celticman's blog

Award-winning Scottish author, Denise Mina, gets to play gumshoe in a Philip Marlowe Mystery. She’s a hired hand, in the same way that Marlowe’s a hired hound. Marlowe’s a man’s man that likes to drink and have a dame on his arm. He takes all kinds of cases but he’s got a code and a line that won’t be crossed. He’ll do the right thing and money be damned. A heatwave in LA makes everybody cranky. But that’s not what’s bothering Marlowe. Something...

Callum McSorley’s Squeaky Clean won the McIlvanney Prize and had the kind of reception any debut novelist would sell his granny for and would fling in his grandad as a freebie. Job done. You’re number 1. But here’s the rub, you need to write something else, pronto. People walk into doors. Open the fridge and put their shoes inside instead of the milk (I’m making that bit up. Never done that—yet). Why not write the same book and call it something...

Blood Roses is the first in a quartet of books which feature Jan Kalisz. He’s a detective investigating a serial killer. So far so mundane. You know the type. Psychopathic killers. They have their own reason for killing, which relies on a tautology. Their reason for killing is because they’re psychopathic killers. What makes it different isn’t Douglas Jackson’s undoubted talent, but the timeline. It’s 1939 and the Germans have just invaded...

Start with the bad news. Flipper is dead. He drowned himself (or herself) in a small pool of water. He couldn’t take the isolation. Humans aren’t good at isolating either. We call it loneliness. You remember Flipper ? Saturday morning telly. It was a bit like Poirot but without the moustache or French accent. Flipper whistled to say ‘there’s the body over there.’ Or he’d rescue somebody. That seems improbable. But Kevin was relatively lucky. He...

Denver Riggleman and Hunter Walker take is as a given that their reading public know what Breach they’re referring to and what January 6th they refer. Like 9/11 it will be imprinted on our minds. But it isn’t. We’ve already moved on. ‘Stop the Steal’ didn’t work. Nobody much refers to it now. It’s no longer a shibboleth. Not even among Trump supporters. Enough Americans voted for a dim-witted, rapist, thieving, draft-dodging, neo-Nazi,...

Football is a simple game. If you have the best players, you win. Would Neymar, Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe get into the PSG team that won their first European Cup at a canter? But football is also a team game. Any and all of the above are no loss. This is a young Luis Enrique team that plays beautiful football. Each player works hard to close down their opponents so they don’t have time on the ball. None of the recognised stars of yesteryear...

I’m a fan of Jenni Fagin’s writing. And the Sunlight Pilgrims is terrific. Sunlight Pilgrims are those supernatural beings we sometimes hear about that can live on light alone. There’s a joke there. It only works if you’re anorexic. Fagin’s characters are always gallus. Dylan McRae is six-foot-seven but rarely seen. He works as a projectionist in a Soho cinema. Or did. He lived with his mum and granny. Or did. They died. He lost the cinema to...

I only read the beginning of this book. You know the saying, you shouldn’t judge the book by the cover? Aye. Really? Well, it’s got ‘Global bestseller’ on the cover. That means lots of folk have bought it. Being translated from Japanese to English is also a mark of quality. I liked the idea of it. ‘Before your memory fades’. My memory is like a rubber that has already rubbed most of itself out. So there’s congruence there. There’s a relationship...

Cover the Bones was brought out as The Seven in Chris Hammer’s native Australia. The Seven refers to the founding fathers and elite of Yuwonderie. By founding fathers I don’t mean black folk. I mean the elite that committed genocide or paid a pittance for land belonging to the natives. I learned a new word. Squattocracy. When the seven founding fathers had been there long enough, the land they stole was legalised. Much like wealth or water...

Reading is what I do. So what are you looking for in the library sounds like my kind of book. If, like former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, you argue there is no such thing as society then this is not for you. Existential nihilism it is not. In Michiko Aoyam’s novel everything is connected and everyone has a purpose but they might just need that little nudge to find their destiny. The beating heart of the book is Sayuri Komachi. She is...