protean depravity

It's finally time for some crime, thriller and mystery again, let's go! I've had tons of time to read over the festive days (it was so wonderful), so there are quite a few short reviews today. Enjoy.

Hey everyone! Hope you survived October and Halloween just fine, and as we enter the dark and grisly part of the year, drinking tea and reading books sounds all the more appealing. And reading mysteries while the weather is raging outside is a comfy classic, so here are some recommendations for those days I hope you enjoy!

Finally, I've managed to accumulate some books, some crime and thriller books to discuss here, it took me long enough... Enjoy these reviews, and don't forget that the world's very best crime fiction bookshop, Hammett Berlin , is turning 30 years old in the first week of June and we are celebrating throughout the whole week with games, food, non-alcoholic drinks, reinforced presence (I'll be there on Monday, Thursday and Saturday afternoons) in the shop and a raffle in which you can win dapper new books which the publishing houses gave us for free to give away to you! It will be fun, mark your calendar; June 2 - 7, at Hammett! Now, off to the reviews.

Enjoy thriller time!

Finally I managed to read enough thrillers for this corner, phew! They're all recommendations I got from the Hammett crew, so they're all expert approved and quality controlled. Hope you enjoy!

Some murder mystery or crime titles that I have caught from the Hammett clients or from what my local library offers. Enjoy!

Devastation from cover to cover... A story of a man who lost everything, became a monster and confronted bigger monsters - what a genuine adventure.

Enjoy the latest short reviews!

Hey! It's time for new short reviews again and the closer we come to the end of the year, the crazier and the better the books get, let me tell you. Look out for the Best Of 2021 next week as there will be some tough choices to make.

Time for new reads, enjoy! Children of Chicago by Cynthia Pelayo Children of Chicago borrows from the Grimm tale "Pied Piper" or "Der Rattenfänger von Hameln" to twist and bend into the horrific teenager killings taking place i n Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood , signed with the graffiti "Pay the Piper". Detective Lauren Medina who is in charge of the case has many demons of her own and one of them just might have to do with what happened at Humboldt Park. Following her through the investigations, slowly unfolding the mysteries of that unfortunate night, doubts will unfold if she really is the right person to treat this case. Pelayo's crime/mystery/horror mash-up should be a real treat for especially German horror readers because it doesn't only borrow its main storyline from Pied Piper, there are also tons and tons of talk about fairy tales in general, and the Grimm brothers in special, and how terrifying they actually are! Incidentally, th...

Here's my latest wrap up; enjoy! The Lost Book of Adana Moreau by Michael Zapata Zapata's debut, The Lost Book of Adana Moreau very elegantly and very skillfully braids the intersecting lives of a myriad of people, concentrating on a frame story revolving around Chicagoan Saul Drower and Maxwell Moreau, grandson of the late ingenious science fiction writer Adana Moreau. It is a love letter to science fiction, parallel universes as well as storytelling in general and really has the potential to enchant you. I'm a sucker for the "story-within-story" technique, so was really delighted Zapata uses it so masterly here. Unfortunately I did not read it in print, I listened to the audiobook. And the thing with audiobooks is that if you don't click with the narrator it can substantially reduce your enjoyment of the book and that happened to me here. I might try reading it in print at a later stage maybe. Love in the Time of Dinosaurs by Kirsten Alene When a few m...

Elizabeth Hand is one of those veteran authors that genre aficionados know and appreciate but who has never made it completely into the mainstream. Honestly, this is a big shame, because every single book by her is a professionally written world of its own - well crafted, well researched, always with an extra mile beyond the ordinary story line. Her Locus and Shirley Jackson nominated latest book Curious Toys is no different; it combines elements of historical fiction, crime fiction and horror in a way that will keep you up at night turning the pages. I for my part enjoyed reading it so much that I carefully rationed the pages so that I wouldn't devour it within a couple of days in my haste and in order to prolong my enjoyment. Truth is, this isn't only a book. This is a captivating time capsule that will carry you away to the early 20th century and that definitely lives up to its title! It's August 1915 and the Riverview Amusement Park in Chicago features many curiosit...