==Crime==
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{{newreview
|author=Chris Ewan
|title=The Good Thief's Guide to Venice
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary='I'd never met a female burglar before, let alone one with the credentials to model lingerie, and I confess that I was more than a little intrigued.' So says Charlie Howard before he realises that the lady in question has stolen his most prized possession. A talisman that he thinks is essential to his writing is the framed first edition of ''The Maltese Falcon'' that hangs above his desk. All his mysterious visitor leaves in this spot is empty space. The explosive and chaotic events that follow are fuelled by Charlie's determination to get his book back.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847399592</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Roger Smith
|summary=When Dr Olembé discovers a potential cure for cancer and is given the go-ahead to begin human trials, the potential rewards are huge. Sadly, his first human patient dies shortly afterwards. Medical neglect? Is Dr Olembé's reputation finished? Well, before we have much time to consider these things, a second body is discovered. This time it's a career academic at the university. Was this suicide? Are the two deaths linked? Part medical crime story, part academic satire, part speculative fiction, The Oxford Virus addresses this case.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095658800X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Spencer Quinn
|title=Thereby Hangs a Tail
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=I have to admit to both skepticism and curiosity when I realised that this novel is narrated by a dog. It's crime fiction, which isn't my usual genre of choice; I don't like anything gorier or more suspenseful than Agatha Christie's relatively tame works. But the pun in the book's title suggested that there might be an element of humour, so I succumbed to my instincts and requested this book.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847398375</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michael White
|title=The Art of Murder
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Detective Chief Inspector Jack Pendragon has had a lot of experience of murder but he's never experienced anything like the one he was called to on a wintery January morning in Whitechapel. The man is horribly mutilated but he's held up in a chair and the scene has been set as a nod to the surrealist painter, Magritte. This is art as murder.
Back in Whitechapel in the 1880s the man who was probably the most famous murderer of them all. He's planned the murder of four local prostitutes with the bodies being horribly mutilated. Four, he feels, is a satisfyingly balanced number. This is murder as art.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551446</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nigel McCrery
|title=Scream: A DCI Mark Lapslie Investigation
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=When I read on the back cover that McCrery's writing credits include television's 'Silent Witness' I was impressed and expecting a terrific read. But did it deliver? This book opens with DCI Mark Lapslie attending a terrorism conference, yes, you heard correctly, a terrorism conference which is being held in Pakistan. Meanwhile, back in wet and cold Britain, one of his colleagues, DS Emma Bradbury is having to step into her boss's shoes, so to speak. A body has been discovered and the police need to get their investigation started. There's no doubt, by the state of the body, that it is murder. And soon the whole team is a hive of activity - from the CSIs to the pathologist.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849161151</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jane Robins
|title=The Magnificent Spilsbury and the Case of the Brides in the Bath
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=During the early months of 1915, Britain was fighting for her life during the First World War, and newspaper headlines were preoccupied with the army's exploits and outrages by the enemy. For a time, only one event at home could compete with them on the front news pages – the unhappy fate of two or three brides who had been drowned, in separate incidents, in their baths, and the fact that one man was probably responsible.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848541074</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Arnaldur Indridason
|title=Hypothermia
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Maria's body was found by her friend Karen. It was hanging from the rafters of her holiday home at Lake Thingvallavatn and when Detective Erlendur arrived it seemed like a straightforward case of suicide. Maria had been in a poor mental state since the death of her mother two years previously and there was a history of depression. It wasn't until Karen approached Erlendur with a recording of a séance which Maria had attended shortly before her death that his curiosity was aroused. There was no great pressure at work and he had the time to indulge himself, so he looked further into the case along with the unsolved disappearances thirty years earlier of two unconnected people.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532271</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Dean
|title=To Die Alone
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=The bodies of a man and his dog are found in an isolated part of the northern hills. The injuries, particularly to the dog are horrific and although it initially looks though the man might have died from accidental injuries it soon becomes obvious that he's been stabbed. The victim – Trevor Meredith – has been acting strangely lately as it looks as though he might have been aware that he was in danger. And where has his girl friend disappeared to? More to the point, who, ''exactly'', is Trevor Meredith. Chief Inspector Jack Harris and his team have their work cut out.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709091141</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Rachel Sargeant
|title=Long Time Waiting
|rating=2.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Pippa Adams is determined to do well on her first day as a CID detective, especially when she is plunged straight into a murder case. However, an unfortunate comment about Agatha Christie plunges that into disarray and she becomes known as 'Agatha'. There is little time to dwell on this though; there is a murder to solve. Two men broke into the Brocks' home late one night, took Carl Brock away and killed him, and chained his wife, Gaby, to a chair. Carl Brock was a teacher and presumably above reproach - but as Pippa and her colleagues investigate, all sorts of issues come to the surface and it seems that Carl was not as innocent as they first presumed. Can Pippa find out the truth and persuade her disdainful colleagues that she is a capable detective?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709091060</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Adrian Magson
|title=Death on the Marais
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=We meet the central character, Inspector Rocco and are informed that he's a city man, happiest pounding the elegant streets of Paris. But suddenly and against his will, he finds himself in the sticks. He's not too happy about it. His new colleagues are more than happy to rib him a little, tell him that nothing much in the way of crime happens here. One of these colleagues takes things a stage further - puffs up his cheeks before commenting 'we get the occasional punch-up over a game of bar billiards ...' Rocco thinks he'll be bored out of his skull in no time. Big surprise then when on day one, yes, on day one he's involved in the discovery of a young woman. And Magson wastes no time in giving his readers all the gory details of this woman's last few hours alive. We almost feel her slow, agonising death. And the question is why?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749008342</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Buchan
|title=The Island of Sheep (John Hannay)
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Richard Hannay is feeling old. He looks at himself and his contemporaries and sees a spread of complacency. Luckily - or perhaps very unluckily - an old pledge will come to haunt him. His earlier career in Africa saw Hannay and his friends swear to protect a man from others - and now a second generation of animosity is ripe for Hannay to step in and be a protective detective. Add in a supposed treasure hoard, and who knows where his last journey might end up?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184697156X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Katherine Hall Page
|title=The Body in the Fjord
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Page gives us another ''The Body In The...'' book within a tried and tested format. The book jacket covers are always bright and jazzy and this one is no exception. We're deep in Norway, its picturesque countryside and world-famous fjords. We are in the company of two different but interesting women. Mother and daughter. Pix, the daughter (I think the name sounds as if it belongs to someone young) is a mother in middle-age with teenage children. She has responsibilities, but at times she behaves like a sixteen year old and I suppose that is part of her appeal. She cannot seem to say ''no'' to anyone and now finds herself enlisted to solve an unexplained death and a missing person. The latter is the more important as the missing person, Kari, is related to Ursula's best friend. Yes, perhaps a few too many names at the beginning of the book to grapple with but it soon settles down.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0709090641</amazonuk>
}}
