In Our Mad and Furious City
Book
Guy Gunaratne's blistering debut, IN OUR MAD AND FURIOUS CITY, is an unforgettable portrait of 48...
literary fiction
Alien
Book
A legendary fusion of science fiction and horror, Alien (1979) is one of the most enduring modern...
Tales of the Thieftaker
Book
A pre-dawn fire that nearly destroys the colonial city of Boston. A young witch in the town of...
The Forest Lover
Book
In her acclaimed novels, Susan Vreeland has given us portraits of painting and life that are as...
Beneath the World, a Sea
Book
South America, 1990. Ben Ronson, a British police officer, arrives in a mysterious forest to...
The Cornish Coast Murder
Book
'Never, even in his most optimistic moments, had he visualised a scene of this nature - himself in...
The Traitor
Book
"War is coming - and that means our secret agents must get busy.'August 1918. On his way to the...
Adam Colclough (3 KP) rated Harry's Game in Books
Mar 6, 2018
For the most part thrillers are the literary equivalent of Danish pastry, enjoyable but not made to last. A few, and ‘Harry’s Game’ is one, are more substantial fare, food for the mind that may give you indigestion.
On one level it is a book in the tradition established by Frederick Forsythe, fiction played out as fact allowing the author to draw on his journalistic background. Seymour goes beyond this by creating characters who aren’t simply stock heroes and villains. Instead they are human beings engaged in a struggle that is squalid and futile rather than heroic and purposeful.
This combines to give a grimly believable picture of daily life in Northern Ireland at a time when a single word or action out of place could have deadly consequences. He also writes well about the machinations behind the scenes on both sides, with the British political and military establishment struggling to fight an undeclared war they don’t understand; and the IRA high command masking the brutality of their actions behind misty eyed romanticism.
Brutal, believable and still relevant more than forty years after it was first published this is a novel that is very much worth reading, even if doing so can be unsettling.
The Colour of Murder
Book
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MARTIN EDWARDS 'One of our most ingenious and stylish home-grown crime...
Fiction Historical Mystery Thriller
Norwegian Wood: Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2016
Book
THE BRITISH BOOK INDUSTRY AWARDS NON-FICTION BOOK THE OF YEAR 2016 "Every man looks at his wood-pile...