thrillers
Black Lake, Series Finale, BBC Four review – Nordic noir comes to an unsatisfying endSunday, 08 October 2017
Beware – here be spoilers, though if you can make them out through the blizzard of cliché that engulfed the last double-bill of this thunderingly underwhelming Nordic noir then you’re already ahead of me.Black Lake (BBC Four) saw a group of largely... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Berlin SyndromeTuesday, 03 October 2017
There’s an intriguing combination of style and atmosphere in Berlin Syndrome, one that proves that, although director Cate Shortland has embraced genre with conviction, she certainly hasn’t left the arthouse roots that she established with her first... Read more... |
Black Lake, BBC Four review – Nordic blanc falls flatSunday, 17 September 2017
What would Saturday nights be without BBC Four’s regular subtitle-fests? Black Lake, their new Swedish import, has nothing in the way of originality to recommend it, but its tale of a haunted ski resort somewhere out towards the Norwegian border may... Read more... |
John le Carré: A Legacy of Spies review - the master in twilight moodSunday, 10 September 2017
Over his long career – 23 novels, memoirs, his painfully believable narratives adapted into extraordinary films (10 for the big screen) and for television – John le Carré has created a world that has gripped readers and viewers alike. He has... Read more... |
Safe House, series 2, ITV review - the abduction and captivity show returnsFriday, 08 September 2017
Forget Christopher Eccleston and the Lake District. Two years on, Ed Whitmore’s ready-mix thriller Safe House returns with Stephen Moyer in Merseyside. He plays Tom Brook – not the venerable film critic (Talking Movies is still showing on BBC World... Read more... |
Strike: The Cuckoo's Calling, BBC One review - JK Rowling's debut in crime bows most promisinglyMonday, 28 August 2017
There’s a new ‘tec in town. Cormoran Strike may look like one of life’s losers – he’s on the edge of bankruptcy, sleeps in the office, and what passes for a personal life is a right mess – but in Tom Burke’s portrayal I suspect he’s going to be... Read more... |
Val McDermid: Insidious Intent review - dark and expert crime writingSunday, 27 August 2017
Val McDermid has written close on 30 award-winning thrillers and suspense novels, in four series, since the late 1980s, all of them featuring a lead female protagonist. She herself worked as a journalist and a crime reporter, and the atmosphere is... Read more... |
Blu-ray: RoninFriday, 18 August 2017
There are three bravura scenes in Ronin that merit the price of acquisition. Two of them are French car chases, one along the twisting alleys of Nice, the other through the tunnels and up the wrong side of the carriageway in Paris. It’s a mark of... Read more... |
Coming soon: trailers to the next big filmsFriday, 11 August 2017
Summer's here, which can only mean Hollywood blockbusters. But it's not all Spider-Man, talking apes and World War Two with platoons of thespians fighting on the beaches. There's comedy, a saucy menage-à-trois, a film about golf and even a ghost... Read more... |
Emma Dibdin: 'Being scared of something is a sign you should write about it'Saturday, 05 August 2017
When I began writing my first novel four years ago, there were a few ideas that had coalesced in my mind. I knew I wanted to write a thriller about mental illness through the eyes of a young woman whose family had been defined by it; someone... Read more... |
Peter Høeg: The Susan Effect review - Nordic noir turns surrealSunday, 23 July 2017
Peter Høeg is still overwhelmingly known for a novel published a quarter of a century ago. Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow featured a half-Inuit woman whose suspicion over a young neighbour’s death in Copenhagen lures her from Denmark back to... Read more... |
Michael Connelly: The Late Show review - mesmerising and believable charactersSunday, 09 July 2017
Readers have been committed fans since 1992, when the sometime crime reporter Michael Connelly turned novelist. Connelly’s best-known sequence has featured, over three decades now, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) detective Hieronymus Bosch... Read more... |
