The second outing for Parker Bilal’s Sudanese detective Makana, a refugee scraping along on a dilapidated houseboat in Cairo, has all the satisfying complexities of his first, “The Golden Scales”.
Schlagwort-Archive: The Independent
Rezension: Keith Ridgway: “Hawthorn and Child”
Hawthorn and Child are not father and son, but two police detectives. Child is cool, good-looking, black, married, the sensible, no-bullshit member of the duo; Hawthorn is neurotic, gay, and prey to bad dreams and fits of weeping.
Rezension: John le Carré: “A Delicate Truth”
The spy who came in from the shadow of the wall. The commodification of public services, the manipulation of power for personal gain, extraordinary rendition, and old-fashioned moral bankruptcy are at the heart of John le Carré’s 23rd novel.
Rezension: John le Carré: “A Delicate Truth”
“A Delicate Truth”, le Carré’s 23rd novel, is another fable of conspiracy and financial malpractice. In the British Crown Colony of Gibraltar, a counter-terrorist operation is underway to capture a high-ranking jihadist arms-buyer.
Rezension: Teresa Solana: “The Sound of One Hand Killing”
Teresa Solana is already known to us, as are her terrible twins, through two previous crime novels. “The Sound of One Hand Killing is”, however, the first in the series in which Solana and her twin Barcelona private eyes actually meet on the page
Artikel: ‘The name’s Secretan… James Secretan’: Early draft of Casino Royale
An extract from the 1952 draft version is to be made public to coincide with the book’s 60th anniversary this weekend
Artikel: The Blagger’s Guide To: Agatha Christie
Cathy Cook’s “The Agatha Christie Miscellany” offers biographies of Christie, Poirot, Miss Marple and other characters, details of the author’s favourite foods, a comparison of the various theories surrounding her 1926 disappearance and more
Rezension: Régis Jauffret: “Severe”
In the spring of 2009, the French were mesmerised by a murder trial that had everything needed to whet Gallic appetites: a glamorous mistress, a billionaire victim, and more than a whiff of kinky extramarital sex.
Rezension: Frank Bill: “Donnybrook”
Beginning with an armed robbery and going on to include a vast amount of shootings, attempted rape, torture and beatings, “Donnybrook” is as subtle as a 12-gauge shotgun blast to the face.
Portrait: Camilla Läckberg
If it’s a mystery why a country as sedate as Sweden has spawned such a crop of world-beating crime writers, then the plot really thickens with a visit to Fjällbacka. Camilla Läckberg outsells Stieg Larsson in her native Sweden. Susie Mesure joins the fanclub
Interview: Jeffrey Archer
“Fifty Shades”? Couldn’t get past the first 30 pages. Cameron? He should stick it to Clegg before he gets stuck himself. Dragging up the past again? Give it a break. Jeffrey Archer is back – and he’s as irascibly entertaining as ever …
Portrait: Gillian Flynn
Flynn went to journalism school with the aim of becoming a crime reporter but applied to Entertainment Weekly to be a television critic after realising she was “too unassertive” to succeed on the crime beat. After writing for 10 years she was made redundant.
Portrait: Ruth Rendell
The bestselling novelist Ruth Rendell walks across the large sitting-room of her house in Little Venice, west London, about to take her seat for the photo shoot, when she spots something on the mantelpiece that unsettles her.
Portrait: Joanne Harris
Harris’s most famous work – one of the rare novels to sell more than a million copies in Britain – is “Chocolat”, which inspired a movie described by one critic as a “gooey, sticky, mushy, sickly-sweet confection”.
Artikel: The sun sets on Nordic noir
The phrase light entertainment is not bandied about among Scandinavian television producers. From “The Killing” via to “Borgen”, their plotlines – replete with serial killers, corrupt officials and moody detectives – are as chilly and gloomy as the winter weather.
Service: How crime fiction has moved on
An exhibition at the British Library explores the A-Z of the classic whodunit. It runs until 12 May 2013.
Rezension: MR Hall: “The Chosen Dead”
Hall’s coroner heroine Jenny Cooper would clearly be sympathetic to Tolstoy’s notion that his hero was truth – though the pursuit of truth has cost her dearly, and her fragile mental state has been stretched ever tighter over the course of five increasingly impressive books.
Artikel: Capote’s tale of brutal killings ‘glossed over failings of lead investigator’
Capote is no longer around to care, but newly unearthed evidence in the case of the Kansas farmhouse murders that became his blockbuster book “In Cold Blood” casts fresh doubt on his famous claim that it was “immaculately factual” from front cover to back.
Rezension: Lynn Shepherd: “A Treacherous Likeness”
In Lynn Shepherd’s new detective novel, Mary Shelley is accused of something scandalous. Suzi Feay listens to the evidence. The conclusion has haunted her ever since she finished the book.
Rezension: Paula Lichtarowicz Hutchinson: “The First Book of Calamity Leek”
The search for ways to convey the cruelty that men and women inflict upon one another has taken writers from the social realism of George Orwell all the way to the grotesquery of Mervyn Peake. Paula Lichtarowicz follows in the latter’s footsteps.