Any consumer of media content of any kind will slot right into the opening of this novel. In a gritty urban setting, a grizzled and world-weary cop looks down on a dead body, possibly a prostitute. There’s a street-smart young beat cop standing nearby who knows the local working girls. There’s an incompetent subordinate who might have contaminated the crime scene. Techs are taking samples; witnesses wait nearby to be questioned. Then comes something unexpected: our detective notices a woman walking nearby, then “realises” she isn’t actually there, and unsees her.
Continue reading The City & The City
Before reading this book, I spent about a month reading nothing but novels written by women in the first half of the twentieth century. Most of them were mystery novels. Ninety per cent of the action took place in drawing rooms. The ritual of tea was interrupted for no possible emergency. There were some dead bodies scattered about, but the more serious problem was the difficulty of getting decent servants. It was heaven.
My poor, fragile brain was not prepared for The North Water. Continue reading The North Water
Billy Graves, NYPD, is a cop with a history, a member of a group of mostly-now-ex-detectives each of whom has a personal White Whale, a One That Got Away. When their Whites start turning up dead, Billy is forced to confront the possibility that one or more of his friends might be involved. Meanwhile, his family is the target of a series of unsettling and increasingly violent incidents at the hands (unbeknownst to him) of one of his colleagues.
Continue reading The Whites
Mr King giveth, and Mr King taketh away. For someone so prolific, I guess it should come as no surprise that some of the approx. 157 books he releases every year will be duds, but it’s still disappointing when you know all the good he’s capable of when he puts his mind to it. Continue reading Mr Mercedes
If you like your espionage old-school and British, a new Le Carre release is like a little gift from the universe, a fixed point in a world of entropy and decay. Whispers of treason in the corridors of power, if you care for that kind of thing. Which I do. I could wish this one had a more decisive ending, though.
