My Review (5 stars out of 5) In the days leading up to Christmas, a climate catastrophe looms over Helsinki – but flooded subway tunnels and abandoned vehicles aren’t the only issue. With ruthless private security firms taking the law into their own hands, poet Tapani Lehtinen and his wife Johanna are some of the…
Heroes and Collectives
How many central characters should a novel have? One or two? Three? Or… Most novels have a hero or heroine, or in some cases, a pair of heroes or heroines. In creating what I hoped would be a new thriller series, I realised I’d gone a bit overboard in character-creation mode and for a while,…
‘The Body Farm’ by Patricia Cornwell
My Review (5 stars out of 5) A research institute testing the decomposition of corpses comes in handy when Kay Scarpetta seeks help with a mysterious mark on the body of a dead girl. In Black Mountain, North Carolina, the doc is called in along with newly promoted Pete Marino and FBI buddy Benton Wesley…
‘Broken Rhodes’ by Kimber Silver
My Review (4 stars out of 5) Back in the town where she grew up in Harlow, Kansas, Kinsley Rhodes wants answers. Following the murder of her grandfather, she needs Sheriff Lincoln James to track down the killer. But Kinsley and the sheriff don’t see eye to eye. Kinley’s difficult past won’t allow her to…
‘The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man’ by Paul Newman
My Review (5 stars out of 5) In 1986, together with close friend and screenwriter Stewart Stern, Paul Newman began to tape an oral history. His aim was to provide a biographical record, including comments from family members, friends, actors and movie directors. The idea focused on everyone being entirely truthful – a no-hold-barred account…
‘The Storms of Padstow’ by Joy Mutter
My Review (5 stars out of 5) This is the second book in the Nuru and his Crows series, another dark erotic thriller steeped in magical realism. Model Eloise Le Brun falls foul of African fortune teller Nuru and his two pet crows. As the magician’s weird spells start to work, Eloise finds her life…
‘The Girl Who Played with Fire’ by Stieg Larsson
My Review (5 stars out of 5) Two journalists working with Millennium magazine plan to expose a sex trafficking gang in Sweden, but before their work is finished, the pair are murdered. When the police discover Lisbeth Salander’s prints on the weapon, they assume she must be guilty. But the two journalists are not the…
‘Madly, Deeply: The Alan Rickman Diaries’ by Alan Rickman
My Review (5 stars out of 5) (Audiobook) Alan Rickman shot to fame as villainous Hans Gruber in Die Hard, back in 1988. Up until then he’d done a lot of theatre, mostly in the UK. His diaries run from 1993 until his death in 2016 and offer insight into the actor’s public and private…
‘The Lonely Lake Killings’ by Wes Markin
My Review (3 out of 5 stars) This is book 2 in the Yorkshire Murders series, and is the first I’ve read by this author. The story centres on the murder of a barmaid who is found dead by a lake. The proximity of the body to the home of a local recluse seems to…
On Creating a Series
I assume that other authors, like me, create a series of books (ie a sequence featuring the same characters or setting/location) so the expectation that whatever readers loved about the first book will prompt them to read the others. But do we do it simply to have the same group of characters ready and waiting,…
Colin Garrow 