Category: Books

Nick Hornby’s latest actually took me a little while to get through, and I really couldn’t put my finger on why that was. But, much as I always seek out the latest Hornby fiction (must admit to giving 31 Songs a miss), I’m not enjoying his books as much as I did when he was…

Top Of The Heap is another in the Hard Case Crime series. This time it’s by Erle Stanley Gardner and details a complicated investigation involving seedy motels, mob leaders, shady companies, strippers, and illegal gambling dens. All the ingredients to make a good noir thriller then. I’ll admit that I didn’t find it quite as…

When I saw the film I mentioned that I hadn’t read any of the comics, so recently I picked up this first volume. Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez used this and a couple of other stories as the basis of the film and it’s quite remarkable how closely they kept to the comic. Indeed I…

The other day, I mentioned this piece about the writing of a book called The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists. Well, on Monday evening I paid a trip to Waterstones to try to find it. First stop was the large 3 for 2 tables that most people seemingly don’t get past. No luck. None…

If you’ve ever fancied writing a book (I have), then this is definitely worth reading. It’s the story of how a book called Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists which sounds like a fun read. All the more so since it was conceived in a pub round the corner from work.

This is the first of the Hard Case Crime books that started being published in the States last year. They feature fantastic period-style covers and are a combination of newly published works and re-published older pieces. In this case, it’s a 1961 vintage book that was originally titled Mona. Block, of course, continues to be…

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Penguin Lost is the sequel to Death and the Penguin and third of Andrey Kurkov’s translated works following The Case of the General’s Thumb. We rejoin Viktor, who has returned from the Antarctic where he fled in place of Misha the penguin at the end of the first novel. Things have changed, and he starts…

Snobs, by Julian Fellowes, is a story set in a world that I’ve not entered in contemporary fiction. Think the world of Jeeves and Wooster. Think the world of those people you’ve never heard of in the diary columns of Associated Newspapers’ publications. Think of the nonentities whose marriages are afforded lavage multi-page coverage in…

If you happen to buy The Shadow Of The Wind, there is one really important thing to do before you start reading it – peel off the Richard & Judy Bookclub sticker on the cover (You’ll probably also want to peel off the ‘3 for 2’ sticker that will almost certainly also adorn the front…

Last year, when the BBC started showing Hustle, I read a piece by one of the writers explaining where the inspiration came from. Obviously there’ve been plenty of films covering this area, more of which later. But one book he mentioned was The Big Con by David Maurer. It was first published in 1940, and…