Review of Bitter Water by Gordon Ferris (Corvus, 2012)

A year after being demobbed from the army after the end of the Second World War, and a few months after a traumatic run-in with the Slattery gang, Douglas Brodie is working as a rookie journalist for the Glasgow Gazette.  An ex-policeman and ex-soldier, Brodie has a nose for trouble.  His woes start when his editor, in the absence of the established crime reporter, sends him to the scene of a murdered councillor, the chair of the planning committee for the city.  Shortly after, he’s accosted by a former soldier who wants him and advocate Samantha Campbell to help his friend, who’s been arrested for breaking in to a house.  They reluctantly agree, but the man is nevertheless sent to prison.  Then a series of brutal attacks start to take place around the city, the victims accused of committing unpunished crimes.  With the Gazette’s crime reporter poking around the death of the councillor, it’s left to Brodie to write about the vigilante attacks, but he’s soon drawn into a game of cat and mouse with the gang and other forces.

Gordon Ferris’ writing is easy on the eye and he tells a colourful tale that rattles along a fair clip, with plenty of action and twists and turns.  The story is entertaining, but one has to often suspend belief for it to work, with too many elements relying on characters not pursuing the logical course, the police being hopeless, and the public to a person siding with the vigilantes.  The result is a kind of mix of detective novel and action adventure.  The characterisation is quite nicely done, especially Brodie and Samantha Campbell and their will-they-won’t-they relationship, though many fitted the stock character mould (the dullard inspector, the red-haired barmpot, the world weary journalist, the upper class lout, etc).  The historical contextualisation is not laboured and there is a decent sense of place.  Overall, an enjoyable read that keeps several threads moving along and knots them in a blockbuster conclusion. 

Review of I Will Have Vengeance by Maurizio De Giovanni (Hersilia Press, 2012, translated by Anne Milano Appel)

Naples, March 1931, and Maestro Vezzi, one of the world’s greatest tenors and a favourite of Mussolini is found stabbed to death in his dressing room at the famous San Carlo Theatre.  There’s plenty of suspects, given that nobody who knows him has a good thing to say about him other than he’s a brilliant opera performer, but everyone seemingly has an alibi given they were either absent or taking part in a dress rehearsal.  Commissario Ricciardi is assigned the case and sets to work with his loyal colleague, Brigadier Maione.  Like Vezzi, Ricciardi is not well liked, being distant and direct, relentlessly pursuing cases as if he has a personal stake in the outcome.  Ricciardi’s affliction is that he can see death scenes and the final few moments of a victim’s life and associated sorrows, which then haunt his investigations.  With pressure rising from Rome, Ricciardi makes slow progress as he tries to find a clue that will crack open the case.

I Will Have Vengeance is a locked room mystery set in an opera house.  The story has a well realised sense of place, especially with respect to the San Carlo Theatre, and nice historical contextualisation, placing the reader in Naples in 1931 and its warren of streets, sights and sounds.  The plot is well constructed and has a couple of decent red herrings and blind alleys.  The story seemed to wobble a bit towards the end, but De Giovanni finds a plausible and fitting resolution.  The real strength of the book, however, is the characterisation.  There is a well penned set of supporting actors, but star of the book is undoubtedly the troubled and mournful Commissario Ricciardi, who’s haunted by the ghosts of the dead that surround him and conducts a love affair which involves no contact or words.  Whilst the story is generally well told, I did on occasion find myself skipping back pages or re-reading sentences to decipher meaning, which was a slight distraction.  Overall, an interesting and engaging historical mystery and I look forward to catching up with Commissario Ricciardi in the future.

Lazy Sunday Service

I'm off to Stirling in Scotland tomorrow to present a talk at an education symposia on Tuesday, so I've made a start on Gordon Ferris' Bitter Water to put me in a Scottish frame of mind.  The book is set in Glasgow immediately after the Second World War and follows the exploits of Douglas Brodie, ex-copper, ex-soldier, and the newest crime reporter in town.

My posts this week
Review of The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black
Review of Entry Island by Peter May
Handbook proofs
Out in the storm

Out in the storm

Emma shouted into the wind from the shelter of a doorway.  ‘Mike!  For god’s sake!  Mike!’

Another huge wave broke over the promenade, its spray arcing up and crashing down. 

Mike turned and pointed, his face beaming as he struggled to stay upright.

‘Mike!  Stop being an idiot!’ 

Emma tried to signal to him, but he turned back, wading towards the railing, his camera raised to his eye.

The next wave thumped into the sea wall.  The fluorescent water rose up, towering over Mike’s figure.  Then it tumbled down enveloping him.

When the spray cleared the promenade was empty.

‘Mike!’



A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.

Handbook proofs

The proofs for The SAGE Handbook of Human Geography have arrived, all 732 pages of them.  The end is finally in sight!  I'm slightly biased, but I think it's a great collection of essays by a set of wonderful authors.  It should be published by April/May, hopefully.  The dust jacket is right.  Here's the line up.

Volume 1

Part I Imagining Human Geographies
1 Place, Tim Cresswell
2 Mobilities, Johanna Waters
3 Inhabiting, Jacques Lévy
4 Difference, Katharyne Mitchell
5 More-Than-Human Geographies, Beth Greenhough
6 Nature-Society, Andrea Nightingale
7 Transformations, Daniel Clayton
8 Critique, Alastair Bonnett
9 Geo-historiographies, Trevor Barnes

Part II Practising Human Geographies
10 Capturing, Matthew W. Wilson and Sarah Elwood
11 Noticing, Eric Laurier
12 Representing, Anna Barford
13 Writing (somewhere), Juliet J. Fall
14 Researching, Meghan Cope
15 Producing, Mia Gray
16 Engaging, Jane Wills
17 Educating, Jennifer Hill and Avril Maddrell
18 Advocacy, Audrey Kobayashi, Meghan Brooks, Sarah de Leeuw, Nathaniel Lewis,
Catherine Nolin and Cheryl Sutherland

Volume 2

Part III Living Human Geographies
19 Ethics, Elizabeth Olson
20 Economy, Marianna Pavlovskaya and Kevin St Martin
21 Society, Jamie Winders
22 Culture, Patricia Price
23 Politics, David Featherstone
24 Words, Cheryl McGeachan and Christopher Philo
25 Power, Louise Amoore
26 Development, Katie Wills
27 Bodies, Rachel Silvey and Jean-François Bissonnette
28 Identities, Robyn Dowling and Katharine McKinnon
29 Demographies, Elspeth Graham
30 Health, Matthew Sparke
31 Resistance, Sarah Wright

Review of Entry Island by Peter May (Quercus, 2014)

Sime Mackenzie, a detective based in Montreal, has recently separated from his wife and is suffering from chronic insomnia.  Given he’s a fluent English speaker in a mostly French-speaking force he is assigned to a team, that includes his wife, a crime scene investigator, being flown to the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St Lawrence to investigate the murder of rich businessman on the remote Entry Island, stabbed to death in his own home.  Kirsty Cowell claims that she was attacked by a man wearing a ski mask, who killed her husband when he intervened.  Circumstantial evidence, however, suggests that she was her husband’s killer.  Lieutenant Crozes, who's charge of the investigative team, wants to wrap the case up quickly and is happy to take the obvious route.  Sime, however, senses that they are making a mistake, but his judgement is clouded by an acute lack of sleep, the presence of his estranged wife, and a sense that he shares a connection to Kirsty Cowell even though he’s never met her before.

In Entry Island, Peter May weaves together two stories, separated by almost two centuries -- a murder investigation on a remote island in the Gulf of St Lawrence and a doomed love affair on the Isle of Lewis between a crofter’s son and the daughter of the local laird.  The intertwining of the stories is nicely done, providing some interesting counterpoints between the two periods and how the past intervenes in the present.  Whilst the Lewis story is compelling, the present day investigation is less satisfactory, with a little too much melodrama at times, a rather contrived personal situation, a weak investigative plot that relies on the team ignoring evidence, including a second death and an attempted murder, and a resolution that didn’t ring true.   Nonetheless, some of the telling is very good, producing a page-turning read, with nice historical contextualisation concerning the Highland clearances and emigration to Canada, and a strong sense of place in Scotland and Canada.  The result is a story that is a little uneven, with a somewhat weak ending, but is still an engaging and entertaining read.

Review of The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black (Picador, 2007)

In the late 1950s, two years after his fateful investigation into the death of Christine Falls, pathologist Quirke is still working in a Dublin hospital.  He’s made an awkward truce with his daughter, who is now in her early twenties, and he’s given up drink.  When an old acquaintance from his college days asks him not to perform an autopsy on the body of his dead wife to save her from the stigma of suicide, Quirke cautiously agrees.  Deirdre Hunt has been recovered from Dublin Bay.  Only she didn’t drown.  Nevertheless, Quirke decides to keep that information to himself and to perjure himself at the coroner’s hearing.  Fascinated by the case, however, he starts to poke around only to find his daughter having an affair with Deirdre Hunt’s business partner.  Moreover, Inspector Hackett has become interested in the death and Quirke is left wondering if he made the right decision to help Billy Hunt.

Compared to many contemporary crime fiction novels, which have a relatively quick pace and are packed with melodrama or dramatic action, The Silver Swan is quite sedate.  Benjamin Black’s (John Banville) style is understated, atmospheric drama, told with a steady cadence of unfussy prose.  It is well suited to portraying the drab city streets of Dublin and the conservative and reserved society of Ireland in the 1950s and its hidden, seedy underbelly.  The book hinges on two events that at first seemed unlikely: Quirke’s decision to lie about an autopsy and his withdrawn and distant daughter taking up with the victim’s flamboyant business partner.  However, the first makes some sense when placed into the context of Ireland in the 1950s, when suicide carried significant stigma, and the second works well in terms of introducing a certain edge to what is generally a quite a flat story.  The plot is nicely set out and the characters well drawn, with Quirke a reticent, taciturn and troubled investigator.  Overall, a tale that takes a different path to most crime fiction.

Lazy Sunday Service

If you're interested in the property crash in Ireland, then I've recently done two 10 minute interviews on RTE Radio 1.  The first on This Week on January 5th (postcast here) and the second on Drivetime on January 17th (podcast here).  I've also written two blog posts explaining where things are at and what that might mean.

Is a new house price bubble forming in Dublin and could creating more supply temper price rises?
House prices in Dublin might be rising, but we’re a long, long way from a normal market

I did a fair bit of media work last year, including 3 television interviews, 11 radio interviews, and interviews with journalist that resulted in 15 mentions in international newspapers and 29 in national ones.  It's not something that I proactively court, and I turn a fair bit down when its not my area of expertise or pass them to colleagues, but I do think it's important for academics to contribute when they can, so I'm happy to participate in debates when asked.

My posts this week:

Pulling a thread
Review of Broken Harbour by Tana French
New year splurge
Big data: draft of encyclopedia entry

Pulling a thread

Chloe draped her arms over Neil’s neck and nuzzled into his neck.  ‘What are you doing?’

Neil kept his eyes fixed on the laptop screen.  ‘Pulling a thread.’

‘Meaning?’

‘I thought I was finished.  Then I tinkered with the second paragraph, which meant I had to re-jig the third, which led to a redrafting of the whole first section.’

‘And how is it now?’

‘Still unravelling.  It’s like a run in your tights.  One slight nick that’s unfurled into an ugly ladder.’

‘Why don’t you come back to bed?’

‘Soon.’

‘You’ll be hours.  It can’t unravel on its own.’

‘Mmmmm.’




A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.

Review of Broken Harbour by Tana French (Hachette, 2012)

Jenny and Pat Spain thought they had the perfect life.  They were happily married, had two darling kids, and they’d bought a dream home on a new estate in Broken Harbour.  Then the Irish economic boom came to an end.  Their house was poorly built and situated on an unfinished estate far from friends and family and Pat lost his job.  Added to that was a sense that someone was entering their house and stealing things and a strange animal was living in the attic.  Then the police get a call to say that the children have been smothered, Pat fatally stabbed, and Jennifer is fighting for her life.  Michael Kennedy of the murder squad is assigned to the case with rookie detective Richie Curran.  Kennedy is a model professional, but Broken Harbour is the site of a dark episode of family history that threatens to disrupt the investigation.

Broken Harbour won the Crime Fiction Book of the Year at 2012’s Irish Book Awards.  The story has a very contemporary feel, concerned with the murder of a family on a ghost estate in post-crash Ireland.  Where the book excels is with respect to providing a highly detailed account of an investigation that microscopically charts the procedural elements.  It also has a strong sense of place and in-depth characterisation.  These come, however, at the expense pace and length.  The style adopted is to reproduce the entire case, including whole conversations that often go on for pages without adding much to the plot.  It’s an interesting approach, creating a certain enclosed atmospherics.  However, it felt as if a good quarter of the text could have been edited out without impacting on the plot or its affective resonance.  At times the plot veers towards melodrama, some of the elements are difficult to believe, and it relies a little too much on lengthy confessions, but nonetheless it provides an engaging story.  Overall, an entertaining if overly long tale.

New year splurge

My to-be-read pile is not short of books at present, but that hasn't stopped me ordering the following books at the local bookshop in a new year splurge.

Maurizio DeGiovanni - I Will Have Vengeance
Ruth Dudley Edwards - Corridors of Death
Gordon Ferris - Bitter Water
Robert Gott - The Holiday Murders
Declan Hughes - All the Dead Voices
Marek Krajewski - The End of the World in Breslau
Seth Lynch - Salazar
William McIlvanney - The Papers of Tony Veitch
Ali Monroe - Washington Shadow
Anthony Quinn - Disappeared
Eduardo Sacheri - The Secret in Their Eyes
Roger Smith - Capture
P.D. Viner - The Last Winter of Dani Lancing

Just a couple of days after placing the order I've now read a post over at Col's Criminal Library and I now have five new books on my wish list. 

Wiley Cash - This Dark Road to Mercy
John Florio - Sugar Pop Moon
JW Nelson - Joey's Place
Terry Shames - A Killing at Cotton Hill
Gregory Widen - Blood Makes Noise

I think I'll wait a while before seeking these out though; at least, until I've read a good few of the one's I've already ordered.

Lazy Sunday Service

I've just enjoyed another week of reading Irish crime fiction, working my way through Tana French's Broken Harbour and Benjamin Black's The Silver Swan.  The books are set sixty years apart, but both evoke a certain kind of melancolic Irish landscape.  I hope to post reviews sometime next week.






My posts this week
Is a new house price bubble forming in Dublin and could creating more supply temper price rises?
Review of Dead Lions by Mick Herron
House prices in Dublin might be rising, but we’re a long, long way from a normal market
Books by Irish authors read in 2013
Review of Visitation Street by Ivy Pochoda
This isn't a video game

This isn’t a video game

His eyes fixed on the monitor, Hasker’s fingers tapped at the keyboard.  7,000 miles away the drone locked onto a small encampment, quiet in the early hours. 

‘Target acquired.’

‘Finish the job, son.’

They watched as four missiles landed in quick succession.  Figures stumbled through the wreckage and flames. 

Hasker pushed back his chair.  ‘I can’t do this any longer.’

‘Stay where you are, Hasker.’

‘This isn’t a video game.  Real people just died.’

‘They were terrorists.’

‘They were women and children and I just blew them all to hell.’

‘Which is where they belong.’

‘Which is where we’re going.’





A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.

Review of Visitation Street by Ivy Pochoda (Ecco/Dennis Lehane Books, 2013)

On a hot summer evening, teenagers Val and June decide to have an adventure.  They take a small inflatable pink raft and walk down to the shore in Red Hook in Brooklyn.  First they seek to join an old friend, Monica, who brushes them off, before pushing off into the sea, watched by a young man, Cree.  Early the next morning, Jonathan, a disillusioned music teacher, finds Val under the pier and carries her to a nearby Lebanese grocery run by Fadi.  From there she is whisked to hospital where she claims to have no memory of the night before.  A search is launched for June, but no trace can be found of her.  Over the following weeks a dark cloud hangs over Val, Jonathan, Cree, Monica and Fadi, each of them feeling out of sorts as they come to terms with June’s disappearance and their relationships to each other and the local community.

Most crime novels dwell on the crime itself and how it is solved, with the lead characters being the detectives and/or criminals.  Visitation Street takes a different approach, instead focusing on the friends and community in the aftermath of a crime whilst still moving the story to a resolution.  In so doing, Ivy Pochoda tells a layered tale that has a great sense of place and social depth, dropping the reader into the world of Red Hook and its inhabitants, with keen observations regarding race, class, family, and urban life.  Her characters are very nicely portrayed and their interactions and dialogue realistic.  The plot has a nice cadence, the prose is evocative, and the telling has a strong emotional register, especially a sense of foreboding, without ever slipping into melodrama or psychological suspense.  The result is a thoughtful literary crime novel that also offers an illuminating social commentary on life in a Brooklyn neighbourhood. 

Books by Irish authors read in 2013

Of the 110 books I read and reviewed last year 20 were books by Irish authors, all but two of which were crime fiction.  I think that proportion is a reasonable slice of my overall reading and hope to continue in the same vein this year.  Irish authors are presently producing some really top-notch, engaging and entertaining crime stories  and all the books below are worth a read.

Zugzwang by Ronan Bennett ***
The Third Pig Detective Agency by Bob Burke ***
The Reckoning by Jane Casey ***.5
The Deal by Michael Clifford ***
Screwed by Eoin Colfer ***.5
The Guts by Roddy Doyle ***.5
Graveland by Alan Glynn *****
Echoland by Joe Joyce ***
Little Criminals by Gene Kerrigan *****
The Devil I Know by Claire Kilroy ****
Irregulars by Kevin McCarthy ****.5
Landscape and Society in Contemporary Ireland by Brendan McGrath ***.5
Bogmail by Patrick McGinley ***.5
The Lost by Claire McGowan ***.5
I Hear Sirens in the Street by Adrian McKinty ****
The Polka Dot Girl by Darragh McManus ****
Ratlines by Stuart Neville *****
Crocodile Tears by Mark O'Sullivan ****.5
The City of Strangers by Michael Russell *****
The Twelfth Department by William Ryan ****
Once in Another World Brendan John Sweeney *****

Review of Dead Lions by Mick Herron (2013, Soho Press)

Dickie Bow used to be a bottom-feeding British intelligence agent operating in Berlin in the 1980s.  When he spots one of his old time Russian rivals he decides to shadow him.  Only Dickie never completes the journey, being found dead on a replacement rail bus travelling between Reading and Oxford.  Nobody is suspicious about his death except Jackson Lamb, head of Slough House, a dumping ground for washed up intelligence workers.  An unsent message on Dickie’s phone points to Alexander Popov, a master spy that the British had discounted as a fake profile, and a network of deep sleeping moles.  His interest piqued, Lamb starts to investigate using his team of misfits.  Two of the team, however, have been seconded to help facilitate the recruitment of a Russian billionaire with political ambitions.  Something is not quite right about the operation, but both are looking for a route out of Slough House.  A skilled political operator with a nose for intrigue and deception, Lamb sniffs trouble and soon finds it.

Dead Lions is a modern day spy story set in London and the home counties.  It’s central cast are a handful of misfit intelligence workers who have been reassigned to Slough House for various misdemeanours, some personal (alcoholic, gambler, anger management), some operational (messed up an operation).   They are led by the irascible snide, Jackson Lamb, who after years in intelligence knows where all the bodies are buried and how to play the game.  The plot has two strands -- the death of a former intelligence agent and the possibility of a deep sleeping network of Russian agents being reactivated, and the potential recruitment of a Russian billionaire by British intelligence -- that Herron carefully intersplices, leading to an exciting dénouement.  What separates Dead Lions from other contemporary spy fiction is Herron’s colourful, crafted prose, the use of some interesting narrative devices, such as a cat’s tour of Slough House at the start and a mouse’s at the end, the underlying black humour, and his cast of nonconformist agents.  The characterisation is very nicely penned, as are the engagements between characters.  The plot is engaging and entertaining, but at times felt a little too fanciful.  Dead Lions was a great read and I intend to read the first book in the series, Slow Horses, and to continue to follow the adventures of the Slough House team.

Lazy Sunday Service

My reading for 2014 has got off to a great start.  Both Mick Herron's Dead Lions and Ivy Pochoda's Visitation Street proved to be wonderful reads (reviews this coming week), and I'm now a fair bit into Tana French's Broken Harbour.  If the standard continues in the same vein for the rest of the year it'll be a vintage twelve months (fingers-crossed).  

My posts this week
Review of Frank Sinatra in a Blender by Matthew McBride
December reviews
Best reads of 2013
Around the world in 2013
New to me authors in 2013
All I can hear is the wind, rain and you whispering loudly

All I can hear is the wind, rain and you whispering loudly

‘Len?’ Sally shook a hairy shoulder.

‘Wha-?’

‘Len, did you hear that?’

‘Hear wha-?’

‘That screeching and crash.’

‘All I can hear is the wind, rain and you whispering loudly.’ 

‘I think a tree’s just come down.’

‘And I slept through it?’

‘You’d sleep through a car crash!’

He felt the mattress shift as she left the bed.

‘Len?’

‘What?’

‘A tree has fallen through the garage roof.’

‘What?’

‘I said a ...’

Len tugged the curtain back further.

‘Jesus.  The car!’  He dashed from the room.

‘Just be thankful it didn’t land on the house,’ she called after him.




A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.

New to me authors in 2013

It's always nice to discover new authors and their stories.  Of the 110 books I read in 2013, 67 were by 63 authors that were new to me. I'd be happy to read other books by just about all of them and no doubt will over time. 

Hard Bite by Anonymous-9 (Elaine Ash) *****
Hunting Eichmann by Neal Bascomb ****
Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer *****
Behind the Battle by Ralph Bennett **
Zugzwang by Ronan Bennett ***
The Third Pig Detective Agency by Bob Burke ***
The Reckoning by Jane Casey ***.5
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline *****
Outerborough Blues by Andrew Cotto ****.5
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt ****
The Sea Detective by Mark Douglas-Home *****
The Woman Who Walked into the Sea by Mark Douglas-Home ***
The Perfect Crime by Les Edgerton ***.5
The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye ****
Information: A Very Short Introduction by Luciano Floridi ****
Go With Me by Castle Freeman ****.5
Black Seconds by Karin Fossum ****
A Nail Through the Heart by Tim Hallinan ***
The Third Rail by Michael Harvey **.5
The Big Gold Dream by Chester Himes ***
The Silver Stain by Paul Johnston ****
Echoland by Joe Joyce ***
The Devil I know by Claire Kilroy ****
Tretjak by Max Landorff ***.5
Blood from a Stone by Donna Leon ***
Jade Lady Burning by Martin Limon ****
City of Heretics by Heath Lowrance ***.5
The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter by Malcom Mackay ***
Exposed by Liza Marklund ****
A Death in Bordeaux by Allan Massie ***
Big Data by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier **.5
Frank Sinatra in a Blender by Matthew McBride ***
Black Wattle Creek by Geoffrey McGeachin ***.5
Diggers Rest Hotel by Geoffrey McGeachin ****.5
Bogmail by Patrick McGinley ***.5
The Lost by Claire McGowan ***.5
Landscape and Society in Contemporary Ireland by Brendan McGrath ***.5
Laidlaw by William McIlvanney *****
Norwegian by Night by Derek B Miller ****
Icelight by Aly Monroe ****.5
The Maze of Cadiz by Aly Monroe ***.5
Missing in Rangoon by Christopher G. Moore ***.5
The Spy Who Loved by Clare Mulley ****.5
A Private Business by Barbara Nadel ****
Last Rights by Barbara Nadel ***
Crocodile Tears by Mark O'Sullivan ****.5
Death of a Nationalist by Rachel Pawel ***
Piggyback by Tom Pitts ****.5
Broken Dreams by Nick Quantrill ***
Roll With It by Nick Place ***.5
Hour of the Cat by Peter Quinn ****
Where the Shadows Lie by Michael Ridpath ***
The Murder Farm by Andrea Maria Schenkel ***
The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver ****
Pale Horses by Nate Southard *****
Once in Another World Brendan John Sweeney *****
Beautiful, Naked and Dead by Josh Stallings ****
The Dark Angel by Dominique Sylvain ***
Black Irish by Stephan Talty ***.5
Dresden by Frederick Taylor ****
Ostland by David Thomas *****
Season of the Witch by Arni Thorarinsson **.5
Bed of Nails by Antonin Varenne ****
In Search of Klingsor by Jorgi Volpi ****
The Eye of Jade by Diane Wei Liang ***
Too Big to Know by David Weinberger ***.5
The Low Road by Chris Womersley ****
The Master Switch by Tim Wu ****

Around the world in 2013

I managed to travel virtually to 26 countries during 2013 via the books that I read.  Here's the breakdown, with the full list of titles and links to reviews below.

27: United States
12: Ireland
8: England
5: Australia, Scotland
4: Germany
3: France, Iceland, Italy
2: China, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden
1: Korea, Thailand, Norway, Wales, Greece
12: More than one country (Austria, Burma, Cambodia, England, Germany, Ireland, Laos, Mexico, Poland, Thailand, Ukraine, USA)
3: Fictional
10: Non-fiction

Australia
Black Wattle Creekby Geoffrey McGeachin ***.5
Diggers Rest Hotelby Geoffrey McGeachin ****.5
Roll With It by Nick Place ***.5
The Low Roadby Chris Womersley ****
White Dog by Peter Temple *****

China
A Loyal Character Dancer by Qui Xiaolong ***
The Eye of Jade by Diane Wei Liang ***

England
A Private Business by Barbara Nadel ****
All the Lonely People by Martin Edwards ***.5
Broken Dreams by Nick Quantrill ***
Dead Man's Time by Peter James ***
Icelight by Aly Monroe ****.5
Last Rights by Barbara Nadel ***
The Reckoning by Jane Casey ***.5
The Riot by Laura Wilson ***.5

France
A Death in Bordeaux by Allan Massie ***
Bed of Nails by Antonin Varenne ****
The Dark Angel by Dominique Sylvain ***

Germany
Stettin Station by David Downing ***.5
The Good German by Joseph Kanon ****
The Murder Farm by Andrea Maria Schenkel ***
Tretjak by Max Landorff ***.5

Greece
The Silver Stain by Paul Johnston ****

Iceland
Season of the Witch by Arni Thorarinsson **.5
Strange Shores by Arnaldur Indridason ***
Where the Shadows Lie by Michael Ridpath ***

Ireland
Bogmail by Patrick McGinley ***.5
Crocodile Tears by Mark O'Sullivan ****.5
Echoland by Joe Joyce ***
I Hear Sirens in the Street by Adrian McKinty ****
Irregulars by Kevin McCarthy ****.5
Little Criminals by Gene Kerrigan *****
Once in Another World by Brendan John Sweeney *****
Ratlines by Stuart Neville *****
The Deal by Michael Clifford ***
The Devil I know by Claire Kilroy ****
The Guts by Roddy Doyle ***.5
The Lost by Claire McGowan ***.5

Italy
Blood from a Stone by Donna Leon ***
Liar Moon by Ben Pastor ****
The Dance of the Seagull by Andrea Camilleri ***.5

Korea
Jade Lady Burning by Martin Limon ****

Norway
Norwegian by Night by Derek B Miller ****

Russia
The Twelfth Department by William Ryan ****
Zugzwang by Ronan Bennett ***

Scotland
Laidlaw by William McIlvanney *****
The Barber Surgeon's Hairshirt by Douglas Lindsay ***
The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter by Malcom Mackay ***
The Sea Detective by Mark Douglas-Home *****
The Woman Who Walked into the Sea by Mark Douglas-Home ***

South Africa
Ishmael Toffee by Roger Smith *****
Thirteen Hours by Deon Meyer ****.5

Spain
Death of a Nationalist by Rachel Pawel ***
The Maze of Cadiz by Aly Monroe ***.5

Sweden
Black Seconds by Karin Fossum ****
Exposed by Liza Marklund ****

Thailand
A Nail Through the Heart by Tim Hallinan ***

USA
Beautiful, Naked and Dead by Josh Stallings ****
Black Irish by Stephan Talty ***.5
City of Heretics by Heath Lowrance ***.5
Countdown City by Ben Winters ***.5
Cripple Creek by James Sallis ***.5
Die a Little by Megan Abbott ****
Frank Sinatra in a Blender by Matthew McBride ***
Go With Me by Castle Freeman ****.5
Graveland by Alan Glynn *****
Hard Bite by Anonymous-9 *****
Home Invasion by Patti Abbott *****
Outerborough Blues by Andrew Cotto ****.5
Pale Horses by Nate Southard *****
Penance by Dan O'Shea ****
Piggyback by Tom Pitts ****.5
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline *****
Screwed by Eoin Colfer ***.5
Severance Package by Duane Swiercynski ****.5
The Big Gold Dream by Chester Himes ***
The Devil Doesn't Want Me by Eric Beetner ****.5
The Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley ***.5
The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye ****
The Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse by Victor Gischler ***
The Perfect Crime by Les Edgerton ***.5
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt ****
The Thicket by Joe Lansdale *****
The Third Rail by Michael Harvey **.5

Wales
Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer *****

More than one country
A Man Without Breath by Philip Kerr *** (Germany, Poland)
The City of Strangers by Michael Russell ***** (Ireland, USA)
Down Among the Dead Men by Ed Chatterton **** (England, USA)
Hour of the Cat by Peter Quinn **** (USA, Germany)
In Search of Klingsor by Jorgi Volpi **** (Germany, USA)
Love Songs from a Shallow Grave by Colin Cotterill ***** (Laos, Cambodia)
Missing in Rangoon by Christopher G. Moore ***.5 (Thailand, Burma)
Ostland by David Thomas ***** (Germany, Ukraine)
Six Bad Things by Charlie Huston **** (Mexico, USA)
The Darkling Spy by Edward Wilson ****.5 (England, Germany)
Then We Take Berlin by John Lawton ***.5 (England, Germany)
Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd *** (Austria, England)

Fictional
Snuff by Terry Pratchett **** 
The Third Pig Detective Agency by Bob Burke ***
The Polka Dot Girl by Darragh McManus ****

Non-Fictional
Landscape and Society in Contemporary Ireland by Brendan McGrath ***.5
Hunting Eichmann by Neal Bascomb ****
The Master Switch by Tim Wu ****
Dresden by Frederick Taylor ****
The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver ****
Behind the Battle by Ralph Bennett **
The Spy Who Loved by Clare Mulley ****.5
Big Data by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier **.5
Too Big to Know by David Weinberger ***.5
Information: A Very Short Introduction by Luciano Floridi ****

Best reads of 2013

I read and reviewed 110 books in 2013, way more than the 80 I hoped to read.  As a whole it was a good year of reading and here are my ten favourite fiction books (not all of which were published in 2013).  For full reviews of each book click on the links and to see all 110 reviews click here.

Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer

Witty and smart, with a nice mix of darkness and light, pathos and humour, and a cleverly worked plot.  Patrick Fort is a lovely creation - truthful, logical, obsessive and unintentionally abrasive - and the other characters are fully formed.  The plot is nicely put together, with a couple of very nice twists towards the end of the story.  There isn’t a word out of place, and the story is all tell and no show.  An excellent piece of literary crime fiction.




Hard Bite by Anonymous-9

Original, witty, smart, dark, and hard with a soft-centre.  Elaine Ash (Anonymous-9) writes in very assured and sparkling prose that is all show and no tell, and which swaps between the first person narrative of Dean and the third person of the other characters.  The plot is very nicely put together, and whilst it could have twirled off into a screwball noir, it manages to be darkly comic without descending into farce, and wheels an interesting path through a morally fraught landscape.  Along with good contextualisation, there is also a decent sense of place in both LA and Mexico.  One of the most original crime and enjoyable novels I’ve read in a good while.

The City of Strangers by Michael Russell

A compelling, page-turner police procedural/political thriller that punches all the right buttons - gripping plot, strong characterisation, excellent historical contextualisation, well realised sense of place.  Gillespie is a well penned and engaging lead, with a well developed back story.  He is accompanied by a mix of fictional and real characters who are all alive on the page and whose interactions are nicely observed.  There is a balanced blend of Irish and international politics, supported by some nice historical detail that is informative without swamping the story.  A very fine piece of crime fiction.


Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

There’s very little to fault in Cline’s storytelling or the detailed world he creates, which has a strong sense of plausibility and realism.  The story hooks the reader in and the pages keep turning.  The characterisation is nicely done, the plot is excellent, and the contextualisation is very well realised.  It’s clear that Cline spent a lot of time on the details and it shows - it’s a tale about a bunch of geeks doing geeky stuff that is geeky in its creation.  It was a joy to read given its strong plotting and intertextuality.



Little Criminals by Gene Kerrigan


A cracking read and a lesson in how write all tell and no show, using tight, sparse, expressive prose.  There isn’t a single sentence that doesn’t propel the story forward.  The characterisation is excellent and the plot is tight and gripping, with a series of wonderful scenes and realistic dialogue.  The whole book is wonderfully evocative of Dublin before the crash, colliding together the worlds of criminal gangs and the corporate elite.  An excellent tale, very well told. 



The Sea Detective by Mark Douglas-Home

A hugely enjoyable read, told in an engaging and compelling voice.  An awful lot happens in its 280 pages, but at no point does the story feel overcomplicated or underdeveloped or overly contrived.  The characterisation is excellent and Douglas-Home is particularly good at framing and playing out a scene and the interactions between characters.  There is a strong sense of place throughout, especially with respect to rural, coastal Scotland.  The plotting is, in my view is exceptional, creating a story that hooks the story in and incessantly tugs them along on a gripping, emotional journey. 

Pale Horses by Nate Southard

A country noir of the blackest kind, offset with strong bittersweet undertones.  The story charts the intersections of three principal characters over the course of a murder investigation: an aging sheriff with Alzheimer’s, an unbalanced deputy with a drug habit and a Christina Ricci obsession, and a former marine haunted by his time in Iraq and Afghanistan.  All three characters are very well drawn and developed as the story progresses.  There is a good sense of place and contextualisation concerning small town, rural America, and the plot is compelling, building to a violent but nicely done denouement.  


The Thicket by Joe Lansdale

Set just as oil is being discovered in Texas and the first cars are bumping along unpaved roads, The Thicket is an adventure yarn that is a mix of Tom Sawyer, Stand by Me and True Grit.  The strengths of the tale is its voice, characterisation, sense of place and time, and plot.  The story is told as a form of a reminiscence through a very engaging narrator’s voice that makes it feel as if it’s the transcript of porch-told tale.  The plot is a boys own adventure with a large dose of spice and grit, that is perfectly paced with the right balance of action and reflection, and the reader is placed into the landscape of East Texas in the early twentieth century and its social relations and rhythms.  

Home Invasion by Patti Abbott

Home Invasion follows the trials and tribulations of different generations of a dysfunctional family of grifters over nearly half a century.  Each chapter is set in a different year at a key inflection point in a family history, told through evocative prose and a narrative that perfectly captures the unfolding scenes, the tenuous web of social relations, complex swirl of emotions, and the foreboding that things will never quite work out as desired.  A dark, unsettling, sympathetic and thoughtful tale that never quite extinguishes hope.  



Ostland by David Thomas

A fictionalised account of parts of the career of ‘Dr’ Georg Heuser – his part in solving the famous S-Bahn murders and his role in the murders of thousands of Jews and others in occupied Russia a few months later, and his arrest fourteen years after the end of the war and subsequent trial.  A story that becomes more compelling and disturbing as it progresses, especially as cracks and doubts are added to Heuser’s professional demeanour and the account unsettles what would seem like commonsensical judgements about Heuser’s actions.  A thought-provoking read and whilst the story is quite simply told, it packs a very powerful punch.