==Crime==
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{{newreview
|author=Alison Bruce
|title=The Calling
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=The story's location is in and around Cambridge and we get the blow-by-blow account as DC Goodhew meets the different members of Kaye's family in order to build up a picture of her recent comings and goings. Kaye's mother seems particularly upset. A nice and effective touch by Bruce is that each chapter heading is simply that day's date. Kaye disappeared in March 2011 so that the reader feels a sense of the clock ticking - and still no Kaye.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849012040</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Daniel Suarez
|summary=Still completely traumatised by 'The Snowman' investigation, Inspector Harry Hole has fled Norway for the seedy underbelly of Hong Kong where he is happy to lose himself to debt and drugs. Back in Norway, two women are found murdered by the same gruesome means and Crime Squad believe they have another serial killer on their hands. Harry's boss, Gunner Hagen wants his best detective back, as he believes Harry is the only person who can find the killer, after two months with no leads. Despite being persuaded to return to Oslo due to his father's illness and with no apparent interest in the case, Harry's detective instincts take him straight to the murder scene when a third woman is found dead and he cannot resist getting involved, especially when the current investigative team seem to be making such a mess of it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846554004</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John H Watson, Tony Reynolds and Chris Coady
|title=The Lost Stories of Sherlock Holmes
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=It is a truth universally acknowledged that a successful detective character will have far too many cases in his career for it to be at all realistic. The worst case in point are the Hardy Boys, who have had two hundred or more adventures and are still not 20. Slightly more literary, but no less busy it can seem, was Sherlock Holmes, for Watson declaimed many times that he did not write down all that man's exploits. Tony Reynolds here gives us eight more cases, making Holmes' workload even more impressive.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907685618</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sam Hawken
|title=The Dead Women of Juarez
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Although the story related here is a work of fiction, the situation is based on fact. The Mexican border city of Juárez has a shocking problem with female homicides (usually young and invariably pretty). Official statistics put the number of murders at 400 since 1993 while, we are told, residents believe that the true number of disappeared women is closer to 5000. But attention to this problem is diverted by drug crime, although the two may not be entirely unrelated. Anything that raises public awareness of this terrible situation, such as Hawken's book, is to be encouraged.
So much for the fact, what about the fiction?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668773X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Denise Mina and Antonio Fuso
|title=A Sickness in the Family
|rating=4
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=In Eton Terrance there lives the Usher family, in a house above a basement flat where a gangster holds sway over a Polish "girlfriend". After a bloodbath in there, the Ushers expand downwards, clearing a cavernous hole in their home where a staircase is due to go. This is not the only crack in proceedings, however, as we soon discover while witnessing the fall of this House of Usher.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848564163</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Teresa Solana and Peter Bush
|title=A Shortcut to Paradise
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=The characters are introduced to the reader one at a time. The main ones have a whole chapter or two to tell their story, including a bit of background information but aside from all of this, they all seem to have some sort of connection to a swish, literary event. So, for example, there's a young, rather frazzled husband called Ernest. You can tell that he's a kindly, mild person. He takes his role as father, husband and (although meagre) breadwinner very, very seriously. He's a translator. He's had some bad luck to contend with lately and the household bills are piling up but he spares his wife the sorry details of their current financial state. But all he's doing is piling on the pressure for himself. Something's got to give ... and it does. Big-time. And without wishing to spoil the plot in any way, I think I can safely say that he ' ... decided to put himself into the shoes of the heroes he translated and, for the first time in his life, he took the bull by the horns.'
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904738559</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jane Casey
|title=The Burning
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=The book opens with a bunch of young women enjoying a drink-fuelled night out in the capital. And as often happens, there's always one absolutely paralytic - with drastic consequences. Casey gives her readers a sharp taste of danger early on as we accompany the unfortunate Kelly on a terrifying taxi ride. The media is stirring up a right old frenzy and calling this local serial killer ''The Burning Man''. And yes, it's a suitably horrible title and we hear it time and time again throughout the book.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091936004</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Massimo Carlotto
|title=Bandit Love
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=In 2004 three criminals-turned-good are approached by a stranger to investigate a drugs haul, stolen from a fully-secure institute. Rather than be pressurised into the job by a man who cannot state what info he needs, nor for whom nor why, they let him die, leaving his ugly bling ring behind for his operators. In 2006 one of them has the nightmare of his girlfriend being kidnapped, and replaced by the same ring. Can the trio work out the identity of a man dead two years, involved somehow in the federal theft, and counter the current crime?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>193337280X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Danny Miller
|title=Kiss Me Quick
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=The jacket cover is certainly eye-catching, a nice sepia-tinged photograph of Brighton seafront. The Prologue opens in the year 1939, also in the Brighton area. A young Jack Regent is enjoying the start of what appears to be a new life. He's apparently paid the price for previous 'events' and is now a reformed character. Or is he? The next couple of pages would suggest otherwise. But then again, Jack's smart, very smart. He makes sure that he doesn't get his hands dirty. He leaves that for others. For the mugs.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849015163</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Bryan Talbot
|title=Grandville Mon Amour
|rating=4.5
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=The [[Grandville by Bryan Talbot|first book]] in this series didn't end particularly well for DI LeBrock, the badger who works for Scotland Yard. At least the main problem, 'Mad Dog' Mastock, was sentenced to the guillotine. But in the prologue here he bursts out of his quandary, and once more causes problems for LeBrock - this time by slaughtering some Parisian prostitutes. Are they linked? What might their story be? And is there a darker part of the past yet to come out of some secretive hiding place, and cause even more danger and peril?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224090003</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Quentin Bates
|title=Frozen Out
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=When a body was washed up on the beach of a rural Icelandic fishing village the powers-that-be were rather keen that the death should be written off as an accident. After all, falling into the water when you've had far too much to drink is not unusual. Hvalvick's police sargeant, Gunnhildur, isn't convinced though. The 'drinking too much' was done in the bars of Reykjavik, some hundred kilometres away. If the man was too drunk to walk he was certainly in no position to drive a car – so who brought him to his death – and why?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849013608</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Adam Kolczynski
|title=The Oxford Virus
|rating=3
|genre=Crime
|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>
}}
