Suggested to me by an afficionada of the spy genre, I must admit that this book didn’t impress me at the start; the basis of the story seemed too improbable. But as I got further in it won me over … Continue reading →
The story of Pericles has been told and re-told many time over the centuries, or even millennia. Although the play, generally accepted as written by William Shakespeare and George Wilkins, may be the best-known version in the English language there … Continue reading →
Intriguing, imaginative, inventive, impressive. Claire North’s character Harry August and his fellow kalachakra live Groundhog lives rather than Groundhog Days. Unlike we normal ‘linear’ folk their lives are both sequential and repetitive in time. Like the Ouroboros continually swallowing its … Continue reading →
An excellent story in the form of a political crime thriller set in the foothills of Pyrenean Spain towards the end of the 16th century. Carr captures the paranoia of the times with the secular state and the Inquisition both … Continue reading →
The second in the Jackson Lamb series. I felt it lacked a little of the tautness of the first; it ranges over an area wider than the confined London of “Slow Horses“ and the plot requires a bigger stretch of … Continue reading →
Recommended to me by an expert in the genre, this first story in a series featuring the character Jackson Lamb didn’t disappoint. It starts with a slow burn as Herron introduces his characters and sets up the basis for this … Continue reading →
So the fifth-richest man in the world has bought up an entire county in Iowa, rebuilt a small town, recruited top scientists, and is building the world’s most powerful supercollider – one that will dwarf the LHC at CERN. What … Continue reading →
So here it is, the fourth and presumably final book in Dave Hutchinson’s ‘Fractured Europe’ series. Does he pull off the challenge of a coherent and satisfactory resolution to the complex puzzle he’s constructed in the first three? Short answer; … Continue reading →
‘Broken April’ is the other book by celebrated Albanian author Ismail Kadare recommended as ‘approachable’ by my guidebook to Albania (‘Chronicle in Stone’ is the other). Set in the 1920s or 1930s it describes the way of life in the … Continue reading →
If I hadn’t been planning a holiday in Albania later this year I would very probably never have heard of Ismail Kadare. His Wikipedia entry says Kadare is regarded by some as one of the greatest European writers and intellectuals … Continue reading →