Now with added stars. Thank you, LJ.
Banks, Ray. No More Heroes: A Cal Innes Novel. Houghton Harcourt. Mar. 2010. c.261p. ISBN 978-0-15-101459-0. $25. M
Manchester PI Callum Innes (Sucker Punch) takes on the job of finding the arsonist who set fire to a house where a woman died and he single-handedly rescued a child. He discovers [...]
Out of here for Christmas. Leave you all with something below. Don’t let the Grinches grind you down, have a good ‘un, and we’ll see you in 2010.
(From the fantastic Letters of Note)
Yet another reason why Brian Cox is a God among men. He can teach Hamlet to toddlers.
A snippet from my review of Cathi Unsworth’s Bad Penny Blues:
Honest-to-God genuine noir fiction is difficult to find these days, especially in the UK. Too often what passes for noir is diluted with the mundanity of the police procedural or else splattered with grue, the emotional core of the story lost to cliché and pandering [...]
It would probably be the fault of the union that the men were being sacked. It usually was. According to the papers, the unions were to blame for all the economic ills of the country. They were too greedy (i.e. tried to keep up with rising prices), too strong (i.e. organised), always on strike (i.e. [...]
Couple of things.
First, nice to see a couple of letters to the Observer about that misjudged piece suggesting indie bookshops (salt of the earth, guv) should feast on the corpse of the recently-toppled Borders. I’ve already had my little whinge about this on that Twitter thing, but I’ll reiterate here: People just lost their jobs. [...]
I’m busy. And not busy eating, for once. Though I am doing that as well. I’m actually working. On writing-related stuff.
In the meantime, feel free to follow me on Twitter if you aren’t already. Usual disclaimer applies (may contain sexual swear words and scenes of an adult nature, like smoking cigars and driving cars and [...]
Our watches for this night of All Hallow’s Eve:
and
Jesus, this scared the fuck out of me. And it came out when I was, what, fifteen?
Alright, so I was sensitive.
I know it might look a little hokey now, especially to an audience for whom Michael Parkinson, Mike Smith and Sarah Greene aren’t bastions of trust. And yes, there is an earnestness to the “acting”, [...]
By which I mean, not quite a review, but definitely featuring opinions of some description.
First, though, it’s confession time.
Confession #1 – I am not, by nature, a reader of fantasy fiction. Sure, I’ve dipped into Gaiman, Barker and Miéville, but fantasy is a genre that I still sorta-kinda associate with a misspent youth in the [...]