Look Out For These - An April trio of domestic noir, World War 2 and a little bit of espionage

Hello there – I’ve been reading less than usual because I’ve been so mad busy at work.  I’ve had to be quite choosy, so April’s trio is definitely the cream.  

The Pocket Wife by Susan Crawford.  I think most of us have woken up at some point with a fuzzy head and struggled to remember exactly what happened the previous night.  Some details are sharp, others blurred and a few that are just a blank.  The protagonist of The Pocket Wife, Dana Catrell has the same problem when she wakes up one afternoon following a drunken session with a neighbour and friend Celia Steinhauser.  Dana remembers Celia showing her a photograph she took of Dana’s husband with another woman, but little else.  When Dana sees an ambulance outside Celia’s house and finds out she’s been murdered, her already fragile mind goes into overdrive.  You find that Dana has a history of mental illness and as she descends into another manic episode, there are always questions about what happened and what has been imagined.  A good domestic noir novel that keeps you guessing and doesn’t disappoint.

Red Icon by Sam Eastland.  It seems only a short time ago that I reviewed the previous Inspector Pekkala novel and was delighted to find this one.  The novel starts with the find of a priceless icon – The Shepherd – thought to have been destroyed in the last days of Imperial Russia.  Pekkala is tasked with tracking down the icon, but as the trail hots up, he finds links to a fanatical religious sect thought to have been eliminated by the Bolshevik Secret Police.  They not only possess The Shepherd, but a new weapon of mass destruction that could bring catastrophe to Russia.  This novel ranges far into the past, where you see Pekkala at the Czar’s court, meet Rasputin and find out about the inner workings of the Romanov Dynasty during the First World War.  Eastland’s meticulous research, the great historical sweep of the novel and the way all the threads come together seamlessly make this one of Eastland’s best Pekkala novels to date. If you want to know more about Red Icon, other Pekkala novels or the historical background to the books, click on this link: http://www.inspectorpekkala.com/

My 1995 copy [left] with the 2015 reissue

  Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson.  This novel is centred on a secret underground Russian research station in Siberia.  Working at the centre brings great prestige, but at a price – once there, nobody returns to their previous life.  One scientist however is desperate to get a message to the outside world, calling on the only person he believes able to penetrate the centre’s secrecy and the wilds of Siberia.  Accessing the centre seems improbable, escape afterwards impossible.  Nevertheless Johnny Porter accepts the challenge and makes his way to the far east to begin what could be a fatal mission.  With the new East West tensions, this feels like a bang up to date novel.  I was delighted when I first saw it and after some rummaging on my bookshelf I found that I had kept the edition I bought in 1995.  Reading it again, the book is as fresh and exciting as it was twenty years ago; a testament to Lionel Davidson’s skill as a novelist and the reason he received three CWA Gold Daggers and the CWA lifetime achievement award.

That’s all for now – please do keep coming back to The Crime Warp for more news about the best in crime and thriller fiction and keep posting comments to let us know your thoughts on our reviews.

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