Saratoga Payback by Stephen Dobyns

Litchfield Reviews Saratoga Payback by Stephen Dobyns for the Lancashire Post

Lancashire Post book review by Nicholas Litchfield: After an absence of almost 20 years, Stephen Dobyns’ popular laconic hero, former police sergeant turned private eye Charlie Bradshaw, makes a welcome return to the sleuthing world in a lively tale of multiple murder, mutilation and horse-napping.

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Date with the Executioner by Edward Marston

Litchfield Reviews Date with the Executioner by Edward Marston for the Lancashire Post

Lancashire Post book review by Nicholas Litchfield: In the latest novel in the highly addictive Bow Street Rivals series, identical-twin detectives Peter and Paul Skillen are embroiled in a dangerous case of treachery, fraud and murder involving two ill-matched duellists sparring over a beautiful woman.

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Litchfield Review Fragments of a Mirror by Knud Sønderby for Colorado Review

Colorado Review book review by Nicholas Litchfield: “Full of deft humor and thoughtful introspection, Fragments of a Mirror offers up glittering shards of Knud Sønderby at his finest. Though only fifty-seven years old when he died, Sønderby published five novels, six collections of essays, and multiple plays. During his lifetime, he became a distinguished Danish novelist, journalist, translator, and essayist. Longtime translator Michael Goldman should be congratulated for bringing this fine Danish writer’s work back into circulation, fifty-one years after the author’s death, and introducing him to a new population.”

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Angels Flight by Lou Cameron

Litchfield Reviews Angel’s Flight by Lou Cameron for the Lancashire Post

Lancashire Post book review by Nicholas Litchfield: Reprinted for the first time in 57 years comes a hard-hitting crime noir tour de force charting a gutsy musician’s bruising journey through the cut-throat American music business during the Dirty Thirties to the Fabulous Fifties.

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A Garden Fed by Lightning by Marshall Moore

Litchfield Reviews A Garden Fed by Lightning by Marshall Moore for the Colorado Review

Colorado Review book review by Nicholas Litchfield: Throughout A Garden Fed by Lightning, the third story collection from Marshall Moore, the quality of the writing is consistently sharp, continually impressive. Infused with an element of the fantastical, many of the stories, initially appearing straightforward and grounded in reality, veer off into unexpected, outlandish territory, and, more often than not, characters are not what they seem.

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Book review: The Bertie Project by Alexander McCall Smith

Litchfield Reviews The Bertie Project by Alexander McCall Smith for the Lancashire Post

Lancashire Post book review by Nicholas Litchfield: Love and marriage, freedom and loneliness, and risk and misadventure are some of the themes in the latest instalment of prolific, bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith’s delightfully witty 44 Scotland Street series.

The Bertie Project, the eleventh novel in the immensely popular series focused on the lives of a small community of people inhabiting a somewhat Bohemian corner of Edinburgh’s New Town, finds many of the streets best-loved residents buffeted by the winds of change.

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Book review: World, Chase Me Down by Andrew Hilleman

Litchfield Reviews World, Chase Me Down by Andrew Hilleman for the Lancashire Post

Lancashire Post book review by Nicholas Litchfield: Colourful, real-life American outlaw Pat Crowe, the most wanted man in America at the turn of the century, is masterfully resurrected in the epic, action-packed Western novel World, Chase Me Down.

Andrew Hilleman’s riveting debut chronicles the incredible exploits of a hardened criminal who gained notoriety in 1900 for kidnapping and holding to ransom the teenage son of a meatpacking tycoon in Omaha and got away with $25,000 in gold.

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