Books
Liz Thomson
It’s 25 years this year since Donna Leon introduced us to Commissario Guido Brunetti, a man who in his way has done as much for Venice as Byron and Ruskin or, in our own time, Francesco da Mosto, like Brunetti a glamorous figure absorbed by the history and culture, not to mention the cuisine, of La Serenissima.Earthly Remains is the 26th novel in Leon’s Brunetti series which has become an international phenomenon, garnering crime writing awards from around the world. Sadly for the locals, there is no Italian edition because the author will not allow it, feeling that as an American in Venice ( Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The jacket designs of Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole thrillers don’t muck about. The novelist’s name with its anglicised spelling is branded in eye-catching upper-case yellow, accompanied by the latest sales figures. "Over five million copies sold worldwide" – that was several crime novels ago. It has since gone up in vertical increments: nine million, 18 million, 23 million, 30 million. The current tally on the 11th case for Oslo detective Harry Hole is 33 million.The Thirst arrives four years on from Police, and is sort of a sequel. In Police a series of policemen were killed by gruesome means. As Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
“What’s it like to be a child prodigy?” is a question asked by violinist Min Kym several times in the course of this fascinating, agonising memoir. There’s no simple answer, but this description rings true: “There’s that peculiar sensation of feeling completely normal within yourself, but acutely aware that you are different.”And it’s something you never entirely grow out of. As she says later on, “Talent is a burden you can’t throw off.” Music came to her with ridiculous ease, but other aspects of her life have proved more problematic. The younger of two daughters of a Korean family living Read more ...
David Nice
Anyone who's followed Yrsa's earlier novels, many of them featuring down-to-earth attorney Thora Gudmundsdóttir as heroine, will value her superb evocation of very distinct and haunting parts of Iceland - the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, Heimaey island, the Western Fjords. Sense of place is relatively unimportant in The Legacy, 2014 start to a new series now translated by Victoria Cribb. Sporadic references to the Icelandic way of life and recent history apart, its Reykjavík interiors could be part of any place where child welfare is a priority. The connecting thread in all the writer's work is her Read more ...