I love time travel stories.  And I love history.  This book had a lot of promise.  The main character, Max (who’s female), is witty and loveable.  The book is full of action.  There are lots…

This is one of those books that I started to read, put aside, and then picked up much later and decided to give it a second chance. And it’s a good thing that I did….

This week marks the 100th anniversary of the murder of the Russian imperial family by the Bolsheviks. Among those killed were not only the hated Tsar Nicholas and his wife Alexandra, but also their five…

It’s not a total mystery why I rate Mark Billingham as the best crime writer in Britain today. He’s created a wonderful lead character, Tom Thorne, with a great supporting cast who you actually grow…

No, not that candidate.  In spite of making every effort to keep up with today’s headlines (references to the Russian seizure of Crimea, North Korea’s nuclear programme and so on), author Jason Matthews never imagines…

This, the second of the Red Sparrow books, continues where the previous one left off, and offers more of the same. It’s written by a former CIA officer, so much of it has the ring…

Jason Matthews writes with such authority about the CIA that I kept thinking as I read this book — he’s either got a great imagination, or he was a player. It turns out to be…

This is normally the kind of book I love. A gritty, serial-killer crime novel set in today’s London. Having read a very favourable review, I thought I’d give it a chance. I have to say…

This books tells the tragic story of a group of young Georgian men (and one woman) who chose to hijack a Soviet airliner in November 1983 in an attempt to escape to the West. As…

Ian Kershaw’s book aims to answer just one question: why did the Germans continue to fight even after the second world war was clearly lost? He reviews a number of explanations given, ranging from the…