Review: ‘Cause of Death’ Geoffrey Garrett

Dr Geoffrey Garrett was for over 30 years a Home Office pathologist. This is his personal memoir, in conjunction with crime journalist Andrew Nott, of many infamous, unusual and heartbreaking cases and a fascinating history of his professional life, giving a unique insight into a pathologist's work. I came across Cause of Death while trawling …

Review: ‘Out’ Natsuo Kirino

In the Tokyo suburbs four women work the draining graveyard shift at a boxed-lunch factory. Burdened with chores and heavy debts and isolated from husbands and children, they all secretly dream of a way out of their dead-end lives. A young mother among them finally cracks and strangles her philandering, gambling husband then confesses her …

Review: ‘The Final Girl Support Group’ Grady Hendrix

In horror movies, the final girl is the one who’s left standing when the credits roll. The one who fought back, defeated the killer, and avenged her friends. The one who emerges bloodied but victorious. But after the sirens fade and the audience moves on, what happens to her? Lynnette Tarkington survived a massacre twenty-two …

Review: ‘Death of Darkness’ Dianne Duvall

Seth has led the Immortal Guardians for thousands of years. With them fighting by his side, he has protected humans from psychotic vampires, defeated corrupt mercenary armies, defended military bases under attack, and more. But the latest enemy to rise against the Immortal Guardians has proven to be a formidable one, wielding almost as much …

Review: ‘Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers’ Mary Roach

What happens to your body after you have died? Fertilizer? Crash test Dummy? Human dumpling? Ballistics practise? Life after death is not as simple as it looks. Mary Roach's Stiff lifts the lid off what happens to our bodies once we have died. Bold, original and with a delightful eye for detail, Roach tells us …

Review: ‘Earthlings’ Sayaka Murata

Natsuki isn't like the other girls. She has a wand and a transformation mirror. She might be a witch, or an alien from another planet. Together with her cousin Yuu, Natsuki spends her summers in the wild mountains of Nagano, dreaming of other worlds. When a terrible sequence of events threatens to part the two …

Review: ‘Awaken the Darkness’ Dianne Duvall

He awakens encapsulated in dirt with no knowledge of how he came to be there. Riddled with injuries, he can remember neither his past nor who he is. Nor can he remember what he is. But surely no mortal man could survive being buried deep beneath the earth. All he knows with certainty is that …

June in books

How are we more than halfway through the year already? 2020 was a complete write-off and I feel like 2021 has pretty much been the same so far. I try not to complain because I've been extremely lucky compared to other people over the course of pandemic. The nature of mine and my partner's jobs …

Review: ‘Murder: The Biography’ Kate Morgan

The stories and the people involved in the history of murder are stranger, darker and more compulsive than any crime fiction. There’s Richard Parker, the cannibalized cabin boy whose death at the hands of his hungry crewmates led the Victorian courts to decisively outlaw a defence of necessity to murder. Dr Percy Bateman, the incompetent …

Review: ‘Stolen Tongues’ Felix Blackwell

High up on the windswept cliffs of Pale Peak, Faye and Felix celebrate their new engagement. But soon, a chorus of ghastly noises erupts from the nearby woods: the screams of animals, the cries of children, and the mad babble of a hundred mournful voices. A dark figure looms near the windows in the dead …