Flawed, but oh so readable!The novel describes an improbable romp through north-east Siberia, by way of rarefied Oxford University, remote British Columbia, and Tokyo. Our hero is super-linguist and multiculturalist Johnny Porter (aka Raven aka Jean-Baptiste Porteur), a native of the Canadian Git...
This is my third time reading The Chelsea Murders, and this time I actually remembered which of them was the killer about halfway through. I don't think there's a murder mystery out there that I've ever enjoyed quite as much, certainly not of the classic English variety which this both is and sen...
53 years ago in 1960 Lionel Davidson was 38 years old when he wrote his debut novel, Night of Wenceslas winning the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award. The politics of the world have changed over the past 53 years but Davidson’s novel stands the test of time and rarely sounds outdated. T...
'Beyond question the book of the year.' Spectator Chaim Weizmann was a great man, one of the founders of modern Israel. He was also a chemist of international repute. His work in the thirties led him to a cheap way of synthesising oil. But politics took over and it seemed Weizmann had died witho...
This wouldn’t do, of course. I detached and deep-breathed, as advised, and it did the trick. No A.6. No sweaty nightmare blankets, either, though. Just mustiness, carpet mustiness. I’d passed out, then. Only where? And who was being sick? Somebody was being sick. Was it me being sick? No, it was ...
Just so the film party must have come on it for the first time, nearly a year before; and just so the acute camera eye of Kelly had recorded it for him. Two thousand feet below the fluted gold canopies swam in the rising currents of air; the monastery glistened on its seven toy terraces like the ...
The case was not locked; he went through it carefully and then moved across to the wardrobe and went through the stuff there. He ran his hands over the top and bent and peered underneath. When he straightened up, I shut my eyes again. I thought he’d be trying the bed next, under the pillow, the m...