detective story
How can we know what dead people want?
In 1999, Patrick Hemingway published True at First Light, a new novel by his father Ernest. In his role as…
A dense, angry fable
Set partly in a future surveillance society, partly in ancient Carthage and 1970s Ethiopia, partly in contemporary Greece and London…
City of dreadful dusk
Fantastic fiction loves contrasts made explicit: Eloi and Morlocks, orcs and elves, and above all humans battling vampires, Martians or…
Velázquez’s vanishing act
This is an extraordinary story. In 1845 John Snare, an unremarkable Reading bookseller, goes to an auction in a defunct…
Wave goodbye to the weight-gaining, drunk-driving Inspector Wallander
Some years ago I met the Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell at the Savoy Hotel in London, where he was…
Hercule Poirot returns – and yes, he’s as irritating as ever
First, a confession. I have never cared much for Hercule Poirot. In this I am not alone, for his creator…
