Imagine if Raymond Chandler wrote near-future science fiction. That pretty much sums up this book. A detective who helps the police but is not a part of the police, with incredible fighting skills and a…
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I am currently in the Georgian capital, participating in the Tbilisi International Festival of Literature. The subject of the festival is protest — a very timely topic in Georgia with national elections just weeks away….
This is a very strange and deeply unpleasant book about a young man who knew no love growing up in 18th century France, has a virtual super-power in his sense of smell, and becomes a…
An observation: If the first book in a series is called “Agent Seventeen”, wouldn’t the sequel be called something like “Agent Eighteen”? A minor quibble. The important thing to note is that the second in…
As this book received the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award in 2023, I thought I’d give it a go. It is a very silly book. Agent Seventeen — whose real name we never learn —…
If you’re like me, most of what you know about ancient Rome comes from repeated viewings of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. Maybe even seeing Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus. I never received a “classical” education when I grew…
Last weekend, as part of our wedding celebration, we invited guests from all over the world to come to Highgate Cemetery and to visit the grave of Karl Marx. (Doesn’t everyone do this?). Here is…
This a wonderful book. No, really. I was a bit concerned as I don’t always enjoy anthologies, and the only author names I recognised were F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda Fitzerald, and Dorothy Parker. But that…
For some time now, the consensus in the mainstream media in Britain and elsewhere has been that Ukraine has effectively lost the war with Russia. Slowly and methodically, Russian troops have taken village after village…
I recently saw (again) the film, starring Michael Caine and the late Donald Sutherland, and this awakened in me an interest in reading the original book. There were a couple of pleasant surprises. For one…