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American crime fiction Australian crime fiction.
Brian Stoddart Chris Nickson Christopher Fowler   Cosy Crime
Derek Raymond   Dorothy L Sayers
English crime fiction   English noir
Gary Donnelly   Harlan Coben     IRish crime fiction
James Lee Burke   James Oswald   Jim Kelly
Jo Spain John Connolly   John Lawton
Jonathan Kellerman   London   Mark Billingham
MJ Trow   Murder   Nick Oldham   Peter Bartram
Peter Laws Peter Lovesey
Peter Temple Phil Rickman   Philip Kerr
Police Procedural Psycholgical thriller
Rob Parker    Scottish crime fiction Southern Noir
Stacey Halls Ted Lewis True crime
Val Mcdermid    Victorian WW1 WW2

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To hell with raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens –
these are a few of MY favourite things –

THE AMERICAN SUSPECT . . . Between the covers

Jim Kelly’s wartime detective DI Eden Brooke returns in this elegant Cambridge mystery. It is autumn 1942, and the Americans are, once again, ‘Over There’. ‘There’, in this case, is the former British airfield of Dodswell, which is being extended to cope with a new batch of P51 Mustang fighter-bombers. The reconstruction has been briefly paused by the discovery of a human skeleton, which turns out to be that of an RFC pilot, believed to have been killed in a crash in 1917. But what were his remains doing casually buried beside the runway when he appears to have a proper grave, with headstone, in a nearby churchyard?

When an elderly woman, Ede Curtin, living in the village of Dodswell, dies in suspicious circumstances, a macabre coincidence emerges. Beside the dead woman’s bedside is a framed photograph of the pilots of RFC Dodswell, 1917. And there, fifteenth from the left, on the second row, is the man whose remains were disturbed by the excavations on the present day airfield. When Molly Curtin, daughter of the dead woman is herself found lifeless in Dodswell church, suspicion falls on Eliga, her boyfriend, a black soldier working with a US construction battalion. The evidence against him persuades a military court to sentence himself to death, and he he is sent to the prison in Shepton Mallet, to await the ministrations of Albert Pierrepoint (who enters the narrative as himself).

Brooke has other distractions. The apparently random and aimless disappearance of cats from one of Cambridge’s poorest areas triggers an investigation into a hugely lucrative smuggling operation involving crooked London dockers and corrupt US service personnel. One of the most vivid parts of the book is when Brooke, in pursuit of the catkillers, experiences a terrifying air-raid involving incendiary bombs.

Jim Kelly is a diamond of an author, and his gem has many facets, all of which sparkle. He has a deep sense of the past, and how it lives on. To quote William Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It isn’t even past.” Here, the mysterious death of the WW1 airman resonates powerfully in 1942 Cambridge. Kelly’s awareness of the power and importance of place is ever present. With Phil Rickman dead and gone, Kelly is now the unrivaled master of making suburban streets, bleak fens, misty fields and deeply flowing rivers potent elements within the overall narrative. Above all, perhaps, is his compassion for ordinary people, and his perceptive portrayal of the daily grind, the small struggles, the petty sleights and the tiny triumphs that characterise their lives.

Jim Kelly lives relatively local to me, and he once gave a talk at our town library, He revealed that his father had been a London police officer involved in the investigation into the awful events that occurred at 10 Rillington Place. In this book, Brooke is clearly no admirer of Albert Pierrepoint nor of the job he was paid to do. I wonder if this was because of the execution of Timothy Evans, for the murder of his duaghter? Some accounts say that Evans was innocent, and that his hanging is a potent argument against capital punishment. More recent books, such as Kate Summerscale’s The Peepshow, suggest that Evans was not the wide-eyed simpleton portrayed in popular media. Pierrepoint pulled the lever that sent both Evans and the undoubted killer John Reginald Halliday Christie to their deaths, but was he the heartless functionary portrayed in this book? I am not sure.

Eden Brooke has his own crosses to bear. His WW1 war wounds still cause him grief, and the young men in his family are all away ‘doing their bit’ and in imminent danger. I will not spoil your enjoyment of this superb novel by giving too much away, but once again Jim Kelly is at the top of his game with this cleverly crafted, thoughtful and immersive mystery. The novel is published by Allison and Busby, and is out now. For further details on American servicemen executed at Shepton Mallet, click this link.

My reviews of the earlier books in the series are here.

March 19, 2026 0

REAPER . . . Between the covers

New Zealand’s long standing Queen of Crime is, of course, Ngaio Marsh, but her trademark Inspector Alleyn novels were mostly set in England, apart from four where Alleyn is seconded to New Zealand. Vanda Symon, in contrast, sets her novels resolutely ‘at home’. I thoroughly enjoyed Prey (2024) which was set in Dunedin.

Here, Symon takes us the the capital city. We quickly learn that Max Grimes is a former Auckland police officer, now living rough, but with a day job as a cleaner. The circumstances surrounding his apparent downfall unfold as the story progresses. The titular Reaper has decided that his life mission is to rid the city streets of those he views as bottom feeders – the vagrants, the alcoholics, and vulnerable people who live in shop doorways and empty properties. People like Max, then? Well, perhaps not. Vanda Symon’s first task is to convince us that Max is tough and resilient enough – despite his reduced circumstances – to tackle a serial killer.

Homeless sleuths need some form of contact with and co-operation with the regular police, and for Max Grimes, this comes in the shape of DS Meredith Peters, an astute and resourceful officer, but one acutely aware of the residual misogyny not just in the police force, but in city politics.There is a parallel plot. Experienced readers know that these lines often converge, but for now, here it is: we learn that Max’s daughter was murdered by her drug-addled boyfriend, who subsequently took his own life. When Shane McFarlane, the boy’s father, approaches Max and asks him to trace the dealer whose product effectively killed both of their children, Max’s initial reaction is repulsion and a rude refusal. Later, he reconsiders, and agrees to help.

The Reaper is given sporadic third person narratives to himself, so we know exactly what he is up to, well before Max and the police do. He shoots dead a former chemistry teacher and successful crystal meth cook named Gary Cochrane, and it is Cochrane who pulls the two parallel plot lines together, much to the detriment of Max Grimes, who has had a bruising recent encounter with Cochrane in his search for the dealer who has caused him so much pain.

Vanda Symon cleverly emphasises Grimes’s physical vulnerability here, as she realises that a Reacher-like superhero is an unlikely fit for her man. I did wonder, however, about Max having a constantly charged and fully paid-up smartphone, despite his abject poverty, but hey ho, it’s crime fiction. When Max is framed for the shooting of Cochrane and arrested, at least he has a roof over his head but, mentally, he is in a very dark place.

The idea of a homeless solver of crimes is certainly not new. Trevor Wood introduced to his sleuth Jimmy Mullen in The Man on the Street, and followed up with One Way Street and Dead End Street. Is the concept plausible? Probably not, but then this particular reviewer must constantly remind himself that he is dealing with crime fiction. Readers want to be absorbed, intrigued and entertained; Vanda Symon emphatically ticks all three boxes. She has given us an ingenious plot which leads to a (literally) searing finale. Reaper is published by Orenda books and is available now.

March 11, 2026 1

THE DANGEROUS STRANGER . . . Between the covers

This is the latest outing for British CriFi’s most unlikely partnership – Wilkins and Wilkins. Detective Inspector Ryan, of that kin is scruffy and, to be blunt, dresses and talks like a chav (remember them?) His partner Ray is Nigerian – London, handsome, public school educated, urbane and, before he was paired with Ryan, a rising star of Thames Valley police. They are based on Oxford. The book begins, however, in London, where an ageing criminal, known, as Dogs, is hunted down by a violent former associate called Head Hunter, and forced to take on another job.

An emergency call sends the Ws out to a budget hotel, now housing asylum seekers. An angry mob of locals, incensed by the recent murder of a local girl by an apparent immigrant, is laying siege to the property and, amid the chaos, a young African man is murdered while trying to escape the hotel. What this has to do with the events in London remains to be seen. To add to the already fraught relationship between Ryan and Ray, the Superintendent attaches a young Detective Constable, William Huber to the Ws team. He is unlikely to gel with Ryan, as William is a ‘posh boy’, enthusiastic, earnest and plummy of voice. The Ws have home lives that seem different, but neither resembles any kind of utopia. Ray is, as they say, ‘happily’ married, but life with wife Diane and their twin sons is frequently fractious. She is a professional woman, and is determined that Ray do more than his hair share of parenting, in spite of his unpredictable working hours. Ryan lives alone in a seedy rented flat, while his four year old son is brought up by his sister. He tries to be a good dad but, again, his job and what it sucks out of him, make him an imperfect father.

As the case progresses, it transpires that the man killed in the hotel protest may have been a wealthy and well connected French citizen but, clearly some things simply do not add up. The case takes a grim turn when a twelve year-old boy who attended the riot with his father is found to have concealed a knife and an empty canister under his bed. Hidden with them is his mobile ‘phone, on which is a video of the burning man. The two big questions are: what was the Frenchman doing in the asylum hotel, and what became of the migrant for whom he was mistaken? Further grit is thrown into than less than well-oiled mechanism of the investigative team by the arrival of a prominent French police officer to “help” with enquiries. As the story progresses, Simon Mason leaks clues into the narrative, a drop or two at a team, as to the connection between Oxford and the world of Dogs and Head Hunter.

Mason endows Dogs with a noirish quality as if he had just walked in from the streets of one of Derek Raymond’s ‘Factory’ novels.

“Really, he was only happy in London. Old Rotherhithe, those shabby, mean places of his youth.He was shabby and mean himself and always would be, thank God. All his life he’d lived in the weeds; he resented it and loved it, they were his weeds. It was the way he was made.”

Ray has his demons, but on Ryan’s back is the terrifying specter of his abusive father, now a broken man in an ex-offender’s institution.

“He thought of the person his father had become, a pathetic figure, shrunk and feeble, sick-looking, an animal that needs putting down.But buried very deep in Ryan, like a disgusting secret, was something he didn’t understand and couldn’t bear to think about: he was still frightened of this person.”

The joy of crime fiction is that its best writers make us believe in the improbable. Mason presents us with Ryan Wilkins, in his scuffed trainers and awful trackies, forever twitching with facial tics caused by God knows what family history. He is off the social scale in terms of lifestyle. His clapped-out Peugeot is always on the cusp of breakdown, and how he maintains the trust of his little son is little short of miraculous. And yet, and yet. He has instincts and insights that his more ‘civilised’ partner Ray can only dream of. I don’t want this series to end but, going forward, could Ryan ever mature into a seasoned institutional copper. What would he be like aged 50? Thankfully, that is a conundrum to which I will not have to provide a solution. The Dangerous Stranger is an absolute peach of a crime novel, and will be be published by Quercus on 12th February.

For my thoughts on previous Ryan Wilkins mysteries, click this link.

March 10, 2026 0

DEAD HEAT . . . Between the covers

For Matt Grimshaw, everything has suddenly become rather ‘former’. Thanks to being sacked by his long-term employer, he is now a former journalist, and Takara is now his former lover, he having discovered her cavorting with a colleague in his London flat. Adam and Celia, a well-off media couple, are still his friends, however, and they have given him the key to the cottage next to their villa on the Mani Peninsula, part of the ancient kingdom of Sparta.

Matt spends a few days on his own there before Adam, Celia, their teenage daughter Lydia and her friend Jasmine arrive. Adam is disconcerted that across the bay a former abandoned folly, Arcadia, has been converted into a luxury compound by a tech billionaire called Reynash de Souza. The problem is that Adam and de Souza have, as they say, history. When de Souza throws a party for all the neighbourhood, what Dylan called ‘a simple twist of fate’ intervenes and turns the azure Aegean into something far, far darker.

In the background is a missing person, a man called Marc Ashley, a guest at de Souza’s Arcadia. One morning, he set out for a run and never came back. His sister Sarah is desperately trying to find him by a leafleting campaign and organising volunteer search parties.At the heart of the story is the relationship between Matt and Adam. Matt is a talented writer, but insecure and, perhaps, too sensitive to the needs of others. His emotional antennae are fine-wired, but to his own detrimental. Adam is, to use the old word, a cad. Charming, persuasive, charismatic even, he uses people. One such is a young woman called Amira, a former intern at Adam’s production company. He seduced her and is subsequently horrified when she turns up at de Souza’s mansion. She blackmails him, and Matt, ever loyal, agrees to be part of the deception involving a pay-off that will deceive Celia.

The book begins with one of those enigmatic prologues, date stamped well after the events of the main story. A man sits in a Greek court, watching a prisoner being sentenced. Sabine Durrant drops a fairly hefty hint that the observer is Matt Grimshaw, but who is the convicted man? Sabine Durrant not only deftly recreates the enervating physical climate, but makes us sweat in the oppressive emotional climate created by infidelity, old sins returning to haunt the perpetrator, and dangerous atmosphere caused by money mixed with power. Dead Heat is an immersive mystery beautifully woven with the threads of cruelty, revenge and deceit. It will be published by Century on 12th March.

March 9, 2026 0

IF A FACE COULD KILL . . . Between the covers

Brigid Quinn is a former FBI agent. She and her husband Carlo have retired to the rural community of Catalina in Arizona. At the end of their street is a property used by the authorities to house paroled offenders, one whom is a woman called Nicki, who went down for manslaughter after killing her abusive husband. The book begins with a botched burglary at this group house, which ends when the hapless was shot dead by a SWAT team after they were alerted by a 911 call from Nicki.After she retired from the FBI Brigid volunteered at Desert Doves, a refuge for victims of domestic violence, which is where she met the traumatised Nicki Gleason. There, she taught Nicki the basics of self defence, and it was that knowledge which resulted in jury foreman stating:

“We find Nicole Gleason guilty of one count of involuntary manslaughter, your Honor.”

One of Brigid’s neighbours, an unpleasant busybody called Dorita, is organising a petition to have the occupants housed elsewhere. Dorita is as unpleasant looking as her behaviour is ugly:

“It struck me that her large face wasn’t so much like the Red Queen’s as like a painting of Martin Luther..”

Dorita and Brigid are destined not to get on well together, but the neighbourhood spat ends violently when Dorita is found dead in her garden. It seems as though she has been held down in a barbecue fire pit. Face down. The result is graphically not pretty, but then there are few beautiful people in this novel.
This is Nikki’s probation officer/mentor:

“She was the ugliest butterfly you’d ever seen, startlingly ugly. She didn’t have a moustache, but it wouldn’t have surprised me.A long, gaunt face with uncooked dumplings under her eyes to make up for the lack of flesh elsewhere. Her lipstick appeared to be a gallant attempt at redeeming her face, but even that failed as the shade contrasted severely with the colors in her top. An overbite. That was my three-second observation, but I don’t think I’m missing anything.”

For those who enjoy such things, we witness the exquisitely grisly autopsy on poor Dorita Gordano. She was killed by blunt force trauma to the face, and a gasoline soaked plug of rag was forced into her throat. The facial burning was clearly post mortem, and some kind of statement. But of what, and by whom? Neither does Becky Masterman spare us the details of what a vile specimen Nicki’s husband was. Vincent was obsessed with video games to the extent that one afternoon, anxious to get to his games console, he left daughter Ramona strapped into her car seat one blazing Arizona afternoon. He was also casually brutal about where he stubbed out his cigarettes. There is, obviously, a broader moral argument about whether such men deserve to be killed with a two litre vodka bottle, but this book is crime fiction, not a philosophical treatise, so we can roll with it.

After some humming and hahing, the local police, led by Sheriff Max Coyote, a former friend of Brigid’s (they have fallen out, big time) decide that Nicki is a person of interest in the murder of Dorita Gordano. The pathologist believes that the initial injuries to Dorita’s face were caused by a large concrete block, and in the garden of the group house is a recently built wall. And one of the concrete blocks bears blood traces.

Masterman’s prose is as sharp as tacks. Sometimes, American CriFi can be too slick, too polished, and too predictable. Quinn’s observations are frequently acerbic, and scatter broken glass for us to tread on. Here, she catches the over-effusive Eleanore Turner in an unguarded moment.

“She looked like hell. She tried to sit up straighter and force the corners of her mouth into her standard smile, but the corners twitched with the effort, like those of a politician being asked the one question they could not answer. None of it worked. She was smaller than I’d seen her in our last several encounters, some giant thumb pressing down on her for too long, and she could no longer resist.”

The action accelerates. First, someone firebombs the group home, and one of the residents, a young man called Jackson is killed in the resultant explosion. Then, a local Home Owners Association meeting is called and, despite Max Coyote trying to reassure residents, the mood turns ugly. Brigid’s rather strange niece Gemma Kate is attacked as she sits watching a horror movie in a theatre where she and her attacker are the only customers.

There is a narrative shift late in the book. Hitherto, everything we have read is through the eyes of Brigid. Then, quite abruptly, we have a chapter describing the thoughts of Nicki Gleason, followed by those of Eleanore, abducted and imprisoned in a locked casita. Becky Masterman ends the novel with horror and violence, but also redemption. It is certainly a visceral read. If a Face Could Kill will be published by Severn House on 3rd March.

March 1, 2026 0

SHARKS . . . Between the covers

In April 2024 I reviewed The Kitchen (same author, same central character) and I was impressed. If you click the title, you can read why. Now, Hamburg prosecutor Chastity Riley returns, and we are wading through gore from page one, as Fraulein Riley views the bodies of an elderly American couple – Walt and Lorraine Tucker – in their run-down villa in the suburb of Wilhemsburg. The book blurb describes the district as troubled, while an AI response on Google says it is “no longer considered “rough” in the sense of being dangerous, but rather in the sense of being an “up-and-coming” edgy, urban, and authentic district”. I think I trust Simone Buchholz rather than corporate PR-speak.

“All I see is a muddle of ghetto and nature. I see run down tower blocks, gloomy pubs, grey streets, and growing right next to them are birch birch trees and willows and rose bushes. Sometimes there’s a little canal or a meadow.There are even old farms a bit further from the S-Bahn tracks. I get the idea things could be really nice here. But it doesn’t work.The problem is this part of town has problems and its emotional core is dreariness.There’s no new dawn in the air.There’s a rot, a lack of prospects. Abandon hope all ye who enter here. Flee while you have the chance. And the only people who come here are those who can’t afford anything else, or not anymore. People don’t look like they’re here of their own free will.”

Near the Tuckers’ house is the Rote Flora, something of a Hamburg institution. A former theatre, it has been occupied since 1989 by alternative-lifestyle squatters, and some of them tell Chastity that Tucker hated them with a vengeance, and never lost an opportunity to be offensive towards them.Genuine Noir is about despair. It is about people living on the edge. Here, Chastity’s old chum, Haller, describes a woman he has met while (unofficially) investigating the Tucker murders.

“She told me that since her husband died, she’s been going for walks. For seven years, she’s been walking 16, 18, 20 hours a day. She only goes home to sleep. But she says she doesn’t sleep all that much anymore. Sometimes she doesn’t sleep at all. She thinks she’ll die sooner if she stops going for walks and starts sleeping. When she said that, I thought, she’s sly. She’s running away from death.”

It is through this little old lady that the break comes. On one of her endless walks she spotted two men leaving the Tucker house and driving away in an old Ford Taunus, a gold one. Presented with, first, a photofit, and then a subsequent ID parade, she picks out two ‘guns for hire’ called Caltzo and Rubsch. But who has done the hiring?

Commenting on the style of a translated novel is something of a leap of faith, but we have to trust Rachel Ward. Buchholz punches the narrative forward with short sentences, often containing fewer than a dozen words. Even when Chastity is thinking about her past, pondering ‘what ifs’ or speculating on the future, there is still a powerful sense of immediacy, and the forward movement barely falters. A word of advice. Unless you are German speaker, or know Hamburg, you will need your ‘phone at hand, and Google primed to go. Buchholz peppers the narrative with Hamburg cultural references. For example, Chastity meets her former colleague, the recently retired Haller, in a bar called The Haifisch. Apparently, ‘Haifisch’ was a hit for the German band Rammstein, but it also translates as ‘shark’.

Buchholz keeps the mood relentlessly downbeat. Riley’s BFF Carla has to have a termination. They go together to the clinic and, waiting outside while Carla recovers, Riley observes the day:

“The sky has spread over the city like a blanket, or maybe like a lid. In Hamburg, you can never be certain what the day is going to make of it. Sometimes a low-hanging sky like that seems almost comforting, loving, lulling. And sometimes it just eats everything up. The only thing you can be sure of is that it’s not lightening up again today.”

I am not sure if Noir novels can sparkle, but this one does – with snappy dialogue, vivid locations – and a brilliant solution to the murder. Sharks is published by Orenda Books and is out now.

February 25, 2026 1

THE LOST WOMEN . . . Between the covers

The latest David Raker thriller from Tim Weaver is true to form. Raker, a widowed former journalist, is an expert finder of missing persons, and the author’s speciality is setting up situations where the impossible has occurred – and then, eventually, presenting us with an explanation that fits, rather like in that classic crime fiction staple, the locked room mystery.

Here, the first mystery is what to make of the two apparently unrelated plot strands. First, we are told of the unexplained disappearance, almost two decades earlier, of a trio of women film makers who vanished while working on a story about Porthtreno, an abandoned Cornish village. More immediately, Raker is hired by a wealthy actress, Ellie Snyder to find out how and why her husband has disappeared from an exclusive private clinic where he was undergoing cosmetic surgery.

Both Raker and his assistant, ex Met Copper Colm Healy labour under the shadow of personal grief; Raker for his wife Derryn, taken by cancer, and Healy for his daughter Leanne, slain by a serial killer. Readers familiar with Tim Weaver’s style have come to expect seemingly unconnected and unexplained changes in narrative. Here, on page 125 of 437, after a second-by-second account of Raker and Healy investigating the disappearance of Preston Stewart, we are introduced, seemingly out of nowhere, to Zauna and Marco. Who they? You might well ask, but you will just have to strap in and wait for all to be revealed. This, of, course is the essential segue between the abducted surgeon to the missing women of Cornwall. Is it clunky? Yes. But does it work? Affirmative, likewise. The clincher comes when Raker and Healy are searching Preston Stewart’s house and they find a book, and a link to a YouTube video, both called The Lost Women of Porthtreno.

Central to the plot is a jailed serial killer known as Dr Glass.”It was in that forest, out in east London, that six women had been found in clear plastic coffins filled with liquid formaldehyde. A seventh had been found in a wall cavity nearby, and Glass had kept all of them hidden in a disused sewer network 30 feet under the earth.” Along the way, we also learn that on one drunken occasion, out of nowhere, Preston Stewart had confessed to Ellie that he had been involved in a murder, back in his student days in Bristol. We also know that the mysterious Marco, also a student in Bristol, went missing, never to be found. And one of the Porthtreno film makers was …. wait for it …. His sister Zauna.

A policeman who has been involved in the case sums up everything that is implausible about David Raker, and yet he also puts his finger on why the books are best sellers.

“From what I know about you, from what I’ve seen myself, you’re smart, intuitive, and I genuinely believe you’re a good man. But you’re out of touch. It’s been a long time since you worked within any kind of structure, and when the only person you have ever had to be accountable to is yourself, you forget what it’s like in the real world.”

Yes, Raker’s adventures can sometimes verge on comic strip implausibility, but, in the end, this is why we love crime fiction.Tim Weaver goes to the cupboard where crime fiction tropes are stored, and he leaves very few hanging on their pegs. We have corrupt cops, a serial killer with an astonishing ability to create murderous conspiracies from within his jail cell, drugged coffee, devastating explosions triggered by mobile ‘phones, private investigators hired by clients who are actually the principal villains and, last but not least, a central character physically immune to knives, choke holds and high explosives. The Lost Women is, however, a superb thriller, full of twists, turns, red herrings, and great dialogue. It will be published by Michael Joseph on 26th February.

February 24, 2026 0

TOMBSTONING . . . Between the covers

“Dazzling debut” has the tawdry connotations of tabloid alliteration, but sometimes clichés earn their keep. In 2006 we were in the high summer of New Labour but with Gordon Brown scheming away to get the top job, Arsenal moved from Highbury to The Emirates, and Doug Johnstone’s first novel ‘Tombstoning’ was published by Penguin. Successful and highly regarded at the time, it is now republished in a twentieth anniversary edition by Orenda Books.

The best books have central characters we care about, and Johnstone did this in spades. David Lindsay and Nicola Cruikshank were at school together in Arbroath, she a glacial beauty, he a skinny and rather clumsy lad too self-conscious to ask her out. Their final school days were shadowed by tragedy – a fellow school chum called Colin died after plunging from a cliff. Now, fifteen years on, Nicola has been asked by an alumni group to help organise a reunion, and she emails David, finding him on the website of his employer – a struggling web design firm in Edinburgh. Fatefully, David is persuaded by Nicola to rendezvous at the reunion in Arbroath, where he meets one of his former teachers in the pub after a dismally skill-free, but entertaining Third Division football match (Arbroath 1 – Montrose 1)

Mr Bowman reveals that far from being forgotten, Colin Anderson has been adopted by some local teenage boys as a macabre folk hero, and they have taken up the suicidal practice of jumping off the cliffs at high tide in honour of their hero. The activity is known, with bizarre irony, as Tombstoning but, thus far, no-one has died. Doug Johnstone was not the first (nor will he be the last) writer to explore the trope of the school or college reunion. The potential is for old jealousies to surface, historic slights to become even more barbed as the years have gone by, and it becomes probable that teenage rivalries can be revived by men and women now in their thirties, and much more capable of inflicting damage. So it is here.

The ghost of Colin Anderson is, like that if Banquo, the spectre at the feast, and it is not long before things begin to unravel.The mood darkens dramatically, when David receives the news that Gary Spink, an old chum with whom he had gone to the football match, has been found at the foot of the Arbroath cliffs. He and Nicola had been the last people to see him after the three of them had been thrown out of the nightclub hosting the school reunion.

About the half way mark, Johnstone introduces another figure from David’s past – Neil Corrigan. He had been the fourth member of the teenage quartet at school. Now, Colin and Gary are dead, but what became of Neil? Not as bright as his three pals, he was, however, powerfully built and aggressive. He seemed a perfect fit for the Royal Marines, but after serving in the Gulf War, he left to become a policeman. But now? Who Knows? Rumour has it that he has been seen in Arbroath.

Johnstone was brought up in Arbroath, and he describes his home town with affection, but doesn’t spare us the reality of the rather run-down former fishing port and the rusting hulks of trawlers decaying in its harbour. More potently, he describes the human tensions and sense of unease between locals who were never bright or ambitious enough to move away, and former friends like David and Nicola who have seen something of the world outside.

My only quibble with this book is a slight one, and it lies with the introduction, which seems to suggest that the novel is Tartan Noir. Noir, Tartan or otherwise suggests a bleak and monochrome vision of a society devoid of hope and optimism, where human venality tramples on love and human decency. If the writer of the intro wants genuine Noir, then I suggest he reads Derek Raymond’s I Was Dora Suarez. Ted Lewis’s GBH or Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me. Instead, Tombstoning has romance, genuine affection, decency, optimism and, above all, the power of love. Yes, it has its dark moments and is a terrific thriller, but the bond between David and Nicola is what lifts it above Noir’s slough of despond. This edition will be published by Orenda Books on 26th February.

February 23, 2026 1

MRS HUDSON AND THE SPIRITS’ CURSE . . . Between the covers

The canonical 56 short stories and four novellas featuring Sherlock Holmes have left so-called ‘continuation’ authors with plenty of subordinate characters to draw on. Dr Watson, inspector Lestrade, Moriarty and brother Mycroft have each been the central character in novels. I suppose it was only a matter of time before Mrs Hudson took centre stage. Martin Davies took up the challenge in 2002 and this book was reissued at the end of last month. It came up as available on my Netgalley account, and as I enjoyed Mrs Hudson and the Capricorn Incident, I decided to go back to the beginning of what is obviously a popular series.

The book is narrated by a young street urchin called Flottie (Flotsam) who has been taken under Mrs Hudson’s wing and, together, they take up new employment as housekeepers for two rather unusual gentlemen who have just moved into a house on Baker Street.The thrust of the main plot is this: a young man named Moran, with three colleagues, Neale, Postgate and Carruthers, was unwise enough to venture to an insanitary patch of jungle in Sumatra, in pursuit of an ambitious business scheme. As ever, the oppressive heat and rain wore them down, but their fatal error was, to paraphrase the punchline of a venerable joke, to “tell the local witch doctor to ‘fcuk off'”. Postgate never made it out alive.

Now, Neale, Moran and Carruthers have retreated in fright to England, convinced that they have been doomed by an ancient curse. Moran seeks the help of Holmes, and when Carruthers is found dead in his London hotel, his face (inevitably) contorted in an expression of terror, the game, as someone once said, “is afoot.”

At one point, another celebrated fictional character – gentleman thief Arthur Raffles – joins in the fun. Incidentally, Raffles’ creator, EW Hornung, was married to Conan Doyle’s sister Connie, although the two authors were said not to be bosom pals.

Without giving too much away, it transpires that Mr Moran has been a little economical with la vérité, but to little avail, as Mrs Hudson’s perspicacity and Flottie’s determination bring him down. Martin Davies doesn’t quite slam his four aces down on the table by introducing Moriarty, but he does the next best thing by acquainting us with a criminal mastermind called Fogarty who, while posing as a gentleman’s butler, presides over a violent and lucrative criminal empire.

Subsequent recreators of Sherlock Holmes have to get round the problem of the brevity of the 56 original short stories. Even the four novels were not long by contemporary standards. So, what is the problem? It is that in the short stories, Conan Doyle can keep a tight focus. There is one mystery, one closely linked set of characters and, usually, just two locations – Baker Street and wherever the crime was committed. In contrast, the modern homages have to fill out many more pages in order to give their readers a sense of money well spent. Whereas in the originals, Watson can feasibly go wherever Holmes does, be it Sussex, Dartmoor or Shoscombe Old Place, it stretches the readers’ credulity to have domestic servants travel far and wide with their employer, so Martin Davies get round the problem by sticking mostly to London locations.

Flottie is a plausible heroine, Holmes and Watson are faithful reproductions, and while Mrs H is nothing like the rather meek and put-upon woman in the original stories, she is perfectly credible. Canonical diehards will find the cosy fireside chats between Holmes, Watson, Hudson and Flottie, discussing the finer points of the case, utterly implausible, but we need to remember that Conan Doyle’s genius made Holmes invincible, impregnable and inviolate. No matter how many imitators take their turn, the canonical stories will always be there for us, pure and perfect. Martin Davies gives us an enjoyable and absorbing version of the old tropes and, although no-one can embellish the originals, this book doesn’t diminish them. This is an entertaining and absorbing melodrama, republished by Allison & Busby and available now.