Reviews

‘absorbing second mystery . . . stunning resolution.’ [Stage Fright]

- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

The Rector’s Daughter

This 1924 novel by F. M. Mayor was chosen by listeners to Radio 4 as a neglected classic in response to an appeal by OPEN BOOK and it is currently being serialized as A Book at Bed-Time. This got me thinking and I got my paperback copy – a Penguin Modern Classic – down from […]

Wallander and film noir

This blog is mostly about reading, and sometimes about writing, but I do watch DVDS and TV as well. I have tended though to watch less and less TV over the years. There is hardly anything I like these days, not even dramatizations of the classics. I prefer to hang on to my own idea […]

Bodies in the Bookshop

More about that in a moment, but first I want to lament the passing of an old friend. Over the years I must have bought dozens of books from Galloway and Porter. They stocked remaindered books and were especially strong – from my point of view – on fiction, art history, cookery and guide books. […]

Paradise

‘I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library’ wrote Jorge Luis Borges. Me, too. A week or two ago I was in the London Library and it occurred to me that this is very nearly my favorite place on earth. Libraries have always been very special places to me. I wrote […]

CADS

CADS stands for a periodical called Crime and Detective Stories, ‘an irregular magazine of comment and criticism about crime and detective stories,’ to use the editor’s own words. It arrives through my letter-box around twice a year and and as I never know when it is going to appear, it always comes as a pleasant […]