It’s 1948 in Los Angeles, and Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins needs to make a mortgage payment. Too bad all he has in his pocket is lint. Along comes a savior, looking like a devil and talking like a devil, but offering Easy the precious cash he needs. The man has one simple request: find the woman […]
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Detroit is no place for virgins, or gentlemen. Walker, who is neither, follows the 50-year-old trail of a stolen manuscript across the bleak landscape of a dead city, coming face to face with the man who murdered his partner 20 years ago. Loren D. Estleman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loren_D._Estleman and http://www.lorenestleman.com/) published this in 1999. Loren D. Estleman 306
The Hours of the Virgin Read More »
When Aaron Crown is finally imprisoned for the decades-old murder of Ely Dixon, it is to Dave Robicheaux that he proclaims his innocence loudest. Dave isn’t keen to get involved, but then a filmmaker seeking to prove Crown’s innocence is murdered and the mob accuse Dave of taking a pay-off. First published by Burke (http://jamesleeburke.com/index.html)
A Portuguese bank is founded on the back of Nazi wartime deals. Over half a century later a young girl is murdered in Lisbon. It’s 1941 and Klaus Felsen, SS, arrives in Lisbon and the strangest party in history where Nazis and Allies, refugees and entrepreneurs dance to the strains of opportunism and despair. Felsen’s war
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Scott Turow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Turow) gives us Rusty Sabich. He is chief deputy prosecuting attorney in a large mid-western city. His boss is in the midst of a bitter campaign for re-election. A fellow prosecuting attorney, Carolyn Polhemus, has been brutally murdered. Rusty is handling the investigation– and he needs results. Before election day. Before his illicit affair
In the fourth Dan Kavanagh (a.k.a. Julian Barnes, http://www.dankavanagh.com/index.html) novel, bisexual detective Duffy finds himself investigating a mysterious death in a country mansion. Dan Kavanagh a.k.a. Julian Barnes HarperCollins reprint paperback edition. ISBN 978-0060809539
A beautifully written study in melancholy set in a Swiss hotel by a lake. Edith Hope has gone to regain her composure on the advice of friends after an affair. Full of sly humour and rendered in delicate prose, this is a gently entertaining read for which Brookner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Brookner) won the Booker Prize of 1984. Anita
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In the dying days of the Ottoman Empire in 1908 Basil Pascali is a spy who reports regularly to Istanbul on the activities of the local people on his Aegean island. His reports are never acknowledged or seemingly acted upon, although his regular payment continues to come through. He expects to be found out at any
Pascali’s Island by Barry Unsworth Read More »
Packed with detail and displaying an evident love of the subject Melvyn Bragg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvyn_Bragg) gives us the story of the Christianization of the North of England in the seventh century. The book shines a fictional light onto the warring, pagan Dark Ages. An outstanding blend of passion and erudition. Melvyn Bragg 800 pages in Sceptre
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