As the Shinkansen bullet train speeds out of Tokyo, several of those on board seem to be on missions to kill. But who will kill, who will die, and why?
This is a speedy and satisfying locked-room crime novel. It’s not clear at the outset how the disparate group of characters are connected. What links a father bent on revenge, a hitman obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine, and a professional killer who’s concerned that he’s unlucky and wants to quit? And what are the roles of those off the train, including a woman who is phoning with instructions?
So many questions, and Bullet Train presents an engaging mystery for readers to try and solve. It’s violent, but given the sheer number of murderers this is perhaps not surprising. This was part of my ongoing Japanese crime reading jag, following on from The Aosawa Murders (https://riversidebookshop.co.uk/2020/07/25/the-aosawa-murders-by-riku-onda/). Isaka is a prize winning author in Japan, and the movie starring Brad Pitt and Sandra Bullock is due out this summer (see https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12593682/).
For an escapist and entertaining crime read, this is a good choice.
This is a great range of very satisfying Christmas mysteries. Feeling like pulp crime? Try John D. MacDonald. Classic crime? Try Ellis Peters. Something modern? Try Sara Paretsky. There are also stories from lots of all time great crime writers, including John Mortimer, Agatha Christie and Colin Dexter.
I read many of these stories last Christmas when this collection came out in hardback. Now it’s out in a striking softback edition with a smart vintage style Gothic revival cover. For a book with over 700 pages, it’s very comfortable in the hands. Some stories are very short and some are longish, which means you can find something that fits your time as well as mood.
I found it put me on to several crime writers who were new to me, which made for some fun reading this year (I have been cheerfully reading Ellery Queen and Rex Stout as a result).
It’s so attractive that it would make a successful present, but ideally only for someone you can borrow it off later.
Our Summer Reading Promotion is now on in store, get 4 books for the price of 3 (with the cheapest book free). We have titles available across Children’s, Fiction and Non-Fiction, see our full list of titles for purchase in the 4 for 3 promotion below:
Fiction Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi
Girl Woman Other by Bernadine Evaristo
Troy by Stephen Fry
Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Islands of Mercy by Rose Tremain
I Am An Island by Tamsin Calidas
V For Victory by Lisa Evans
The Great Fortune by Olivia Manning
Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak
Us Three by Ruth Jones
Actress by Anne Enright
V2 by Robert Harris
All Adults Here by Emma Straub
Summer by Ali Smith
Non-Fiction The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read by Phillippa Perry
Agent Sonia by Ben Macintyre
Difficult Women by Helen Lewis
Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
Untamed by Glennon Doyle
Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty
The Moth and the Mountain by Ed Caesar
Sicily ’43 by James Holland
Childrens The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charles Mackesy
The Unadoptables by Hana Tooke
Worst Holiday Ever by Charlie Higson
Rowley Jefferson’s Awesome Friendly Adventure by Jeff Kinney
This might be the best mystery I’ve ever read. I immediately reread it and liked it even better second time around.
A prominent local family host a party at their smart villa in a seaside town in 1970s Japan. Seventeen people are poisoned and only one member of the family survives: teenage Hisako, a blind girl. Hisako claims that all she can remember is a blue room, and a flower.
Convinced that she is guilty of murder, a local police inspector tries for years to prove it. But an easier suspect takes his own life, and people start to move on. A gathering together of multiple forms of testimony helps to find an answer at last.
The Aosawa Murders is made up of witness accounts, stories and other ‘found’ testimony. You read along, almost as an investigator yourself, and the process is extraordinarily engrossing. It reminded me of the things I liked best about Graham Macrae Burnet’s His Bloody Project, but ultimately it’s not really like anything else (https://riversidebookshop.co.uk/2016/09/07/his-bloody-project-by-graeme-macrae-burnet/).
Riku Onda’s writing is beautiful and the translation seamless. The setting is so vivid it becomes a character in itself: “But the ocean here isn’t refreshing at all. Gazing at it doesn’t give you any sense of freedom or relief. And the horizon is always close, as if waiting for an opportunity to force its way onto land. It feels like you’re being watched, and if you dare look away for just a moment the sea might descend upon you.” (p. 14)
The need to reread immediately is a reflection of the intricate and satisfying plot. I suspected I could make more connections by having a second pass of the evidence, and I did.
The book literally gave me chills. There were a couple of moments where I gasped aloud. It’s both understated and electrifying and I’m still not sure how the author achieves this. The Aosawa Murders has opened up a whole world of Japanese crime writing for me. I went straight on to read The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shimada. I will never forget The Aosawa Murders.
“Nadja Wilk and her sister, Katja. They came from Gdansk, where they had worked in a hotel. Real people with real lives, not just ciphers for the tabloid newspapers”. Big Sky, the latest instalment of Atkinson’s series featuring private detective Jackson Brodie, starts with Nadja and Katja. Ready to leave their hotel jobs for better chances in the UK, they Skype with impressive businessman Mark Price who promises good placements and offers to pay for their travel. But: “The office was a fake. Anderson Price associates was a fake, Mark Price was a fake. Only the Rolex was real”. As always, Atkinson nails the nature of violence against women in this funny, smart and devastating book. She deals with hard subjects brilliantly, giving characters who elsewhere might simply be exploited victims both relatable features and agency.
We find Jackson looking after with his 13-year-old son while taking various low rent private eye jobs. Jackson is still for justice, though not always in a strictly legal way. He remains focussed on the unwanted and uncared-about. The book’s epigraph is revealing. Malcolm X: “I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who is for or against it”.
Many memorable characters from previous books turn up, which felt to me like a huge treat. Skilfully plotted, this gripping mystery sees many strands and lives woven together. A woman is murdered in her garden; a young girl hitch-hikes a lift from a lonely sea front; an interesting teenage boy looks after his young half-sister in between shifts at a ghost train and failing seaside theatre. Jackson remains an engaging commentator on the meaning of unexpected events. Watching a mother beat the living daylights out of someone who may have a clue about her missing child: “Jackson glanced around to see how the rest of the café’s denizens were reacting to this, but they all seemed to have quietly disappeared. Jackson didn’t blame them. Wives and mothers, he thought, you never wanted to get on the wrong side of them. Madonnas on steroids”.
Atkinson’s sentences are both completely precise and deceptively easy to read. I think it must take a great deal of work to produce something that seems so effortless.
A young woman covered in blood walks down a snowy small town street, and a man’s body is found with stab wounds nearby. Minor league lawyer Meecham tries to get the woman released from jail, and there seems to be much more to the story than is evident…
Reprinted in a smart new paperback edition, this 1952 American mystery classic has introduced me to Margaret Millar (who is possibly my new addiction – I have already been trying to find out which of her other books I can get hold of). An excellent Noir style thriller, Vanish in an Instant is more than just a great page turner. The psychological aspects of the work ring true, and the style is fresh and engrossing. “On the observation ramp above the airfield she could see the faces of people waiting to board a plane or to meet someone or simply waiting and watching, because if they couldn’t go anywhere themselves, the next best thing was to watch someone else going. Under the glaring lights their faces appeared as similar as the rows of wax vegetables in the windows of the markets back home”.
A teacher is murdered in Shoreham-by-Sea in Sussex. Her school has an historic connection with ghost story writer R M Holland. As pupils and colleagues try to come to terms with her death, the story surrounding it unfolds with Gothic overtones.
Investigating is Detective Sergeant Harbinder Kaur, an excellent character with an acid tongue and a sharp mind. On arriving at a witness’s home, she sees that the witness has been reading The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, and remembers that the murder victim had been “sitting in the dark with her herbal tea. Someone really should tell these women about Netflix” (p. 138). Her genial home life gives me the same cosy feeling I get reading this aspect of Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti crime stories (see https://theriversideway.wordpress.com/2017/06/20/earthly-remains-by-donna-leon/). She is an old student of the comprehensive where the murder happened, and knows all the rumours and ghost stories which surround the school. The story is told from the perspectives of Harbinder, Clare (a colleague of the victim), and Clare’s daughter Georgia, who is a pupil at the school. Also woven in are sections of R M Holland’s ghost story.
It helped that the abandoned cement works and nearby strip of workers’ houses where some of the action takes place are familiar to me, as I used to go past them on the bus… and I had often thought that it was quite a creepy place. But I’m pretty sure this personal experience isn’t necessary for others to enjoy the book!
This was a perfect holiday read for me. I had never read any Elly Griffiths, but a friend bought me this standalone mystery novel for Christmas. I devoured it in two days when I should have been doing other things. I am now looking forward to reading her series set in Norfolk, which my friend says is just as good. There are two good dogs in this book.
The dying police inspector Barlach thinks that a surgeon practising in Switzerland may be a Nazi war criminal. He gets himself transferred from his friend’s hospital in Bern to the suspect’s institution, and a new kind of nightmare begins.
This superb and unusual mystery novel, first published in 1951/2, has been reprinted now by Pushkin Vertigo, an imprint republishing quality crime fiction of the 20th century. The publisher says Suspicion is “a genre-bending mystery recalling the work of Alain Robbe-Grillet and anticipating the postmodern fictions of Paul Auster and other contemporary neo-noir novelists.” (See https://www.pushkinpress.com/product/suspicion/). I found it easy to read, but it also engages with the highly challenging subject matter in a thoughtful and interesting way. Dürrenmatt is not afraid of taking an intellectual and moral stance, which is important when dealing with torture and crimes against humanity.
Suspicion is beautifully written and translated. Dürrenmatt was also a playwright, with The Physicists being his most famous work. Despite the subject matter, this book is a perfect short holiday or travel read, and I would particularly recommend it to fans of Simenon or Lionel Davidson. I have already ordered all the other Inspector Barlach books that I can find. A new addiction has been born.
Commissario Brunetti, the senior Venetian police officer and star of Leon’s previous books, is sent to recuperate from stress in a secluded house on Sant’Erasmo, an island in Venice’s laguna. While there he makes friends with a local man. They spend days rowing in the laguna, tending to the man’s bees, and talking. But the bees start to die, and then his friend is found dead…
I have read many of the Brunetti books, and this is the best so far in my view. Set in Venice, the books are stuffed with spectacular surroundings, wonderful food, and chaotic corruption in public life. They are easy to read, and strangely addictive.
Brunetti wrestles with what is right when dealing with crimes, but also when dealing with the opaque and shifting concerns of the various authority figures he comes across, and as he addresses the other complexities of family and political life. I don’t always agree with the politics presented in the books, but I have a sneaking fondness for his arch and progressive wife Paula.
A previous winner of the prestigious Silver Dagger Crime Writing Award, Donna Leon has maintained both her popularity and the quality of her work over a long and impressive career. Ecological themes feature increasingly strongly in her work, as this interview makes clear, and this only adds to the relevance of her work (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/15/donna-leon-interview-commissario-brunetti-earthly-remains). Earthly Remains is a thoughtful, interesting summer read.
This is a very welcome collection of four new short stories from the much missed author of exceptional psychological crime mysteries. Val McDermid’s introduction commends James for taking us to places that are “dark, vicious and shocking. But always beautifully written”.
My favourite is the deeply menacing and highly believable A Very Commonplace Murder, which reminded me of a Shirley Jackson short story in its precise and convincing suburban horror. A man asks for a key to view a rental flat, and the house agent suspects he is not genuinely interested in renting it. The agent is right. “It was the first time he had been back since it all happened sixteen years ago. He came neither as a pilgrim nor a penitent. He had returned under some compulsion which he hadn’t even bothered to analyse”. And so we are compelled to find out what happened in this flat, and what this man’s relationship to it was.
I was glad to meet favourite detective Adam Dalgleish again in The Twelve Clues of Christmas.
In a lovely small hardback edition, this is great gift for fans of crime fiction, especially those who thought we’d never have another new thing from P D James to savour. If you’re buying one Christmas crime book this year, make it this one.
This Booker-longlisted novel is the story of a 17 year old boy facing the death penalty for a triple murder committed in a remote village in the Scottish highlands. It is 1869, and Roderick Macrae is the son of a crofter who is living in a feudal society. His Bloody Project is presented like a true crime story, with an account by the killer of what happened and documents from other parties involved. The novel is introduced by the author, in his own name, suggesting that Roderick Macrae was a relative of his. You have to bring your brain to this collection of purported primary sources, and the main question you have to answer is not whether Macrae committed the crime, which he admits, but whether he was mad at the time. If it could be proved that he was insane, he might avoid the otherwise inevitable death penalty.
What has happened to Macrae that may have led to this point? Through his partial account we hear of brutality, unfairness, bereavement and extreme poverty. As a study in the abuse of power, and the impunity that goes with it, the book is excellent (to be more specific would be to risk spoilers). The language used by every character in the documents is evocative and convincing – for example, Macrae calls winter in the village the ‘black months’ and summer the ‘yellow months’.
His Bloody Project grips tighter and tighter as the pages run out. As we find out more about the murders and the killer, we inevitably think more about how we test whether a defendant was insane or not, an issue as present today as in 1869. Equally relevant now, is the question – when you are subject to the law but the law does not protect you when you need it, can the society you live in really be said to be based on the rule of law?
For his second crime mystery novel, Celestin takes us to Jazz age Chicago. Louis Armstrong is transforming the cornet solo, and Al Capone largely owns the city, which is corrupt at every level. The novel opens with a gangster funeral almost Roman in scope, where the crowds are showered with blue petals from airplanes.
Three sets of unconventional detectives have cases that converge. Dante Sanfilippo is a New York booze runner returning to Chicago from exile in New York at the request of Capone, who wants internal gang troubles investigated. Michael Talbot and Ida Davis, agents at the Pinkertons private detective agency, are looking for a missing heiress. Jacob, a police photographer, is investigating a gruesome alley death, on his own time.
And so we are introduced to the several different worlds of the city. The diversity of the characters, in terms of race and class, gives us access to these. There is complacent old money, garish new money, smoky jazz clubs, dangerous meat yards, and lakeside views.
Ida and Michael will be familiar to readers of The Axeman’s Jazz (https://theriversideway.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/the-axemans-jazz-ray-celestin/). Those who loved the vivid portrayal of 1919 New Orleans in that novel will be equally pleased with the 1928 Chicago of Dead Man’s Blues. You don’t have to have read the first one to read this – it can stand alone – but this is the second in a planned quartet, each set in a different city, so it is worth reading in order. Luckily we have both in stock!
Disclaimer is yet another book being marketed with comparisons to Gone Girl on the cover. In fact, this clever debut set in London and Spain has its own distinctive style and deliciously sinister concept. When Catherine Ravenscroft and her husband downsize, she finds an unfamiliar book by her bedside just as she’s settling into a new chapter in her life. To her horror, the story of The Perfect Stranger is apparently her own: a 20-year-old secret about the tragic Spanish holiday she’d tried to forget. Its lurid plot details a holiday seduction by a married woman who’s also a bad mother – a deadly combination to appear in print. To underline the mysterious author’s baleful intentions, the standard disclaimer is scored through with red ink: any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is definitely not a coincidence.
Catherine is an award-winning documentary maker; perhaps this professional woman who charms her way into other people’s lives deserves this fictional intrusion into her privacy. Disclaimer’s dual narrative pits her against disgraced teacher and widower Stephen Brigstocke, who discovers a fiction manuscript by his wife that reveals his family’s fatal connection to Catherine. When he self-publishes and carefully distributes The Perfect Stranger, Catherine has to fight to regain control of her life – and her story – as the poisonous prose suggests a reckoning is coming. Knight is adept at creating suspense as the gradual revelation of family secrets builds to a shocking denouement in the Spanish sun. Disclaimer is a superior psychological thriller shot through with cruelty, tragedy and insights into the artful nature of fiction, though perhaps not best suited as a beach read.
“Still half asleep, Chief Inspector Frank Stave reached an arm out across the bed towards his wife, then remembered that she had burned to death in a firestorm three and a half years ago. He balled his hand into a fist, hurled back the blanket and let the ice-cold air banish the last shades of his nightmare”.
So opens The Murderer in Ruins, a gripping historical crime novel set in Hamburg in 1947. The city is experiencing the coldest winter anyone can remember, and refugees and displaced residents are living in the ruins. Hamburg is occupied by the British after being destroyed in the conflict, and it appears that a serial killer is leaving unidentifiable naked bodies in the frozen ruins. Stave has his own problems – his young soldier son is missing, and he is a frequent visitor to the Red Cross reunification office, without success.
The description of the barely-functioning city is completely convincing, and the mystery is satisfyingly gripping and surprising. The lingering poisons of the Third Reich and the war are shown to touch relationships and power structures in post war life. Translated four years after its German publication, and released here by a small press with the support of the Goethe Institute, it is intended to be the first part of a trilogy. I hope Arcadia Press crack on and publish the next two, as I can’t wait to read more from this author.
y I’ve ever read. I immediately reread it and liked it even better second time around.
The Riverside Way 