Crime fiction
How the railways shaped modern culture
Cue track seven of Frank Sinatra’s 1957 album Only the Lonely and you can hear Ol’ Blue Eyes pretending to…
Rebels and whistleblowers: a choice of recent crime fiction
A veteran CIA officer gets involved in an anti-government movement in Bahrain, and a young British intelligence officer infiltrates a news service
Small-town mysteries: A Case of Matricide, by Graeme MacRae Burnet, reviewed
The gifted writer Graeme Macrae Burnet makes a mockery of the genres publishers impose on credulous readers. The author of…
A choice of thrillers for end of summer escapism
Charlotte Philby’s appropriately titled The End of Summer skilfully explores the strains of a double life. Also reviewed: Ajay Close, Charlotte Vassell and Giuseppe Miale di Mauro
A haunting apparition: Bonehead, by Mo Hayder, reviewed
A young policewoman returns to her native Gloucestershire, hoping to solve a mystery connected to a terrible past accident there
An Oxford spy ring is finally uncovered
Charles Beaumont’s warped group, recruited by an eccentric fellow of Jesus College, seems all too plausible. Other thrillers from Celia Walden and Matthew Blake
A tangled web
A teasing piece of crime fiction weaves together real and invented murders in a satire on the true crime genre and its devotees
On the run in Russia
Owen Matthews concludes his magnificent KGB trilogy, and there’s a thrilling debut from David McCloskey, a former CIA Middle East specialist
Did she jump or was she pushed?
A police detective inherits a country estate and looks forward to early retirement, but is forced back into action when human bones surface at a village treasure hunt
Village villainy
Cosy crime was once the literary world’s guilty secret, a refuge for any reader seeking entirely unchallenging entertainment – like…
Character is king
Thriller writers are hard pressed to stand out in what’s become a very crowded field. As a result, from Cardiff…
Sinister accidents abound
The old adage that everyone has a novel in them has a new version: anyone can write a thriller. Celebrity…
Playing cat and mouse
Almost any promising writer of spy fiction can expect at some point to be called the ‘next Le Carré’, an…
Sins of the father
I’d forgotten what a rich and deep and characterful voice John le Carré had. Listening to author and lawyer Philippe…
The fog of unknowing
It’s 1981 in Richmond, south-west London. Detective Inspector Henry Hobbes is called out to a rundown house where the octogenarian…
No one wants to know
If the homage wasn’t clear from the title, Tana French makes sure throughout The Searcher, her seventh novel and second…
Irritable male syndrome
By my reckoning, this is the 24th outing for John Rebus, Scotland’s best known retired police officer. One of the…
The thrill of the chase
A guide to reading in lockdown. My involvement with crime and mystery fiction started when I was four. The first…
Mad, bad and dangerous
Brian De Palma brings his film director’s eye to Are Snakes Necessary? (Hard Case, £16.99), written in collaboration with the…
Crime fiction: a sole survivor is haunted by a family tragedy on a remote Scottish island
James Sallis has a modus operandi: never to waste a word. Sarah Jane (No Exit Press, £8.99) follows this stricture…
Washed-up in LA: This Storm, by James Ellroy, reviewed
When James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential appeared in 1990, it introduced us to a world of blatant corruption, casual racism and…
Death of a rock star: Slow Motion Ghosts, by Jeff Noon, reviewed
Here is a novel set in the no man’s land between past and present, a fertile and constantly shifting territory…
Investigative journalists: new crime fiction reviewed
Despite being well-travelled as the BBC’s world affairs editor, John Simpson doesn’t roam far from home in his spy thriller,…
Recent crime fiction
Gabriel Tallent’s My Absolute Darling (4th Estate, £12.99) has the word masterpiece emblazoned on the cover, alongside quotes from several…
Ian Rankin’s diary: Paris, ignoring Twitter and understanding evil
After ten days away, I spent last Friday at home alone, catching up on washing, shopping for cat food, answering…
