Pick of some recent reviews

A pick of some of the reviews and interviews I've read and enjoyed in the past few days.

Material Witness likes No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay. I'd already added this to my basket in Amazon on the basis of reading a preview in the Bookseller, so it is good to know that the promise of this book seems more than realised.

Crime Fiction Dossier makes Gordon Campbell's Missing Witness his book of the week. Apparently the author spent nearly 30 years writing this legal thriller, so you may have to wait a while for his next.

Random Jottings interviews Sarah Bower, author of Needle in the Blood, a book which I've bought for Cathy on the basis of RJ's and other recommendations. This book took a mere 3 years to write, but the author couldn't find a publisher until "I was Editor of the Historical Review and I had been reviewing a book by one of Snowbook's authors, J D Landis, and I thought I would see if they were interested in Needle.  So I sent an email to Emma with the first three chapters attached and within 12 hours she got back to me asking for the rest and within 48 hours she had said yes."

Aust Crime Fiction reviews The Killing Hour by Paul Cleave, thoroughly enjoying it. This is the second book by this author, and apparently he is writing a third. None of them seem to be available yet in the UK (no Amazon listing), sadly.

Reading Matters and It's a Crime! both feature positive verdicts on Arnaldur Indridason's Voices. I agree that it's a very good book, and I think its sequel, The Draining Lake, is even better.

Comments

[Susan Balée]

Great review of the reincarnation book in the Inquirer, Maxine. I like how you analyzed what makes a bestseller and some authors' canny use of the knowledge. I did not, for example, know that Robin Cook did that for "Coma," but I thought it was a ripper of a novel!

[Maxine]

Oh, thanks, Susan, I had forgotten it comes out today -- must go and look! Thanks again for your kind words. If I could write half as well as you, I'd be doing OK.

[Peter]

"Sentences are clumsily constructed ... "

Yes, "The Da Vinci Code" was in evidence, all right.

OK, I admit that I didn't make it through "The Da Vinci Code"'s first paragraph. But I did stick out for I think the entire opening sentence.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

[Maxine]

I think DVC works if one thinks of it as a teen novel. They had the clever idea of not marketing it as a YA novel, but as a non-niched novel. (Previous sentence = British irony.) Hence lots of regular readers of non-teen-targeted novels hated it, but lots of people who don't usually read books, as well as teens, liked it (presumably, as a lot of people sure bought it!).

[Susan Balée]

Good point, Maxine. I couldn't get through the bad prose of DVC either, but my son -- then age 12 -- devoured the book in a day. The next day he did "Angels & Demons" (we were on vacation). The prose didn't bug him because he was reading for the plot and he loved the ideas.

We're going to Paris this spring and he's keen to look out the places -- Louvre pyramid, cathedral, etc. -- i.d.'ed in Brown's book.

[Maxine]

Apparently you can get Da Vinci Code tours of Paris -- drives the French mad, apparently!