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Keri Arthur: Destiny Kills (2008)
Having just read a novel which was the second in a series, I thought I had done the same again when I began to read Destiny Kills. The opening chapters seem to follow on straight from an earlier story,...
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John le Carré: Our Kind of Traitor (2010)
Since 2000, John le Carré's novels have been rather downbeat, even by the standards of a writer not known for cheerfulness (The Constant Gardener, Absolute Friends, The Mission Song, and A Most Wanted...
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Carol Goodman: Arcadia Falls (2010)
Note: There is a serious spoiler in the final paragraph of this review.There is almost a subgenre of fiction set in remote New England boarding schools and colleges. Like thirties house parties in...
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Nick Hornby: The Complete Polysyllabic Spree (2006)
Nick Hornby writes an approximately monthly column for American literary magazine The Believer, entitled Stuff I've Been Reading. The Complete Polysyllabic Spree collects the first three years or so of...
View ArticleGeorge MacDonald Fraser: The Light's On at Signpost (2002)
Best known to me as the author of the fantastic Flashman novels, George MacDonald Fraser turns out from this volume of memoirs to have also been involved in the scriptwriting for a number of well known...
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Maeve Gilmore: Titus Awakes: The Lost Book of Gormenghast (2011)
The Gormenghast trilogy, by far Mervyn Peake's best known work as a writer, has many fans, including myself. And fans always want more, so we were intrigued when the publication of Titus Awakes was...
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Michael Collins: The Secret Life of E. Robert Pendleton (2006)
Campus novels are not uncommon; novels about writers even less so. But Michael Collins has here produced an excellent novel, by incorporating a striking crime thriller theme into this self-consciously...
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H.D.F. Kitto: The Greeks (1951)
The Greeks has long been touted as the best basic introduction to the culture of ancient Greece, where the foundations for much of the way we think and live today were laid but which still can seem...
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Gwyneth Jones: Spirit, or The Princess of Bois Dormant (2008)
Edition: Gollancz, 2009Review number: 1456There are a few writers who seem to be able to create a world which is instantly memorable, colourful and atmospheric, and it is a valuable skill to have in...
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Robert V.S. Redick: The Red Wolf Conspiracy (2008)
Edition: Gollancz, 2009Review number: 1457This excellent fantasy novel tells of the voyage of the great ship Chathrand on a mission apparently to seal a peace between two empires which have been...
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Julian Rathbone: Kings of Albion (2000)
Edition: Abacus, 2001Review number: 1458L.P. Hartley's line "The past is a foreign country" is often quoted, but it can be hard to realise just how different things were in former times. Kings of...
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Michael Moorcock: The Blood Red Game (1974)
Edition: Mayflower Science Fiction, 1974Review number: 1459The contents of this novel are actually from the very beginning of Moorcock's career, appearing as a pair of stories in a science fiction...
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Donato Carrisi: The Whisperer (2009)
Translation: Shaun Whiteside, 2010Edition: Abacus, 2011Review number: 1460Three stories come together at the beginning of The Whisperer. An investigator specialising in finding missing children rescues...
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Liz Jensen: My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time (2006)
Edition: Bloomsbury, 2007Review number: 1461If the title did not warn the reader, the first sentence's appropriation of the famous opening to Rebecca would make it clear that My Dirty Little Book of...
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Alastair Reynolds: Blue Remembered Earth (2012)
Edition: Gollancz, 2012Review number: 1462The setting of Blue Remembered Earth is a post-scarcity world, where an environmental collapse has been followed by the rise of African states as superpowers,...
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Esi Edugyan: Half Blood Blues (2011)
Edition: Serpent's Tail, 2011Review number: 1463The treatment of Jews by the Nazis during the Second World War is well known (even if a small minority of people claim that the Holocaust did not...
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Julian Barnes: The Sense of an Ending (2011)
Edition: Jonathan Cape, 2011Review number: 1464When The Sense of an Ending won the Man Booker Prize last year, I remember seeing a suggestion that this was more a belated recognition of Barnes' career...
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Anthony Horowitz: The House of Silk (2011)
Edition: Orion Books, 2011Review number: 1465The character of Sherlock Holmes has been part of a huge literary industry, possibly the largest collection of what would now be known as fan-fiction ever...
View ArticleMichael Moorcock: The Twilight Man (1966)
Also available under the title The Shores of DeathEdition: Sphere Books, 1970Review number: 1466Like The Blood Red Game (which I bought in the same second hand bookshop as The Twilight Man in May),...
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Gregory Benford: Timescape (1980)
Edition: Millennium, 2000Review number: 1467Gregory Benford is an author whose writing I like, but I have never got round to reading much of his work. Timescape is a classic science fiction, not quite...
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