Fatal Forgery Long before the days of online banking, a big part of any banker’s working life was trust – but not all bank employees were able to resist the lure of hard cash. In 1824, respectable banker Henry Fauntleroy is arrested on charges of forgery, leaving Constable Samuel Plank to find out exactly what’s…
Category: Reviews
‘The Corrections’ by Jonathan Franzen
The Corrections All Enid Lambert wants is to have one last Christmas with her family round her. She and her husband Alfred are getting on a bit and the reality of their lives together has reached a point where the words ‘fractured’ and ‘awkward’ may be the best they can hope for. At times, the…
‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes The twelve short stories collected together as ‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ were first published in The Strand Magazine, beginning with ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’. Arthur Conan Doyle’s first two novels featuring the consulting detective (‘A Study in Scarlet’ and ‘The Sign of Four’) hadn’t made much of an impression…
‘Cold Comfort Farm’ by Stella Gibbons
Cold Comfort Farm I’ve wanted to read this novel since seeing the movie version back in the late 90’s (starring Kate Beckinsale, Eileen Atkins and Ian McKellen), but it’s taken me til now to actually get around to it. Stella Gibbons was working at the Evening Standard in 1928 when the paper decided to serialise…
‘The Good Son’ by Paul McVeigh
The Good Son Ten-year-old Michael Donnelly has a dog called Killer, an almost-telepathic relationship with his sister Wee Maggie, and a bit of a crush on the girl down the street. He’s also got a father who breaks promises and a bullish older brother who calls him ‘gay’. When Michael finds a gun in the…
Getting the Word Out
As mentioned in my previous post, one of my tasks for this year is to get folk interested in my books (and ideally, buying them). As there are several ways to do that, I decided to tackle a couple of things I’ve been putting off: The Mailing List Reviews But before doing that, I thought…
Blackwater Lake by Maggie James
Blackwater Lake Back from his idyllic life in Crete, Matthew is somewhat disinclined to spend time at his family home – with a house chock-full of junk and rubbish, his mother’s hoarding habit holds only negative memories. Inevitably, he can’t avoid it forever, but discovering his mother is dying, turns out to be only the…
The Mangle Street Murders by MRC Kasasian
The Mangle Street Murders When March Middleton goes to live with her guardian, the ‘personal’ detective Sidney Grice, she is faced with two problems: firstly, how is she ever going to live in the same house with a man so annoying, so irritatingly contrary and so stuffed with self-importance that she can barely get a…
‘Storm Ring’ by Stephen J Carter
Storm Ring Stephen J Carter’s “Storm Ring” is the 1st volume in the “Zero Point Light” Sci-Fi series. The story opens on the starship Arcturus 4 when the ship’s computer wakes up its human cargo. Rather unhelpfully, the initial scenes reminded me of ‘Alien’, but this feeling quickly passed as the story progressed. The six-strong…
Night Shift by Stephen King
Night Shift Though some of the short stories in Stephen King’s first collection were familiar to me, I’m amazed I haven’t read this book before. Some (like ‘Strawberry Spring’), were first published in the late Sixties, but most appeared between 1971 and 1978. Only four, including ‘Jerusalem’s Lot’ and ‘Quitters Inc’ were previously unpublished. While…
Colin Garrow 