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Berlin Red/ Sam Eastland

Publishing is like most industries: if your competitors have a successful product, copy it. In 1989 Philip Kerr, a copywriter at Saatchi and Saatchi, wrote The March Violets set in Nazi Germany in the thirties and introduced to us the cop Bernie Gunther. Gunther was like Raymond Chandler’s [...]

January 26, 2017 // 0 Comments

EAST WEST STREET/PHILIPPE SANDS

EAST WEST STREET is a portrait of two eminent jurists and an investigation into the antecedents of international human rights lawyer Phillippe Sands. The common denominator is Lviv, a city sometimes in Poland but now in Ukraine as the two lawyers, Hirsch Lauterpacht and Raphael Lemkin both lived in [...]

January 18, 2017 // 0 Comments

Not elementary enough, Doctor Watson

Yesterday after my evening meal (having recorded the same on Sunday) and because Monday is worst night of the week for television I watched the third and final episode of the BBC drama’s blockbuster Sherlock’s fourth series. By now most UK viewers will know that this incarnation of Sir Arthur [...]

January 17, 2017 // 0 Comments

Shantaram/Gregory David Roberts

I studied modern languages at school which provided an excellent education on French and German classic literature for which I am grateful. Our teacher had a theory that the life of the writer was irrelevant. The cleverest boy in our class challenged him one day on this. Since that day I have often [...]

January 10, 2017 // 0 Comments

The Spanish Game/Charles Cumming

My recent reviews of the Charles Cumming espionage novels reflect an admiration for this novelist. Indeed I would have put this admiration as high as nominating him as the successor to John le Carre. So I read an earlier one of his  called The Spanish Game and having just finished it I am less [...]

November 25, 2016 // 0 Comments

Hartsbourne

I have always been fascinated by great houses. It’s not so much the architecture and grounds but those that lived and stayed in them. Melanie Gay, knowing that I always want to learn more about places I have visited or intend to, recommended me a book called the Riviera Set by Mary Lovell. I [...]

November 18, 2016 // 0 Comments

The Trinity Six/Charles Cumming

I am becoming a fan of espionage writer Charles Cumming having read and reviewed  favourably The Colder War.  Previous novels feature his hero Thomas Kell a wizard of detection through computer hacking and mobile surveillance and the French head of MI6 Amelie. The Trinity Six goes back in time to [...]

November 16, 2016 // 0 Comments

The Rebecca Notebook and other memories /Daphne du Maurier

The Rebecca Notebook is an account of how Daphne du Maurier wrote her most famous novel and a series of reflections on her life late in her life. Rebecca, like most of her novels, has a pleasing structure as the story unfurls. Few can tell a story as well as Daphne du Maurier which accounts for [...]

November 13, 2016 // 0 Comments

Paris Spring/James Naughtie

Jim Naughtie is a versatile man. He has been a leading radio broadcaster for many years presenting the flagship Today programme, written a work on opera and hosted the BBC book club. At such an event I met him and  found him to be affable and engaging. As a keen reader of the espionage genre I [...]

October 26, 2016 // 0 Comments

Madrid: The History/Jules Stewart

One of the debates we have on the arts side of the Rust is kindle v book. It’s not either/or as many like me see the benefits of both. The kindle is transportable, downloadable and readable. Yet it has somehow taken some of the “connection” out of reading. Giving someone a [...]

October 9, 2016 // 0 Comments

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