Reviews
Set Free –
The BOLO Books Review
Set Free is the latest novel from Canadian-based crime fiction author Anthony Bidulka. As with much of his work, Set Free shows Bidulka’s love of travel and exotic locales. Set Free opens with Jaspar Wills’ arrival in Marrakech after he has left his previous life...
Sunshine Noir – The BOLO Books Review
This year has seen a plethora of outstanding short story anthologies. Already this year, BOLO Books has covered Echoes of Sherlock Holmes, Blood On the Bayou, and Storm Warning – with a few others still to come, including today’s choice. Sunshine Noir is edited by...
Say No More – The BOLO Books Review
Most crime fiction readers are aware that Hank Phillippi Ryan came to fiction writing by way of her highly successful investigative reporting career on Boston television, so it should be no surprise that her novels often feature hot-button topics which affect and...
Peepland (Issue One) – The BOLO Books Comic Review
The Times Square of the Nineteen-Eighties looked vastly different to the family wonderland found in New York City today. Often described as a den of depravity, there is little doubt that at the time it was a sketchy and seedy place, but it was also a place populated...
Echoes of Sherlock Holmes – The BOLO Books Review
Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger have once again edited a volume of stories aimed at expanding the Sherlock Holmes multiverse. As always, these two have gathered a stellar cast of writers for their new anthology, Echoes of Sherlock Holmes. This time out, the...
The Vanishing Year – The BOLO Books Review
Domestic suspense continues to be an increasingly popular sub-genre of crime fiction, rife with variations on the theme of danger lurking in the most unexpected, yet commonplace, locations. The Vanishing Year by Kate Moretti is one of the most recent examples and one...
Blood on the Bayou – The BOLO Books Review
From the Booking Desk: Blood on the Bayou is the latest Bouchercon Anthology - release recently at the 2016 Bouchercon in New Orleans. This collection of stories is 100% solid and is as diverse as the city of New Orleans itself. I could have reviewed any of these...
The Branson Beauty –
The BOLO Books Review
It is sometimes incorrectly assumed that the traditional mystery is the sole domain of the Golden Age. While it is true that many of the touchstones of the genre came from that period, there are plenty of modern mysteries that fit this mold – and in some cases expand...
Only Daughter – The BOLO Books Review
Anna Snoekstra is a debut author from Melbourne, Australia. Only Daughter is her first foray into crime fiction and was recently released. Readers who enjoy dueling timelines and complex female narrators will enjoy this succinct debut. This tightly written novel (it...
The Prison Guard’s Son – The BOLO Books Review
Over the years, many crime fiction works have been inspired by the case of James Patrick Bulger – the British two-year-old who was brutally tortured and killed by two ten-year-old boys in the early 1990’s. Authors such as Laura Lippman (with Every Secret Thing), Alex...
A Great Reckoning – The BOLO Books Review
Over the course of eleven novels, Louise Penny has amassed a legion of fans who anxiously await the release of a new Inspector Gamache novel each year. This year’s entry, A Great Reckoning, is one of the best in a series that has already reached great heights in terms...
Huntress Moon – The BOLO Books Review
(This is the third and final in a series looking at the work of Bouchercon 2016 Guests of Honor.) With Huntress Moon, Alexandra Sokoloff has used her background in screenwriting and her interest in feminism to aid in writing a thriller that manages to be both...
Closed Casket – The BOLO Books Review
Sophie Hannah is known in the crime fiction community for writing some of the most complex and psychologically sound mysteries available, so it was not a surprise when the Agatha Christie estate announced that they had chosen her to write a new Hercule Poirot novel....
Red Right Hand – The BOLO Books Review
Chris Holm was faced with a task both enviable and daunting in equal measures. Writing a follow-up to a critically-acclaimed series debut such as The Killing Kind was never going to be easy. Think of it as similar to the pressure on the creators of one of those...
Darktown – The BOLO Books Review
Thomas Mullen’s Darktown is an important book. Inspired by – and dedicated to – the legacy left by the first eight African-American officers hired by the Atlanta police department, the novel does much to explain the problems of institutionalized racism inherent in law...
The Fixes – The BOLO Books Review
When Owen Laukkanen ventured into the young adult writing world under the pen name of Owen Matthews, he created a new, unique style that is all his own. Just as with the Anthony-Award nominated How to Win at High School, Owen’s new YA novel, The Fixes, employs the...
Black Wood – The BOLO Books Review
Navigating the balance between familiar and fresh can be tricky business, but with her debut crime fiction title, Black Wood, SJI Holliday makes it look easy. Black Wood is one of those novels that employs the use of unreliable memory as a device to heighten the...
Under the Harrow – The BOLO Books Review
Flynn Berry’s Under the Harrow is a crime fiction debut that packs quite a punch. This slim volume is so densely packed with descriptive language and beautiful imagery that readers will struggle with wanting to read faster to know what happens and slowing down to...
The Silence of the Sea – The BOLO Books Review
Since her debut novel, Last Rituals, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir has been one of the most popular Icelandic authors of crime fiction. In 2015, The Silence of the Sea was awarded the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year. The Silence of the Sea is the...
The American Girl – The BOLO Books Review
After writing a Frankenstein-inspired novel, some short fiction, and many poems, Kate Horsley is now making her crime fiction debut with The American Girl. It is the story of an outsider thrust into a tangled web without the benefit of memory and a story of the woman...