Book Reviews Archive

The basic facts of Arthur Conan Doyle's life are pretty well known by now, from the creation of Sherlock Holmes to his obsession with spiritualism. Russell Miller's biography helps to link these different aspects of the man into a cohesive whole. ...

This double-review takes a look at Burial, the new novel from author Neil Cross, and compares it to Always The Sun, an earlier novel by the same author—especially in terms of the way Cross uses suspense and horror conventions in the two books. ...

CB Editions have produced another gem in Lichtenberg and the Little Flower Girl, the final novel from German author Gert Hofmann. The story of a love affair between Georg Christoph Lichtenberg and Maria Stechard has been translated by the author's son Michael Hofmann, who also contributes an afterword. ...

The Maze of Cadiz, the debut novel from Aly Monroe, is a wartime thriller set in Spain and introducing "economic warfare" agent Peter Cotton. The first of a planned series of novels, it's a flawed but engaging story that's low on thrills but showcases its author's eye for character and setting. ...

In Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain, a debut collection of short stories from Kirsten Menger-Anderson, the author uses compact, unsettling prose to follow the strains of madness and obsession across a dozen generations of American doctors. ...

Salon and New York Times critic Louis Bayard has spent the last few years carving out a niche for himself as a writer of historical crime stories featuring real-life individuals and characters from classic fiction. In The Black Tower, he turns his attention to the French Restoration and the exploits of Eugène François Vidocq. ...

Whether you're self-publishing, looking for your first publisher, or simply curious to find out more about how the industry works, it's worth finding a decent book on the subject. One of the most respected is Inside Book Publishing, by Giles Clark and Angus Phillips. A key text on several publishing courses, it's also a readable and comprehensive introduction to the industry, whatever your interest in the subject. ...

In The Minutes of the Lazarus Club, archaeologist and TV presenter Tony Pollard tells a story of murder and espionage in nineteenth-century London. The supporting cast is drawn from famous figures of the day, with Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Florence Nightingale, and even Charles Darwin putting in appearances. Pollard's credentials as a historian are solid, but how well does he fare when he brings the historical elements into a work of fiction? ...

In The Lazarus Project, Aleksandar Hemon begins to write about the controversial killing of Lazarus Averbuch in 1908 Chicago, but soon goes off course with the story of a self-absorbed author and a purposeless road trip across the Balkans. ...

In The Cellist of Sarajevo, Canadian author Steven Galloway follows the lives of a handful of citizens of the besieged Bosnian city, tying them together with the story of a sniper charged with protecting the life of an enigmatic cellist who plays adagios for the victims of a recent shelling. ...

In Origins, Lebanese author Amin Maalouf investigates the way his family evolved through the turbulent twentieth century. Along the way, he visits his hometown in Lebanon, as well as Cuba, and looks at how the changes of the last century affected his family, and how they tried to change their homeland. ...

Andrew Davidson's debut novel, The Gargoyle, begins with a car accident that leaves its narrator, an unnamed, cocaine-addled pornographer, hospitalised in the burn ward. While he's recovering in the hospital he's visited by the mysterious Marianne Engel, who greets him with the enigmatic words, "You've been burned... again," and proceeds to soothe him with tales of previous lives and lost loves. What follow is a skin-deep tale of redemption and disfiguring burns. ...

24 for 3, by Jennie Walker (aka the poet and publisher Charles Boyle), is a terrific little book about love, life, and cricket, and it has an interesting story behind it. ...

In The Boat, debut author Nam Le tries to prove that a writer needn't be bound by his own personal experiences. Instead, this collection of short stories serves as a reminder of the importance of experience, and the dangers of over-edited prose. ...

In Fieldwork, Mischa Berlinkski travels to Thailand and brings back a story of friction between anthropologists and missionaries. ...

The Mind's Eye, the first novel in Håkan Nesser's Inspector Van Veeteren series, opens with the classic "amnesia and corpse" combination. ...

Semi Invisible Man is a biography of Norman Lewis, author of Naples '44, The Honoured Society, and many other travel books and novels. It's a great opportunity to rediscover an often overlooked author. ...

In City of Thieves, screenwriter and author David Benioff spins a yarn set during the siege of Leningrad. It's an involving and well-told adventure, but it suffers from a distracting and unnecessarily gimmicky framing device. ...

In The Creator's Map, Spanish author Emilio Calderon combines a wartime thriller with guidebook pedantry. ...

The Widow's Secret by Brian Thompson, introduces readers to new sleuth Bella Wallis, a writer of Victorian sensation novels who skewers her quarries with damning prose. ...