Belfast, 1981. Detective
Sergeant Sean Duffy is the lone Catholic in a Protestant police force,
investigating a series of seemingly unrelated murders and trying to do his job
amid sectarian hatred and violence.
Kudos to McKinty for writing a dazzlingly
intricate police procedural that maintains the historical integrity of The
Troubles. And more kudos for the wickedly dark comic sensibility of the
narrator, Duffy.
He is very smart, very smart-mouthed, and very funny. This was
my fourth try this year at finding a well-written and compelling mystery
series.
All the others fell short by the second book. The
Cold Cold Ground is the first in the Duffy series of six books, and
I’ve read them all!
Fast-paced, evocative, and brutal, The Cold Cold Ground is a brilliant depiction of Belfast at the height of the Troubles -- and of a cop treading a thin, thin line.
Northern Ireland, spring 1981. Hunger strikes, riots, power cuts, a homophobic serial killer with a penchant for opera, and a young woman’s suicide that may yet turn out to be murder: on the surface, the events are unconnected, but then things -- and people -- aren’t always what they seem. Detective Sergeant Duffy is the man tasked with trying to get to the bottom of it all. It’s no easy…
One St. Valentine’s Day in 1900, the schoolgirls of Appleyard College go
on a picnic. Four of them walk up the mountain and into the rocks.
Three of
them don’t return, and they are never seen again. Lindsay’s novel delineates
the before, during, and after of their disappearance. Her critique of Victorian
stodginess and hypocrisy is incisive; her harsh Australian
bush country descriptions are beautiful.
The mood of the novel is thrillingly creepy, its
tension sustained by the inexorable unraveling of a mystery that reveals only …
more mysteries!
If you love all things Down Under, as I do, this book is a
must-read.
**A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BIG JUBILEE READ PICK**
'A sinister tale' Guardian
The classic, atmospheric Australian thriller about the mysterious disappearance of a group of young girls.
A cloudless summer day in the year nineteen hundred...
Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of Hanging Rock. Further, higher, till at last they disappeared.
The
author of the Ring trilogy writes nine stories about water—a beach, an island, a fishing boat, an abandoned yacht, an underwater
cavern, an apartment building’s sketchy water supply.
What at first feels
thematically arbitrary soon works on you creepily, leaving you feeling clammy
and scared. These are ghost stories, and I’ve never liked ghost stories because
they’re never believable to me.
Suzuki convincingly writes about ghosts of the
psyche and the ghosts of the past, so when the real ghosts appear, I believe
it. This is one scary book.
A selection of deliciously spooky short stories from the Japanese master of suspense, the acclaimed author of RING. The first story in the collection has been filmed as DARK WATER.
Suzuki demonstrates the power of his psychological insight into the mechanics of fear in this highly atmospheric collection of stories unified by the theme of water.
Following her divorce, Yoshimi Matsubara lives with her five-year-old daughter Ikuko in a depressing and damp apartment block on reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay. But when a child's red bag keeps turning up in unexpected places, Yoshino's sanity seems to be threatened, and she…
Breakfast's boiled egg, the overhead hum of fluorescent lights, the midmorning coffee break—daily routines keep the world running. But when people are pushed—by a coworker's taunt, a face-to-face encounter with a woman in free fall from a bridge—cracks appear, revealing alienation, casual cruelty, madness, and above all, a simultaneous hunger for and fear of the unknown.
Daniel Orozco leads the reader through the hidden lives and moral philosophies of bridge painters, men housebound by obesity, office temps, and warehouse workers.
He reveals the secret pleasures of late-night supermarket trips for cookie binges, exceptional data entry, and an exiled dictator's occasional piss on the US embassy.
