by NRB | 17 Nov 2020 | Fiction |
The award-winning author of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle returns with a dark and dangerous mystery set on the high seas. The Devil and the Dark Water reminds me a little of the old circular joke: It was a dark and stormy night and the Captain said to...
by NRB | 22 Mar 2018 | Crime Scene |
An accessible dip into the world of fan fiction, these 16 illustrated short stories are not just for lovers of Sherlock Holmes. Seventeen different authors have contributed to this collection, including the overall editor Christopher Sequiera, himself a Sherlock...
by NRB | 28 Apr 2016 | Crime Scene |
The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, written in the mid 1880s, was a world-wide publishing phenomenon. The story of its publication deserves a book like Blockbuster!. Lucy Sussex is a renowned crime fiction expert, researcher and editor, originally from New Zealand, now from...
by NRB | 4 Sep 2015 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I’ve been reading, or rather having read to me via Audible, the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels. The temptation when writing about Holmes is to fall into the manner and cadences of his biographer Dr John Watson. If I were to do this I’d write something like: The...
by NRB | 25 Jul 2014 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
Recently, one of my daughters, knowing of my enjoyment of the Sherlock Holmes novels and stories, gave me a DVD of episodes in the first of the 2010 BBC TV series Sherlock. She said it was an update. I was sceptical. More of that later. I’d read Conan Doyle in my...
by NRB | 31 Oct 2013 | Fiction |
Moneypenny, M, danger, sex and cigarettes; the self-indulgent, worldly tone: William Boyd’s James Bond gets it right. I imagine that writing a Sherlock Holmes or James Bond pastiche is something like ghost writing or co-authoring an ‘autobiography’....
HELEN GARNER The Season. Reviewed by Michael Jongen23 January 2025Helen Garner’s account of a single season of her grandson’s AFL team is about [ … ]
EVA MENASSE Darkenbloom. Reviewed by Ann Skea22 January 2025In Austrian writer Eva Menasse’s new novel, the residents of a small border [ … ]
MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ Annihilation. Reviewed by James Arbuthnott21 January 2025The controversial author of Atomised sets his new – and possibly last – novel [ … ]
CHER The Memoir Part 1. Reviewed by Naomi Manuell16 January 2025Cher is a genuine superstar who has had an extraordinary career across music, [ … ]