Book Reviews

  • The Devil’s Music by Jane Rusbridge

    [tweetmeme source=”nettiewriter” http://www.URL.com] I had heard nothing but praise for The Devil’s Music and was keen to read it for myself so I nudged it up the TBR pile. And I am very glad I did. Jane Rusbridge has written a book so full of heartbreak and longing using the simplest of language, yet has…

  • The Book of Lost Fragrances

    [tweetmeme source=”nettiewriter” http://www.URL.com] How often have you smelled a particular perfume, a bonfire or shoe polish and been instantly transported back to an earlier time in your life? Our sense of smell is the most evocative for memory and this is what is at the heart of MJ Rose’s The Book of Lost Fragrances. Brother…

  • Drood by Dan Simmons

    [tweetmeme source=”nettiewriter” http://www.URL.com] The narrator of this epic tale (nearly 800 pages) is William Wilkie Collins, author of the Woman In White and friend of Charles Dickens.  When Dickens, his young mistress and her mother survive the Staplehurst Rail Disaster, he tells his friend about the atrocities he saw and how he tried to help.…

  • Random by Craig Robertson

    [tweetmeme source=”nettiewriter” http://www.URL.com] We have a legal system so that the courts can take responsibility for meting out justice, taking decisions regarding punishment away from those who have been offended against and making that justice impartial instead of fueled  by revenge. But what if those courts let you down? This is the situation the main…

  • The Cleansing Flames by R.N. Morris

    [tweetmeme source=”nettiewriter” http://www.URL.com] I don’t know much about Russian history. I know that there was a revolution at the beginning of the twentieth century where the Tzar and ruling classes were overthrown; I’d heard about the whole Anastasia thing and I knew that Russians were always the baddies in the best James Bond films. I…

  • Rising Blood by James Fleming

    [tweetmeme source=”nettiewriter” http://www.URL.com] Charlie Doig is a half-Scottish half-Russian adventurer and naturalist. Who just happens to have appropriated 28 tonnes of Lenin’s gold in the immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution. He soon realises that getting such an amount of loot out of Russia is impractical, so with his partner and side-kick Kobi, he scuttles…

  • The Hanging Shed by Gordon Ferris

    [tweetmeme source=”nettiewriter” http://www.URL.com] The Hanging Shed was at the top of the Amazon Kindle chart a couple of months ago due to its absurdly cheap price. If I am being honest, its price was the chief reason I bought this crime thriller set in post-war Glasgow, the same era as the previous book I reviewed,…

  • The Long Glasgow Kiss by Craig Russell

    [tweetmeme source=”nettiewriter” http://www.URL.com] I don’t know about you, but when I’m browsing for a new book, the opening paragraph is of vital importance. If the first paragraph grabs me, I’ll buy the book. And when the first line is as good as that in Craig Russell’s The Long Glasgow Kiss, I want to take it…

  • Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

    [tweetmeme source=”nettiewriter” http://www.URL.com] Where do I begin with this review? To say I loved the book doesn’t do justice to the amazing job David Mitchell has done within its pages. I enjoyed this so much it has knocked my previous favourite, John Irving’s A Prayer For Owen Meaney, into a cocked hat. Mitchell starts –…

  • Kiss The Bullet by Catherine Deveney

    [tweetmeme source=”nettiewriter” http://www.URL.com] The blurb on Kiss The Bullet by Catherine Devaney asks, Could you fall in love with the man who killed your family? and it is this interesting question that the book tries to answer.