The Judge and His Hangman could be devoured in a single sitting, its haunting contents continuing to unspool for days after the backcover folds over.
Category: Reviews
A desert trip to cherish: Wolfgang Herrndorf’s Sand is an oasis of literary ideas
As if Graham Greene took The Comedians and got Hunter S Thompson to take it out the brain-boiling wilderness for a spot of fear and loathing.
The Executioner Weeps: A heady tale of memory loss and dread by Frederic Dard
Reading The Executioner Weeps is reminder of how direct and well-paced a crime novel can be.
A great Japanese novella blossoms: Exploring Spring Garden
Tomoka Shibasaki’s Spring Garden is quietly a great many things, but primarily it appears to be a meditation of seasonality. Buildings are constructed in the spring, flourish in the summer, recede in the autumn and are knocked down in the winter to be rebuilt in the spring again. Their inhabitants follow a similar cycle. They…
Kidnappings and political trappings: Rediscovering Gregory Mcdonald’s Snatch via Hard Case Crime
Wonderfully adept at weaving in new characters, Mcdonald takes a simple melody and orchestrates it into a cacophony of noise. It demands your attention.
Requiem for the Detective Novel: The case for Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s 1958 masterpiece The Pledge
What really happens to a policeman who can’t solve his most important case? What becomes of a pillar of society whose foundations are crumbling?
