Sixty years after Boris Nicolaevsky wrote his account of the notorious Ievno Azef — the most infamous police agent to ever infiltrate a revolutionary organisation — Richard E. Rubenstein took a crack at the same…

Last year, I read Thomas Mullen’s Blind Spots, a novel set in the near future with an intriguing premise. I enjoyed it, and looked forward to reading The Rumor Game. This book is set in…

I admit it: I like reading books about ageing, life extension, and immortality. These seem to fall into two categories. Some authors expect to live forever because of the vitamin cocktails they drink every morning…

Aidan McQuade’s first novel, The Undiscovered Country (2020), was a bit of a hybrid — part crime novel, part history of Ireland in the period just after Partition. It was terrific because McQuade is both…

I read this book, the first in the series of 13 novels about the late 19th century Russian detective Erast Fandorin, when it first appeared some twenty years ago. I remember little about the plot,…

This is one of those books where saying who the writer was is contentious. It was initially published anonymously. Later, the exiled Russian Menshevik writer Boris Nicolaevsky was listed as the author. Nicolaevsky always claimed…

Geoffrey Roberts is a leading expert on Soviet history and chose a really interesting take on Stalin’s life with this book. His starting principle seems to be that whatever else Stalin was (e.g., a monster)…

I heard this author interviewed on the Professor Buzzkill podcast recently and loved what she had to say, especially about medieval Europe. Her book is good and entertaining. But she avoids controversy, not really dealing…

Earlier this year I read and reviewed “Damascus Station” by former CIA officer David McCloskey. I thought it a competent thriller and enjoyed it. I looked forward to reading the second book in the series,…

This book got a surprisingly good review from The Guardian and as one who likes to read the occasional personal productivity / self-help books, I thought – why not give the Terminator a go? Here’s…