Books

A new William Boyd book is always a significant publishing event as he is one of Britain’s most popular novelists and you do not know what to expect. In a writing career that early on embraced drole colonialism in West Africa but has included espionage and a broad sweep of a life by journal in [...]

In the week there was a revealing documentary on Daphne du Maurier on PBS America entitled In Rebecca’s Footsteps. She was a complex character difficult to classify as a writer. The popular notion is of a historical romantic novelist in the style of Georgette Heyer or Philippa Gregory. In fact [...]

Publishing is very much a copy-cat business. Thus – when one writer comes up with a successful genre – rest assured it will not be long before another follows. CJ Sansom’s Matthew Shardlake novels set in the reign of Henry VIII are immensely popular. SJ Parris’ novels are in the [...]

This is Lynne Truss’ fourth novel in the Constable Twitten series and not the best. It is set in the her familiar milieu of 1950s Brighton where a series of murders are committed with a milk bottle. The novel has humour and a good sense of time and location but there are a number of weaknesses : [...]

Underneath the Streets is a political thriller by Adam Macqueen who was for many years a contributor to Private Eye.    The central character is a male prostitute called Tommy Wildeblood who perchance investigates the death of a rent boy in Hampstead Heath. The trail leads him to Devon and to [...]