Inspector Ari Kafka (no relation to the author or, indeed, the local pawn shop owner) is half of the Jewish police officers in Finland which he's sure is due to pay levels rather than religious conviction. Ari graduated 4th in his class at police academy which surprised his mother at the time. If his brother and sister could both graduate top of their university classes, what's wrong with him? His brother is always trying to encourage his attendance at family dinners and the local rabbi has to remind him of the whereabouts of the local synagogue. All this pressure is normally water off a duck's back to Kafka, but this is about to change. When two Arab bodies are found on a railway line, he must choose between loyalties to those he loves and to those he's sworn to serve.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904738923</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Walter Jon Williams
|title=The Fourth Wall
|rating=4
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary=Sean Makin was a cute, much demanded child actor. Then he grew up and the cute became creepy as the baby face that had made him famous remained (due to a physical condition) but was unsuited to an adult's body. So the demand dried up and Sean tries to come to terms with his change of fortunes by writing a 'how to act' blog, intoxicating substances and appearances on a reality celebrity martial arts fight show. One day, whilst being beaten up for the cameras in a wrestling ring full of cottage cheese, he realises the depths to which he's sunk. Something has to change! Luckily change soon arrives in the form of 'Alternate Reality' magnate, Dagmar Shaw.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841498254</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Brian Freeman
|title=Spilled Blood
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=One night seventeen-year old Ashlynn is driving home. She gets a flat tyre and of all the places in the world finds herself stranded in the ghost town: an abandoned farm community that no longer exists on the map and that no-one with any sense would be driving through at the dead of night. But there is more than one kind of sense. These days, another kind says that if you are from the town of Barron (home to Mondamin Research) you don't drive through St Croix – a neighbouring community that is the focus of a recent cancer cluster. The people of St Croix blame Mondamin and by extrapolation everyone in Barron. For the young people this has spilled over into an outright old-fashioned feud.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857383035</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Henning Mankell
|title=The Troubled Man
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Hakan von Enke was a retired naval officer and a man of routine. Each morning he went for a long walk in the forest near his Stockholm home, but one day he failed to return. It's a long way from Ystad, Kurt Wallander's home town and the only reason he became involved in the case was the fact that von Enke's son Hans was the partner of Wallander's daughter Linda. Wallander became concerned about von Enke some months before when they had a long discussion at his seventy-fifth birthday party. He'd seemed worried and wary of a stranger in the street. Von Enke's disappearance hit the family hard - and then his wife disappeared as well.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548402</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=James Craig
|title=Never Apologise, Never Explain - An Inspector Carlyle Novel
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Agatha Mills and her husband lived in a flat near the British Museum and her body was found in the kitchen one morning. There were no signs of a forced entry or of doors being left unlocked as an intruder left so her husband Henry was arrested and charged with her murder. His only defence is that Agatha had enemies: she had been pursuing the disappearance of her brother in Chile in 1973 and was hoping that there would be a trial which would provide an answer as to what happened to William. The defence is outlandish and impossible to investigate, but could it, just possibly, be true?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849015848</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nick Harkaway
|title=Angelmaker
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Joshua Joseph Spork (Joe to his mates) is a clock maker and clockwork mender in London’s East End. He’s spent his life emulating his craftsman grandfather, Daniel, and avoiding the shadow of his late father and crook, Mathew. However, one day all that changes with a visit from heavies, Messrs Cummerbund and Titwhistle and the even more sinister black-veiled Ruskinite monk. They want something that Joe only has a fragment of: The Hakote Book (''Angelmaker'' of the title). He discovers that the mysterious metal punch cards in his granddad’s box are just the beginning. Can he find the rest and literally put the world to rights before all his friends are murdered? Assisted by a 91 year old special agent, an aged, ugly pug and Polly the insatiable (but rather useful) lawyer, he’ll have a jolly good try.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>043402094X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jennifer Hillier
|title=Creep
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Dr. Sheila Tao is a psychology professor at Puget Sound State University in Seattle. She lives a double existence, having an affair with one of her students, but then getting engaged to a banker and former American footballer, Morris. Knowing that this double life cannot last, she dumps the student, Ethan Wolfe, but can't bring herself to confide in her fiancé that part of the reason she was seeing him is that she's also a sex addict.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751549010</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Peter O'Donnell
|title=Modesty Blaise: Live Bait
|rating=4
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=We're back in the gritty yet glamorous world of Modesty Blaise - at least, as gritty and glamorous as you could get in the Evening Standard daily comic strip in the late 1980s. Titan have had a mammoth undertaking to reproduce all the original strips in handy large-format graphic novel compendia, and this latest covers three stories, all of which I consider greater in depth than those in the other volume I've reviewed - [[Modesty Blaise: Sweet Caroline by Neville Colvin and Peter O'Donnell|Sweet Caroline]].
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857686682</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Cara Hoffman
|title=So Much Pretty
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Haeden, New York is a small town of the type where nothing really happens. When 19 year old Wendy White goes missing, the local reporter, Stacy Flynn, thinks she’s found her big break, but her investigations lead her to a wall of silence which proves highly distressing to break through. Hoffman’s observations of small town life and small town personalities are compelling. No aspect is left unexamined, from the painful tedium to the quite contentment experienced as part of a whole spectrum of emotions experienced by visitors and residents alike.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846059704</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Belinda Bauer
|title=Finders Keepers
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Set in Exmoor, plucky little Jess Took is kidnapped from her father's vehicle while he is off managing the local hunt. Before you can say 'who took Took?' another little boy is plucked from his parents' car. In both scenes the only evidence is a post-it note saying 'you don't love her' or him. On the case is DI Reynolds who is initially more concerned with how his new hair transplant is taking until the crimes escalate to a full scale serial abduction case.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0593066901</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Harvey
|title=Good Bait
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=DCI Karen Shields runs the over-stretched Homicide and Serious Crimes Unit and it's an early-morning call which takes her to Hampstead Heath and a seventeen-year-old Moldovan boy who's dead under the ice in the pond. Even working out who he was is difficult and she's got no idea that she's at the edge of a web of organised crime and gang warfare which will take up much of her time. Hundreds of miles away DI Trevor Cordon lives in a sail loft in Newlyn and his day-to-day duties are, well, undemanding but he's shaken out of his rut when an old acquaintance dies in London and he heads off to the capital to find the friend's daughter. It's going to be a lot more complicated than he realises - and it touches on Karen Shield's problems in a way that neither of them could ever have imagined.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434021628</amazonuk>
}}
