A woman calls at a Yorkshire police station to talk to her friend, Detective Inspector Alan Banks, about the gun she found in her daughter's bedroom. Banks is out of the country, however. An un­reg­is­tered gun is a serious offence under British law and the police take it very seriously. The daughter's friend—Banks' own daughter, Tracy—goes to warn the owner, and he goes on the run with Tracy. She's willing at first then realizes that she's in way over her head with this bad boy.

Another good entry in Robinson's long-running …continue.

Tom Musgrave, sword master and master of logic, is called away from the Eliz­a­bethan court to the Scottish borders, where his brother has been found dead­—ap­par­ent­ly frozen in terror by the sight of a hellhound. Musgrave uncovers a nest of intrigue and murder when he returns home to in­ves­ti­gate.

Tonkin has written a good historical mystery, though I found the pro­ta­gan­ist's ra­ti­o­ci­na­tive powers improbable.

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote's best­selling non-fiction novel, describes the 1959 murder of a wealthy farmer and his family, which terrorized Kansas; the in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Kansas Bureau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion; the arrest six weeks later of two parolees, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith; and the lives and deaths of Hickock and Smith. Smith was a ne'er-do-well, brought up by footloose alcoholic parents, with two siblings dead of suicide, while Hickock had been brought up in a good home.

Capote “recre­at­ed” the events of the Clutter murder and, in­ci­den­tal­ly, helped create the genre …continue.

Fifteenth book in the Dresden Files series of urban fantasies.

Harry Dresden is Chicago's only pro­fes­sion­al wizard and the Winter Knight to Queen Mab. Mab compels him to team up with one of his old enemies to rob an im­preg­nable vault, a vault that belongs to Hades, lord of the Underworld. Harry distrusts Nicode­mus—right­ful­ly, as Nicodemus turns on him. But Harry can stab backs too.

A solid entry in this long running series. Harry is in­creas­ing­ly careworn but he still cracks wise, en­ter­tain­ing the readers if not his an­tag­o­nists.

Two mysteries are in­ter­twined in this novel. In the present day, a long-lost diary of Arthur Conan Doyle's from 1900 has apparently been re­dis­cov­ered, but the finder has been murdered, while in 1900, Doyle and Bram Stoker in­ves­ti­gate the murder of several young women.

The two mysteries are artfully in­ter­twined and the plots move along nicely. I was irritated by the author's ignorance of Victorian England—"It was a Victorian-era shilling, worth only five pennies in its day" (twelve, dammit, until dec­i­mal­i­sa­tion in 1971)—and weak grasp of ACD's style.

Liza lives with her reclusive mother, Eve, in the gatehouse of Shrove, a remote English country house. Liza has never been to school and has been kept apart from the world. When Eve is about to arrested for murder, she sends Liza away to a friend in London. Instead Liza runs off with the boyfriend she had met recently. She spends much of the book, like Scheherazade, telling the story of her life to Sean, as she gradually learns to live in the world.

The story may be quiet and …continue.

A collection of related short stories, all taking place in the city of Newford, which might be a little closer to other worlds than most places.

De Lint writes haunting tales of love and music and wishes being granted at a cost.

A murder in Sussex bears sim­i­lar­i­ties to another recent murder in Scotland, but what could the link between the two men be? One of the victims left a half-written letter addressed to John Madden, who is now retired from Scotland Yard. Soon there are more victims and Madden and the police struggle to find the killer.

Airth evokes both the First and Second World Wars, exploring the damage done to those who survived and the injustices visited upon some who did not.

Operation Gold was one of the CIA's great exploits of the Cold War: a tunnel running from West Berlin into the Russian sector to tap into the Soviet com­mu­ni­ca­tion lines. It was believed to be a great success when the Russians broke into the tunnel in 1956. Later it was discovered that George Blake, the MI6 traitor, had betrayed the tunnel from the beginning.

Leonard Marnham is a British Post Office engineer who is sent to Berlin to help the Americans. A naive 25-year-old virgin who lives at …continue.

Someone keeps throwing the events of Dr Thomas Wayne's life into his son Bruce's face. The murder of his parents when he was a boy ultimately led to his becoming the Batman. Now he realizes that he knew less than he had thought about his father.

Hickham does a good job of filling out the story of the Wayne family and the mark they left on Gotham.