Category Archives: Mystery & Thriller
Crime, suspense and endings you won’t forget.
The Devotion of Suspect X Review: A Cover-Up Built Like a Proof
A brilliant inverted mystery where you see the killing but not the cover-up; one of [...]
The Hound of the Baskervilles Review: Holmes Meets the Gothic
The best Sherlock Holmes novel: a family curse, a fog-bound moor and a rational detective, [...]
Big Little Lies Review: A School-Gate Comedy With a Body Count
A sharp, funny whodunit about primary-school parents that handles domestic abuse with real care. It [...]
The Maid Review: A Gentle Hotel Mystery With an Unusual Heroine
A warm, easy hotel mystery carried by Molly, its unusual narrator. The puzzle is thin [...]
Out Review: Natsuo Kirino’s Brutal Night-Shift Noir
A grim, gripping Japanese noir about four factory women and a body, brilliant on work, [...]
The Decagon House Murders Review: Christie’s Island, Rebuilt
A cheeky Japanese riff on And Then There Were None with one of the genre's [...]
The Big Sleep Review: Chandler’s Marlowe Debut Is All Voice
The first Philip Marlowe novel has a famously tangled plot and ugly period attitudes, but [...]
The Silence of the Lambs Review: Clarice, Lecter and the Clock
A tense, intelligent serial-killer thriller built on the duel between Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter; [...]
The Housemaid Review: Trashy, Twisty and Hard to Put Down
A pulpy, compulsively readable domestic thriller. The prose is flat and the logic thin, but [...]
Rebecca Review: The Gothic Suspense Novel That Still Haunts
Du Maurier's masterpiece of jealousy and dread: a slow-burning Gothic mystery with a dark heart [...]
The Name of the Rose Review: A Medieval Whodunit in a Library Maze
A dense, brilliant medieval murder mystery that doubles as a novel of ideas. The theology [...]
Shutter Island Review: A Storm-Lashed Gothic Thriller That Holds Up
A storm-lashed gothic thriller whose famous reveal holds up on a second read. The middle [...]