Sunday, August 22, 2010

New Reviews: Creed, Forrester, Franklin, Neville, Nickson, Sjowall & Wahloo

Two competitions for August and one is open internationally:
Win one of three sets of Lockdown and Deadlock by Sean Black (Worldwide)
Win one of five copies of Inspector Cataldo's Criminal Summer by Luigi Guicciardi, tr Iain Halliday (UK & Europe)

Here are this week's reviews, which this week include several historical novels:
I review Adam Creed's second outing for DI Staffe, Willing Flesh set in a seedy, modern-day London;

Terry Halligan goes back to the Elizabethan era for James Forrester's debut novel Sacred Treason;

Norman Price travels back to Henry II's time when he reviews Ariana Franklin's, fourth Adelia Aguilar outing, The Assassin's Prayer in which the leads traipse off to Sicily;

Back in modern-day, Laura Root reviews Collusion, Stuart Neville's follow-up to the very well-received The Twelve (apa The Ghosts of Belfast);

Michelle Peckham travels back to eighteenth century Leeds in The Broken Token by Chris Nickson

and Maxine Clarke reviews the penultimate title in the classic Martin Beck series by Sjowall and Wahloo, Cop Killer, tr. Thomas Teal.
Previous reviews can be found in the review archive and forthcoming titles can be found by author or date, here.

4 comments:

Uriah Robinson said...

Terry mentioned that James Forrester is the pen name of Ian Mortimer. If his historical mysteries are as good as The Time Travellers Guide to Medieval England we are in for a real treat.

Maxine Clarke said...

Very nice set of reviews. I liked your review of Willing Flesh, Karen. I had to wait 2 weeks between reading it and writing my review, so I'd forgotten a couple of crucial plot details you mention. Nice piece.

I liked the other reviews too, though I don't think I'd be tempted to read Collusion, on the basis of The Twelve which I read a few months ago.

I must get started on the Arianna Franklin series after reading Norman's great review.

I continue to be so impressed by those Sjowall and Wahloo books - their plotting and the intelligence with which they are written.

Maxine Clarke said...

PS I highly recommend Inspector Cataldo to anyone who wants to enter the competition. I enjoyed it very much indeed.

kathy d. said...

Gosh: So much historical fiction. I'll see if my contemporary brain can go backwards in time.

The covers look particularly good today, many of them showing earlier eras, but quite nicely designed.

I am glad to see comments about "Collusion," which I don't think I'll read nor the first one either.

I am so glad to see a review of another Sjowall/Wahloo book, have read three and am going to read all of them eventually.