon Keeper (2009), which was cut into two, producing Dragon Haven (2010) as well. City of Dragons was meant to...Crime Scene: LIZA MARKLUND Vanished and JO NESBO Phantom. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
Two new novels add to the Nordic crime fiction tsunami. Liza Marklund and Jo Nesbo are both mega-bestselling international authors, as the covers of their books proclaim, and among the most widely read of the present wave of Scandinavian crime writing. Marklund’s...Crime Scene: PETER MAY The Lewis Man. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
Secrets literally buried in the past come to light in this evocative mystery. This is the second novel in the ‘Lewis trilogy’, featuring Fin MacLeod as the detective brought back to his remote home island of Lewis, the northernmost point of the Outer Hebrides. In The...Crime Scene: Jean Bedford on Georgette Heyer’s crime novels
‘[Heyer is] a superlatively good writer of honourable escape.’ A S Byatt As a teenager, I devoured all of Georgette Heyer’s historical novels. These Old Shades and Powder and Patch have to remain among the best historical romances ever written, and Heyer...Crime Scene: BELINDA BAUER Finders Keepers. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
Crime and mayhem in a small village on the moors. Belinda Bauer’s first crime novel, Blacklands (2010), won the Crime Writers Association (UK) Gold Dagger Award. It was followed in 2011 by Darkside and the third in the series, Finders Keepers, is published this...Crime Scene: Jean Bedford on the Nordic Phenomenon
Stieg Larsson has done for the Scandinavian crime novel what Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code did for the conspiracy/adventure novel. Fortunately for crime fiction fans, most of the precursors and followers of Larsson are very good writers, with serious social issues to...Crime Scene: HANS KOPPEL She’s Never Coming Back. Reviewed by Jean Bedford
The first crime novel from ‘an established Swedish author’ writing under a pseudonym – another name to watch. She’s Never Coming Back is the story of a kidnapped wife and mother (Ylva Zetterberg). Her husband, unaware that she is being held captive across the road...
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