Strip Jack by Ian Rankin
On a balmy summer night in Edinburgh, the filth razes an illicit brothel in a well-to-do area. Johns and working girls alike are piled into the back of a police car to be given a fine and a stern talking to, with one exception. One of the men coming out of the building is MP Gregor Jack. He is well-liked by his constituents and respected by his peers, but the press are waiting outside and he is proverbially, if not literally, caught with his pants […]
The Treatment by Mo Hayder
Crime fiction is an odd thing. Visit your average thriller-horror-Facebook group and you’ll regularly find people looking for books that portray the extremes of human behaviour. “The sicker the better”, as they put it. Weirdly, The Treatment by Mo Hayder is not one that pops up very often – possibly because it’s about 20 years old – but in all honesty, this book is intense. We didn’t believe in Trigger Warnings in 2022 but this book could do with a couple of them. On a […]
City of Lies by Alafair Burke
New York, 2010-ish. A woman runs down the street in the pouring rain and stops at a payphone to make a 911 call. She tells them a murder has been committed. A man has been shot in the luxury penthouse that belongs to a wealthy investor. The police try to trace the call but the woman is long gone by the time they reach the pay phone. Months later, college student Megan Gunther is brutally slain after being stalked online. Detective Ellie Hatcher is convinced […]
Birdman by Mo Hayder
Weirdly enough, Goodreads gave me Calvin and Hobbes in their other-readers-also-enjoyed-selection. And I get it. There is never a bad time for Calvin and Hobbes, but I definitely need some eye bleach after this one. London, 1999. During construction work on an empty lot, the dead body of a woman is found. Her body is severely decomposed and it takes the police a while to identify her. More bodies are found. They all belong to strippers, prostitutes, drug addicts – people who are loved by […]
NOS4A2 by Joe Hill
It’s the mid eighties, the land of Stranger Things nostalgia, and eight year old Victoria ‘Vic’ McQueen (aka The Brat) has just discovered something interesting: if she hops on her bike and cycles through to a certain spot in the woods by the river, a magic bridge will appear. Whenever something has been lost all Vic has to do is cross the bridge and she will end up where the lost object is. But something else is lost as well: across the country, young children […]
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Thirtysomething Nora Seed has failed at everything in life. None of the careers she’d envisioned for herself have panned out. Her relationships have faltered and fizzled out. Her cat has died. Her brother is no longer speaking to her. Shortly before midnight she decides to end her life but instead of heaven or hell, Nora finds herself in a large library, where it’s midnight forever and every book offers a look into what-if: what if Nora had kept up her rigorous swimming training? What if […]
