Review: The Black Echo, by Michael Connelly
I admit it: I’m a latecomer to this party. Michael Connelly is an enormously successful writer and his series about Los Angeles detective Harry Bosch is his best-known work. But it’s taken me nearly 30…
Articles by admin
The roaring twenties
Increasingly, big business leaders and bankers are talking about the possibility of an economic boom in the next few months. Earlier projections of economic stagnation and talk of the worst economic results in centuries have…
Review: The Bomber Mafia, by Malcolm Gladwell
If Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book about cardboard boxes, I would buy it. He could write about paint drying and make it interesting. I think every non-fiction author wants to grow up to be Malcolm…
This year on May Day, let’s not forget the class war prisoners
The noted international trade union leader Dan Gallin used to say that what the labour movement needed is a “May 2nd Movement”. In other words, after all the wonderful speeches made on May Day, we…
Review: Not Saying Goodbye, by Boris Akunin
Anyone who read through all the previous 11 Erast Fandorin novels by Boris Akunin has been waiting for this moment. Those novels chart the career of the master detective during the final decades of tsarist…
Kyrgyzstan: One step forward, two steps back
The workers of Kyrgyzstan have had very little experience of trade unionism. Under tsarist rule, unions were generally not tolerated. The Bolshevik revolution allowed unions to exist — on paper. But they were quickly turned…
Review: How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers, by Sönke Ahrens
What a long title for such a short book! A short book – but not an easy one. Ahrens is clearly an academic and this heavily footnoted book, full of citations and references, actually tells…
Review: The Other Passenger, by Louise Candlish
The author of this brand new London-based thriller is honest enough to tell readers — in the Acknowledgments — of her debt to the book Double Indemnity by James M. Cain, which was made into…
Review: In Sunlight or in Shadow – Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper, edited by Lawrence Block
Veteran author Lawrence Block has pulled together 17 of the best short story writers around today and given each one an Edward Hopper painting — that’s the idea. And it works exceptionally well, and not…
Review: Wartime Christmas Tales: A WWII Flash Fiction Anthology
I just learned what ‘flash fiction’ is this week – and this is the first anthology of flash fiction that I’ve read. If this is any indication of how good very short stories can be,…