Thanks for visiting during the last six years. The move is now complete and there will be no further posts here. But there will be here. I hope to see you there.
crimeficreader x
31 August 2011
26 August 2011
Into the Darkest Corner – Elizabeth Haynes
Review can be found here.
22 August 2011
The Poison Tree - Erin Kelly
Read the review here.
21 August 2011
Snapshot - Craig Robertson
The review can be found here.
15 August 2011
The Dispatcher - Ryan David Jahn
The review can be found here.
An Agent of Deceit - Chris Morgan Jones
The review can be found here.
Cuckoo - Julia Crouch
The review can be found here.
07 August 2011
Cold Kiss – John Rector
Full post can be found on the new blog here.
06 August 2011
04 August 2011
The Guilty Plea – Robert Rotenberg
Posted on new blog. Click here to see and comment.
This blog will close at the end of August.
Thank you for dealing with the inconvenience.
03 August 2011
31 July 2011
30 July 2011
29 July 2011
Zen from Left Bank Pictures Impresses in North America
A post from February recording the BBC's decision not to recommission this series attracted quite a few comments. A couple more in the last few days draw my attention to it again. Zen has been aired in north America by PBS over the summer (with the final episode due on 31 July) and viewers there have found this site and left comments. Yesterday, Maclean's magazine in Canada reported on it in an article headed 'Intelligent viewers have spoken' - the title says it all.
Thanks all for the comments. Further comments can be left by clicking here.
Meanwhile, PBS has some new interviews (with Rufus Sewell and Ed Stoppard) to accompany the series, as well as further videos which you can find here. Sample below.
Watch the full episode. See more Masterpiece.
26 July 2011
25 July 2011
24 July 2011
White Heat – M J McGrath
Blessed be those who release us from the grip of the Scandinavian crime novel and invite us to take some time out on the tundra.
M J McGrath – Melanie McGrath in her previous non-fiction outings – has a wonderful knowledge of life in the outer reaches of Arctic Canada, its history and politics, and its culture in the contemporary world. She shares all this in White Heat, managing to take in Greenland along the way. Her protagonist, Edie Kiglatuk, is a force to be reckoned with and a beautifully refreshing character in today’s world for this is a woman who takes family, responsibility and commitment seriously. She may be divorced but she still feels and acts upon her commitment to her stepson Joe.
Edie is an expert hunter and guide in a forbidding terrain. She takes two tourists on an expedition but returns with one dead, shot in mysterious circumstances. Canada it may be, and arms length at that, but with a sparse population the authorities do not operate as many of us would expect. When Edie reports this unfortunate occurrence, the Council of Elders in Autisaq are quick to deem it an accident with an overriding view to protection of their much needed economic income from tourism. Think hushed. Think hidden. Think under the carpet, if such flooring existed in this part of the world.
21 July 2011
#hackgate, spooks and Stella Rimington
The innocent might have thought phone hacking was the preserve of our official army of spooks but this week’s news developments prove otherwise and the lay out the consequences as they mushroom by the day. Profumo, Watergate, Enron: is the UK facing a weave of these in the biggest scandal and threat to the fabric of our establishment right now? Fed up of reading about it? Then it might be time to try some fiction.
Former MI5 Director General Stella Rimington and now thriller author with her Liz Carlyle series has moved to a new publisher – Bloomsbury – has a new book out, Rip Tide and a new website to boot. On the website you can even find a sample from Rip Tide in the ‘Advance Intelligence’ file. Below, she talks about her new novel.
Sometimes, fiction is more comforting than reality because you know it’s fiction…
Theakstons Crime Writing Festival – Harrogate (With apologies to W H Auden.)
Starts today!
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Leave your dogs barking with many a juicy bone,
Tinkle the piano and bang the drum
Bring out the readers, let the authors come.
Let helicopters circle whirring overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message ‘this one’s dead’,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the scene of crime policemen wear forensic gloves.
All, from the North, the South, the East and West,
Abandon working week and Sunday rest,
From noon, through midnight, they talk, they sing;
Hoping it can last forever, on a prayer and a wing…
The perps are not wanted now: bang up every one;
Pack up your troubles and grab a Bettys bun;
Pour away with that wine as one very, very should.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
20 July 2011
Jake Needham’s Asian thrillers hit the UK
If you are travelling in the UK at the moment, you might want to pop into your station’s/airport’s WHSmith travel outlet to see what they have on offer in their books section. There you should find two novels from author Jake Needham in a promotion: The Ambassador’s Wife and The Big Mango.
To date, you may not have heard of Jake Needham and here’s why. Born in America where he qualified as a lawyer, Needham has practised law and lived in Asia for more than thirty years. That’s where his novels are set and that’s where his publisher, Marshall Cavendish is based. However, since July 15, Marshall Cavendish has made these novels available in the UK.
Continue reading "Jake Needham’s Asian thrillers hit the UK" »
18 July 2011
Tom Pellereau, the 2011 Apprentice Winner
Congratulations to Tom Pellereau (@Tom_Pellereau) this year's Apprentice winner! I loved him from the start. Here are some pictures of the jubilant Tom.
All earlier Apprentice 2011 posts can be found here.
17 July 2011
The Apprentice 2011 – fast food to determine the final four…
Yes, to determine the final four it was a week of fast food. And as the final is on the TV tonight, this week’s post of the speedy and truncated variety too.
Teams this week were: Natasha and Susan led by Jim; Tom led by Helen.
Task: create a fast food outlet. Something original, added the voiceover.
I loved it that man in charge of a Soho Mexican food outlet was a South African. And the food. Oh dear. It just doesn’t look appealing does it? What’s the black stuff?
Susan: ‘… and even though we had some problems before on the previous task, all the air’s been cleared…’ Not according to Natasha’s face, no.
Susan eats in a lot of Mexican restaurants. So I have to ask: where’s the originality then Susan?
It could have been easy partnership between Tom and Helen but Helen soon asserted herself and made it clear who was in charge didn’t she? A touch of control freakery in evidence there.
And now for a big ‘shhh’. We should only whisper about the lack of knowledge of history in evidence when it came to branding British food. Tom and Helen seemed to think that Christopher Columbus was British and, having discovered the potato, brought it to these islands. I’d love to ask them where cherry genoa cake was first spotted and by whom.
Helen thought the pie and mash needed feminising by making smaller pies for the ladies. That’s a higher proportion of the junk stuff (fatty pastry) in the smaller model, Helen! But sales seemed to go well…
Jim thought it was 'another time for me to shine' but just escaped the taxi in the end.
We were told on You’re Fired that Natasha had been tired. But she looked like someone who lost all interest when she didn’t get her own way in that final team of three.
And who will be the winner? We will all find out tonight. The final is on BBC1 at 9pm, immediately followed by a Dara O’Briain analysis.
I really would not be surprised if Helen wins tonight and MyPy hits the street within a year. But without the Columbus mash.
16 July 2011
Curiouser and curiouser...
Now and again a long memory serves me well.
The Daily Mail is quoting David Beckham on their new baby girl's name thus 'One reason is Harper's an old English name which we loved and one of the other reasons was Victoria's favourite book is To Kill A Mockingbird and the author was Harper Lee. It's a very strong, passionate book. That's where Harper came from.'
And yet, back in 2005 the Guardian disclosed this comment from Victoria '"I haven't read a book in my life," Beckham confesses. "I don't have the time." However, the 31-year-old former Spice Girl does shrug off suggestions that she is a philistine. "I prefer listening to music, although I do love fashion magazines."'
So when did she discover reading? Perhaps the stork has the inside story on that one.
Good words but too late…
Way too late. And after all those smiling faces in pictures. It makes it look like squeezing out an awkwardly placed belligerent blackhead is easier. Could News Corp be this millennium’s Ratner? Is anyone capable of believing that blind eyes missed all this? And again, British MPs do not look clean at all. It is time the UK revisited the concept of shame to be able to re-establish some decent ethics.
crimeficreader
UK-based reader of crime fiction for many years.
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