by NRB | 10 Dec 2012 | Fiction |
Artist Clarice Beckett inspires this award-winning debut novel. Kristel Thornell’s Dobbie and Vogel Award-winning novel Night Street takes the apparently narrow life of interwar Australian artist Clarice Beckett and imaginatively deepens her life’s hue, working with...
by Jean Bedford | 29 Nov 2012 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
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 first,...
by NRB | 27 Nov 2012 | Fiction |
This sequel to Restoration is a hectic, witty adventure set in seventeenth-century England and Europe. When, in my constant search for a readable historical novel, I encountered Rose Tremain’s Restoration in 1980, my day was made (several days actually). It was a romp...
by NRB | 21 Nov 2012 | Fiction, Non-fiction, SFF |
This book of essays and stories adds new perspective to Stephenson’s interests and plot devices. Reviewing a collection of essays is a tricky task at the best of times, since they have often been written over a long period, with differing levels of experience,...
by NRB | 19 Nov 2012 | Fiction, SFF |
China Miéville continues to give a poetic and intelligent edge to the fantasy genre. This new book is an absolute joy. Miéville’s writing in Railsea is full of clever allusions, sly glances at popular culture and the work of other writers, wit, and warmth. As well,...
by Jean Bedford | 14 Nov 2012 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
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...
by NRB | 5 Nov 2012 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
This book is among the best of Lehane’s novels. With books like Mystic River and Shutter Island to his credit, Dennis Lehane has a very good track record, and Live by Night is up there with his best work. Talk about grabbing the reader’s attention: this is how...
by Jean Bedford | 1 Nov 2012 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
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...
by Jean Bedford | 22 Oct 2012 | Crime Scene, Fiction |
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,...
by NRB | 15 Oct 2012 | Fiction |
There are clever and subtle echoes in this book, but it is not a novel. A Possible Life is not a novel and it is misleading of Faulks and his publishers to present it as one. It’s a collection of long short stories, two of which are almost novella length. No...
by Jean Bedford | 10 Oct 2012 | Fiction |
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....
by NRB | 8 Oct 2012 | Fiction |
Emily Maguire’s vivid novel of expats in Hanoi reveals some uncomfortable truths. Mischa is a thirty-something Australian woman who washes up in Hanoi in the aftermath of an abusive marriage: I wanted to lose myself so thoroughly that I would never find...
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