Category: Book Reviews

Some reviewers have been comparing The Raw Shark Texts to the movie Memento. It’s a largely uninspired comparison based solely on the fact that both protagonists share some form of memory loss. But it’s a …

Over the course of his brief career Huston has very quickly become one of the top crime fiction writers. One of the things that is the most impressive about Huston’s career so far is that …

With the first half of 2007 behind us we wanted to gather the BSC think-tank and stop to smell the pages. To look in the rear-view mirror and take stock of the books that we …

This article was supposed to have been posted a couple of weeks ago and I take full responsibility. As has been said before one of the great things about Bookspotcentral is the diversity of the …

Michael McGill is a burned-out private detective and self-described “shit magnet” who is enlisted by the White House Chief of Staff to retrieve the Constitution of the United States, not the one taught about in …

The initial appearance of the pulp hero in the newspapers, radio shows and cinema of 1920s America was a reassuring affirmation of rugged American individualism in a world that, in the wake of World War …

There are a few sentences in the Prologue of Jim Butcher’s Academ’s Fury that in some ways reveal all that you need to know about the book: The steady, smoldering throb from his left knee …

From its cover one might suspect Marie Brennan’s Warrior and Witch to be a fantasy-romance hybrid, but there is actually very little romance in this tale of magic, politics and cultural change. Also misleading about …

Laura Lippman, author of the popular Tess Monaghan series, takes a break to explore a stand alone novel. In To the Power of Three she takes an old mystery novel concept, the locked room mystery …

For 2005, THE GIRL IN THE GLASS won the Edgar award for Best Paperback Original from the Mystery Writers of America. You might think a crime-writing award a strange one for Jeffrey Ford to receive …

With textual help from some well-known names, but primarily from the inspiration of classic Anglo-Saxon storysongs, Charles Vess has created a unique form of graphic novel. Recently reprinted in softcover, THE BOOK OF BALLADS is …

I always think a good hard-boiled crime novel ought to read like I’m sliding into a warm bath with slit wrists, so smooth I’m grinning through the bleed-out. Charlie Huston’s CAUGHT STEALING reads like that. …

Seymour Shubin’s WITNESS TO MYSELF is not the typical fare usually found beneath the lurid cover of a Hard Case Crime paperback. For one thing, the protagonist is a decent fellow, unlike the usual noir …

Lawrence Watt-Evans begins his latest sword and sorcery series with THE WIZARD LORD, Volume One of The Annals of the Chosen. In the land of Barokan, magic is everpresent. The ler are the spirits within …

If you haven’t yet read Titus Groan, then for all your life, the infant heir to castle Gormenghast has waited for you. Certainly for most of your life anyway, since Book One in Mervyn Peake’s …

If you have become as jaded as I have become regarding fantastic fiction, even certain title choices causes you to avoid or at the very least postpone when you get to a novel, a blasé …

Innumerable commentators, critics, fans and, lately, even film-makers have suggested that Tolkien’s oeuvre was deeply affected by his experiences in the Great War (1914-18) and particularly at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 (when …