crime fiction

  • West Seattle Blues by Chris Nickson

    West Seattle Blues is the second outing for music journalist Laura Benton. Set several years after Emerald City, Laura is now married with a son who is almost walking and a husband in the book business. She still works, albeit not as much as she used to, writing reviews and doing occasional interviews. When the…

  • Emerald City by Chris Nickson

    Mention Seattle to me and what comes to mind is Microsoft, Frasier and rain. But Seattle is also the setting for Emerald City, the new book by Chris Nickson. It’s 1988 and Laura Benton is a music journalist at The Rocket, a publication at which the author also worked in the 1980s. It’s a male-dominated…

  • 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 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,…

  • One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson

    [tweetmeme source=”nettiewriter” http://www.URL.com] I left writing a review of this book for a week or so to decide what I really thought about it. I enjoyed it well enough when I was reading it,

  • Review of If I Never See You Again

    [tweetmeme source=”nettiewriter” http://www.URL.com] We’ve all heard the old adage that we ‘shouldn’t judge a book by its cover’ and in the case of If I Never See You Again by Irish writer Niamh O’Connor, this couldn’t be more true. The cover doesn’t do justice to the intelligence and

  • Book Review: Dark Blood by Stuart MacBride

    [tweetmeme source=”nettiewriter” http://www.URL.com] I am a big Stuart MacBride fan. His Logan McRae crime series never fails to delight me and the man himself is far lovelier than his gory prose might lead you to believe – he has been a judge in a children’s writing competition my writing group ran. Dark Blood didn’t disappoint.…

  • Review of The Business Of Dying by Simon Kernick

    [tweetmeme source=”nettiewriter” http://www.URL.com] The Business of Dying is the debut novel by successful crime writer Simon Kernick. It tells the story of Dennis Milne, a copper who also kills people

  • Book Review: The Chemistry of Death by Simon Beckett

    [tweetmeme source=”nettiewriter” http://www.URL.com] “A human body starts to decompose four minutes after death.” So starts The Chemistry Of Death by Simon Beckett and this macabre beginning sets the tone for the horror that will unfold in the village of Manham as the bodies of two apparently unrelated woman are found.

  • What now?

    [tweetmeme source=”nettiewriter” http://www.URL.com] I think I’m getting old. Apart from the usual indicators (grey hair, wrinkles, don’t start me on the menopause) I have noticed one other Big Difference in me recently. I no longer find murder and gore palatable. The past few books I have read in my usual genre of choice have left…