Crime Fiction Lover

1 week ago | crimefictionlover.com | Vicki Weisfeld

Author Matt Goldman is part of that tribe of television writers who have made a successful jump into print. These authors have in common their ability to establish steadily rising action with no lulls and visual imaginations that let them describe scenes so that readers can easily picture them too. And they aren’t reluctant to deploy a little authentic humour. Goldman’s first book, Gone to Dust, was nominated for a number of awards. The Murder Show, will likely garner equal attention.

1 week ago | crimefictionlover.com | Vicki Weisfeld

Translated by Astrid Freuler — We’ve been reviewing Hansjörg Schneider’s entertaining stories about the frustrations of Peter Hunkeler, an aging and cynical detective (now retired) of the police force of Basel, Switzerland, ever since The Basel Killings was translated into English in 2021. Basel is located so close to Germany and France that Hunkeler has a second home in Alsace, and the area is almost another character in the stories.

2 weeks ago | crimefictionlover.com | Vicki Weisfeld

Second in this talented team’s genre mashup, The Railway Conspiracy builds on the characters so expertly introduced in last year’s The Murder of Mr Ma. Set in London in the mid-1920s, the series’ main character is Judge Dee Ren Jie, inspired by not only on a real-life Tang Dynasty jurist but also on the traditions of Sherlock Holmes.You’ll also meet Lao She, a university professor who plays Watson to Dee’s Holmes; Sergeant Hoong, owner of a shop selling Chinese goods and a handy presence when...

2 weeks ago | crimefictionlover.com | Paul Burke

Real figures from the past are always an intriguing part of historical fiction. The bonus for crime writers is being able to mix them up in murder mysteries and Legat has chosen the Polish physicist Nicolaus Copernicus to be her protagonist and amateur detective in A Pact With the Devil. The mathematician and astrologer appeared in John Banville’s Dr Copernicus in 1976 – a fictional portrait of the man who challenged the Church’s teaching that the earth was at the centre of the universe.

2 weeks ago | crimefictionlover.com | Vicki Weisfeld

If you’re a fan of stories set in an earthly paradise, you might enjoy Douglas Corleone’s new thriller, Falls to Pieces, about a woman and her teenage daughter living off the grid in Hawai`i. Kati Dawes (her new name) fled from New England with her daughter Zoe (ditto) to the island of Maui two years before the story starts. She fled not only to escape her abusive husband, Jeremy, but also because she had reason to fear she’d be a suspect in the death of her wealthy and tyrannical mother-in-law.