Detective fiction

An ill wind in Buenos Aires: Portrait of Unknown Lady, by María Gainza, reviewed

12 March 2022 9:00 am

How to review a book that pokes fun at critics? When the protagonist of María Gainza’s Portrait of an Unknown…

On the cowboy’s trail: Powder Smoke, by Andrew Martin, reviewed

23 January 2021 9:00 am

Detective Inspector Jim Stringer is back. This is a York novel, or rather a Yorkshire crime novel. The LNER railway…

Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot

The death of cosy Christie

4 November 2017 9:00 am

This is not Midsomer Murders. The new film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express is thick with…

Finders Keepers is not so much a book as a shot-by-shot description of a future film

6 June 2015 9:00 am

Finders Keepers is a sort-of sequel to last year’s Mr Mercedes, Stephen King’s first foray into what he called ‘hard-boiled…