{"id":130337,"date":"2025-10-18T14:55:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T14:55:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/130337\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T14:55:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T14:55:18","slug":"the-best-recent-crime-and-thrillers-review-roundup-books-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/130337\/","title":{"rendered":"The best recent crime and thrillers \u2013 review roundup | Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quantum of Menace<\/a> by Vaseem Khan (<\/strong>Zaffre, \u00a320<\/strong>)
<\/strong>Dismissed from his role as a back-room boffin in the British secret service, Major Boothroyd, AKA Q, returns to his market-town roots in Khan\u2019s excellent James Bond spin-off. This Q is currently in his 50s; his backstory includes a fling with Miss Moneypenny, and emotional baggage in the form of his retired history don father. What\u2019s drawn him home is the mysterious drowning of his old friend, quantum scientist Peter Napier, who has left him an encrypted note; although the coroner has ruled the death to be accidental and Q\u2019s old flame, DCI Kathy Burnham, is not minded to reopen the case. The stakes here are worthy of the Fleming canon \u2013 Napier\u2019s revolutionary work may have terrible consequences \u2013 and even if you\u2019re not a Bond fan, you can\u2019t fail to enjoy this solidly plotted and unexpectedly funny blend of nostalgia and new technology.<\/p>\n

The Killing Stones<\/a> by Ann Cleeves (<\/strong>Macmillan, \u00a322<\/strong>)
<\/strong>Bestseller Cleeves\u2019s latest novel is billed as the return of Jimmy Perez, as Perez and his life partner DI Willow Reeves, now living on the Orkney Islands with their young son, team up to solve a murder. It\u2019s nearly Christmas when Jimmy\u2019s old friend Archie Stout is found dead at the site of an archeological dig, felled by a Neolithic stone purloined from the local heritage centre. Suspects soon proliferate: the artist with whom roving-eyed Archie may have been having an affair; teacher and local history enthusiast George Riley; mediagenic archeology professor Tony Johnson, and even the deceased\u2019s wife. With an evocation of place that is second to none, Cleeves keeps the narrative plates spinning beautifully to create a complex plot that takes in both the thorny issue of who controls heritage and the pernicious effects of online misogyny.<\/p>\n

The Long Shoe<\/a> by Bob Mortimer (<\/strong>Gallery, \u00a322<\/strong>)<\/strong>
Unemployed bathroom salesman Matt, protagonist of Bob Mortimer\u2019s third novel, is someone who aims low in life and usually misses. He will be familiar, albeit with a different name and CV, to anyone who has read the first two books, right down to his ventriloquised cat, this symbol-of-loneliness role having previously been taken by, respectively, a squirrel and a pigeon. Not only has Matt lost his job, but his girlfriend Harriet has left and he\u2019s about to be made homeless. Offered a rent-free luxury flat, he jumps at the chance, but of course there\u2019s a catch; and meanwhile, Harriet is having problems of her own. Whether or not you enjoy this will depend more on your fondness for Mortimer\u2019s surreal humour than your liking for crime fiction. Matt\u2019s inability to take appropriate action at any given moment will have punctilious readers foaming at the mouth, but at the heart of the preposterous plot is a touching story about human relationships.<\/p>\n

Benbecula<\/a> by Graeme Macrae Burnet (<\/strong>Polygon, \u00a312)<\/strong>
<\/strong>Graeme Macrae Burnet\u2019s latest is part of the Darkland Tales series of contemporary takes on Scottish history and legends. The Booker-shortlisted author has chosen a true story from 1857, when labourer Angus McPhee murdered his parents and aunt at their small farm in Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides. Tried and found to be criminally insane, he spent the rest of his life in the Criminal Lunatic Department of Perth Prison. Based on such records as are available, Burnet\u2019s account of the events is narrated, some years after the fact, by Angus\u2019s brother Malcolm, who is still living, alone and largely ostracised by the community, in the family home. Recalling the events that led up to the killing, Malcolm slowly loses his grip on reason as he tries to make sense of something senseless. Burnet\u2019s vivid portrayal of a troubled household by a man attempting to explain the inexplicable is dark, intense and utterly compelling.<\/p>\n

The Winter Warriors<\/a> by Olivier Norek, translated by Nick Caistor (<\/strong>Open Borders, \u00a318.99<\/strong>)
<\/strong>Prize-winning French author Norek, best known for his cop series, has turned his hand to crime on a grand scale: the 1939 Soviet invasion of Finland. The \u201cWinter war\u201d, during which the temperature plummeted to -51C and the massively outnumbered Finns succeeded in keeping the Russian bear at bay and inflicting far heavier casualties than they sustained, was so embarrassing to the Kremlin that the conflict was written out of official Soviet history. Although Norek gives us a god\u2019s eye view of proceedings, the moral and dramatic centre of the action is Finnish sniper Simo H\u00e4yh\u00e4, who, like most of the main characters, is drawn from life, and whose skill earned him the nickname \u201cWhite Death\u201d. The Soviet generals were more afraid of Stalin than of the enemy; horribly topical and wholly immersive, with descriptions vivid enough to make you shiver, this astonishing book is not only a testament to bravery and resilience, but a powerful indictment of the cruelty and needless suffering that result when ideology comes up against reality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Quantum of Menace by Vaseem Khan (Zaffre, \u00a320)Dismissed from his role as a back-room boffin in the British…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[359,18,117,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-130337","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}