BLEED A RIVER DEEP, Brian McGilloway

MacMillan, April '09, ISBN 978-0230701366, £12.99 In the last few years, Ireland has been consistently upping the stakes with its contri...

THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE by Steig Larsson

Maclehouse Press, an imprint of Quercus Books, January 2009, ISBN 9781847245564, £16.99 The second in Larrson's Millennium trilogy, The ...

Donald E Westlake (Richard Stark) passes

The creator of Dortmunder and (under the name Richard Stark) master criminal Parker has passed away. He died on wednesday 29 December, 2008 ...

PARIAH by Dave Zeltserman

Serpent's Tail, 2009, ISBN 978-1846686436, £7.99 Its rare that a meta novel ends up being entertaining as well as clever, but Dave Zelts...

AUDITION - Ryu Murakami

Bloomsbury, 2009, ISBN 9780747589488, £10 A couple of years ago, a friend passed me a copy of In the Miso Soup, with the warning that it wa...

THE BIG O by Declan Burke - guest review by Tony Black

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008, ISBN 978-0151014088 Declan Burke has been on quite a trip with his hugely-acclaimed second novel, The Big O...

The Books of the Year

Russel has been a little slow with reviews lately. However, for some of his top reads of the year, and also those of other respected critics...