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.

Here are some crime reads for you in this last phase of summer (that we never had this year). 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!

The first month of working at the murder mystery bookshop Hammett behind me, I naturally have been focusing on reading thrillers and mysteries, since my new colleagues have lots of good recommendations and I too need to have a few good books up my sleeve to recommend to customers. It is both similar and very different to working in Otherland as the reading habits of crime fiction readers are quite something else. For instance, there's no such thing as second reading in this genre. Once you know who the murder is it's done, you neither need to re-read nor really own that book anymore. Serializing crime stories for Netflix and other streaming platforms interestingly works against this genre, since, here too, once you know how the story ends, you don't really need to read it anymore. That's completely the opposite for Science Fiction and Fantasy, as once an SF/F story is filmed, that's where it grabs the audience's attention. After the first episode they come to bo...

The past month I haven't read as much horror as I'm used to mainly because I was out and about watching movies at various festivals. Now if you ask, "What does watching movies have to do with that?", the answer is "A lot". I want to sit down in peace and quiet and let the dread sink in when I'm reading horror and not be quickly hopping from one cinema to the other and waiting in long queues to get a good sitting place and all the while trying to listen to some audiobook or narrowing my tired eyes in dim cinema lights to read my crumbled paperback before the next movie begins. I discovered that the best genre to go with these frenetic and restless times are thrillers and that's what I ended up reading most in February . Plus, sometimes that's just what your soul wants. Looking back, I ended up discovering lots of interesting authors and reading good books which finally ended up here. Enjoy!

I'm not going to lie here, I love me a good thriller. That feeling of an impossible puzzle brought together, a mystery solved in a good and original way is just too satisfying and I'm on the hunt for that feeling. So you may have realized over the months that the amount of thrillers and mysteries I'm reading is slowly creeping upwards. So much so that now I decided to collect my thriller and mystery reviews in a separate column for hobby detectives like ... me? yourself? Since this isn't my primary preferred genre, I'm probably not as well-read as I am, say, in horror or science fiction, but I'm working on it and trying to catch up. That's why I probably won't be reading the newest books, unless there's a real buzz about them. I'll also and mostly read books according to my mood and whether or not they sound interesting. So please enjoy the very first thrillers-only PD column, filled only with interesting books!

The spring books are here! Here's the wrap-up of my April reads which were actually a lot because I joined lots of group reads. The most spectacular one was the Easter Bunny horror read and it was a blast - you'd be surprised by how many Easter bunny themed horror books there are! After my disappointment with the latest mystery and crime books I have read, I decided to go back to the roots and read from the pen of the Queens of the genre; Agatha Christie and Patricia Highsmith. Nothing close to disappointed this time. So I hope you enjoy the short reviews and find some reads that may interest you!

Alright, here are the short reviews of the last month or so. I have the feeling that I read a little less than usual, but I guess it was only a little less horror than usual and a whole lot more thrillers, most of which I didn't end up enjoying but maybe you like them? Have a look and see yourself!

Enjoy the new shorties!