(An earlier Rebus book than The Hanging Garden or The Naming of the Dead.)

A brutally murdered man has ties to Protestant loyalist para­mil­i­taries in Northern Ireland. He also happens to be the un­ac­knowl­edged son of Rebus’s old nemesis, Big Ger Cafferty, who wants revenge. Never a team player, Rebus goes his own way, solving the case against the backdrop of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and a socially deprived housing scheme.

Later in the series of Cooper-Fry books than Dancing with the Virgins. Detective Constable Ben Cooper's working re­la­tion­ship with Det. Sgt. Diane Fry has improved somewhat, with Fry now according Cooper a modicum of wary respect.

They find themselves separately in­ves­ti­gat­ing two crimes in the remote Derbyshire village of Withens: the dis­ap­pear­ance of a teenage girl two years ago and the recent murder of a young man. At the heart of local matters are the extended Oxley fam­i­ly—­sus­pi­cious, clannish, and looked down upon—and Ben must find out what they …continue.

Twenty years ago, David Marion, then a near-illiterate teenager, was sent to prison for life for the murder of two grown men. Hugh Freyl, a rich, blind lawyer, spots something ex­tra­or­di­nary in him, and spends years educating him behind bars, then securing his release. Now, Freyl has been brutally murdered and David tracks down the killer.

Brady weaves together two stories, Hugh's narrative of the last twenty years and David's in­ves­ti­ga­tion, dove­tail­ing them neatly. David is intense and paranoid, al­ter­nate­ly charming and terrifying those he comes in contact with.

The book is …continue.

Crockford is one of the world's leading JavaScript experts. In this slim volume, he explores the features of the core language, both the good parts and the warts.

JavaScript has been redeemed since 2005 with the explosive pro­lif­er­a­tion of Ajax websites. Long regarded as a toy language, suitable for little more than generating popups, we have come to learn that in the hands of experts like John Resig (of jQuery fame), JavaScript can be a powerful, expressive language. Anonymous functions, duck typing, and dynamic objects are all good …continue.

Betsy Thornhill had a face lift. It worked so well that she now passes for her mid-thirties, instead of 51. After decades in London, she moves back to Manhattan a few months after 9/11. Within days, a man who came on to her is dead, and she's the main suspect.

I didn't like this book or Betsy. I couldn't believe that all the male characters would throw themselves at her—she looks great, but her per­son­al­i­ty and confidence are lacking. Im­plau­si­bly, Betsy fails to think about her estranged daughter, Franny, for 160 pages, despite the …continue.

We saw Shake­speare in the Park's production of Twelfth Night at Seward Park last week, which prompted me to re-read this book.

Fifteen years ago, Theophilos, an agent of the Fool's Guild, then working in his guise as Feste the Jester, initiated the events roughly described in Shake­speare's play, and foiled Saladin's agent, Malvolio. Now the duke of Orsino is dead under suspicious cir­cum­stances, and Theo goes back, disguised as a German merchant.

Theo is witty, quick-witted, and po­lit­i­cal­ly astute, making for an engaging narrator of this medieval mystery.

Sugawara Akitada has been appointed as the governor of a remote northern province in feudal Japan. Aided only by a handful of retainers, he is beset by his own doubts and hostile locals. Winter is closing in and he must exert his fragile authority to rein in a mutinous baron, while also in­ves­ti­gat­ing some mysterious deaths and righting old wrongs.

Parker evokes the spare, stark beauty of Japan, in a well-written historical mystery.

King Richard III, hunchback, last of the Plante­genets, one of Shake­speare's blackest villains, and long decried as the murderer of Princes in the Tower. But did he really murder his nephews to cement his hold on his throne?

Inspector Grant, confined to a hospital bed, is given a portrait of Richard III, and finds that he cannot believe that this was the face of a cold-blooded villain. Aided by a young historial researcher, he conducts an inquiry from his bed, and makes a convincing case that another was the murderer.

More at …continue.

Sequel to Club Dead.

A coven of evil, powerful witches has moved into the area, and are causing havoc amongst the local su­per­nat­u­rals. The local vampire boss has been bespelled and lost his memory, and Sookie has to look after him. He's very attractive and she's on the rebound. And her brother has gone missing.

Sookie is a nice gal, struggling with a disability -- telepathy causes more trouble than it solves -- and trying to survive on the edges of the dangerous world of …continue.

Rudi Rosenharte is an East German academic, re­luc­tant­ly working for the Stasi, in the months before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Stasi are holding his twin brother, Konrad, hostage. Rudi's desperate to get Konrad and his family out, and he's recruited by British In­tel­li­gence.

Rudi ends up keeping four in­tel­li­gence services at bay, as he walks along an ever more precarious tightrope. The plot is, of course, im­plau­si­ble. The book brings the sheer nastiness of a police state to life, and shows the East German state collapsing as …continue.