Review
Shakespearean Whodunnits (ed) by Mike Ashley
Robinson Pbk. £5.99
This book is a must for anyone who wonders what might lie behind Shakespeare's plots. It's all very well to know that Falstaff dies in Henry V, but how? And what about Coriolanus? All we hear is, he's dead. This selection of twenty-three tales by different authors takes us behind the bald facts of the plays and presents each as a mystery. Treated this way even Romeo and Juliet gives opportunities for speculation, for who was it at the terrible end of the play who discovered the truth behind the collection of corpses in the crypt? How did they know who killed who, and why?
"Shakespearean Whodunnits - Murders and Mysteries Based on Shakespeare's Plays" is a series of short stories, in each of which a murder is looked at from a different angle. And if, like me, you're no Shakespearean expert, don't worry - the stories all have a short introduction to explain Shakespeare's plot and who the leading protagonists are. I must admit I found it essential, especially with lesser-known plays such as 'The Winter's Tale' and 'Timon of Athens'. Like most twentieth-century readers I make no claim to be a Shakespearean expert and I needed the brief explanations.
Some of these stories are little gems. I would never have believed that Tom Holt ('Who's Afraid of Beowulf?', 'Ye Gods!', and 'Faust Among Equals') was an expert on ancient Rome, but his 'Cinna The Poet' (from Julius Caesar) was wonderful. I also have to praise Margaret Frazer's 'The Death of Kings' (from Richard II), which had a deeply unpleasant twist, Louise CoopeI's 'Not Wisely But Too Well' (from Othello), Susan B Kelly's 'Much Ado About Something' (I think you can guess!), which turned the play on its head for me in a marvellously unpleasant manner, and Paul Barnett's 'Imogen' (from Cymbeline) which was quite spine-tingling.
If you are interested in Shakespearean times, if you like looking at an old story from a new perspective, or if you simply enjoy good short stories, you should try "Shakespearean Whodunnits".
(Mike Jecks)

Review
The Name of a Bullfighter by Luis Sepulveda
Allison & Busby  Pbk. £7.99
'Hey bro, bring me one of those misnomers'. 'What's that?' the barkeeper asked. 'A Cuba Libre'. The barkeeper filled his order.
Welcome to the world of the disillusioned political activists, as they live with 'the shame of defeat', left stranded as one by one the so-called socialist states crumble under the weight of their own inadequacies and the revolutionary movements of the world collapse. But Juan Belmonte, 44 year-old ex-guerilla fighter, named for the Andalucian bullfighter of whom Hemingway wrote so eloquently in Death in the Afternoon, has one last cause to which he can dedicate his life. Across the world from his temporary refuge in Hamburg, in Santiago, Chile, lives Veronica, a mute wrecked shadow of the woman he loved many years before. So when the crippled Oskar Kramer proposes that Juan should return to Chile to trace a cache of medieval gold coins, he can no longer ignore the embrace of a country where, he believes, the price of democracy is paid in 'the currency called forgetting'.
The book opens unforgettably. A lone horseman waits for a letter in a remote region of Tierra del Fuego “
........"they're coming for you. The same ones as always", he reads. In Chapter Two another letter reveals how the coins came “into play”, a tale of the extraordinary friendship spanning five decades between two wartime comrades, policemen of the Third Reich, separated first by the ideologies under which they came to live, now by time and age. We also meet Frank Galinsky, ex-Stasi. He too is propositioned to recover the coins, this time by his former chief.
A simple story then, though ingeniously constructed and written with pace and style (the book is dedicated, amongst others, to Paco Taibo and the 'roman noir'). But Sepulveda gives the book a remarkable resonance, mostly through Belmonte's dedication to Veronica (I defy you to read the final chapter and not weep) but also by writing from his own background as a political exile in Germany. Thus he is able to cast an unflinching eye both on the shortcomings of his adopted country and on the courage, duplicity and betrayals of twenty years of political struggle in Latin America, vignettes of which litter (and bolster) his narrative.
So finally this is a novel about the transience of political endeavour and the enduring power of friendship and love. It is a fine and moving book. 'Destined for the screen' said Kirkus Reviews. If only Sam Peckinpah, that other rugged idealist and poet of comradeship and loyalty, were alive to make it.
Bob Cornwell

 Review
Nightmare City by Nick Oldham
Headline £17.99
Blackpool on the Saturday night of a match day.  The over-stretched police force is struggling to cope with the football hooligans and drunks, giving the criminal fraternity breathing space for larger crime.  There is a raid on a newsagents in which owners and customers and a police officer are killed.  Then the following morning a young woman is found dead on the beach,  brutally murdered.  While far away in Madeira in an apparently unrelated crime, a young woman FBI agent is also found dead.  The local police think she is a drunken suicide, but  fellow agent Karl Donaldson is not convinced.  The Madeira connection with the Blackpool crimes does not become apparent until later in the novel.
These three crimes - there are other murders and attempted murders on the way - provide three strands of a closely-plotted police novel. Interlinked are the stories of Acting Detective Inspector Henry Christie and Karl Donaldson on the law and order side and on the other ex-gangster John Rider and his former associates Ronnie Conroy and Charlie Munrow. Rider has renounced his criminal past and Munrow has only recently been released from prison, but Conroy is now a big-time criminal who has bought the services of the chief of the North West Organised Crime Squad, Chief Superintendent Tony Morton, whose force is now out of control.  Henry Christie is a floundering but still formidable piggy-in-the-middle, an honest cop who finds the odds so stacked against him that the reader fears for his safety.
Nick Oldham is a new writer - this is his second book - who tells a gripping story, mainly in short bursts in the contemporary manner, which keeps the reader turning the pages.  Unlike some authors who choose fictitious locations he sets his story in a real place, Blackpool, with Henry Christie a member of the Blackpool force, and is courageous enough to deal with police corruption on a large scale, courageous because he is himself a serving police officer.  The corruption shown here may stretch the reader's credibility somewhat, but nevertheless this is an effective and well-written novel with a really exciting car chase.
John Boyles

 Review
Scalpel by Paul Carson
Heinemann Hardback £10.00
For most of us, putting our faith in doctors is something we do without question. Therefore it can be unnerving to remind ourselves that they are human, with all the same emotions, faults and frailties as the rest of us. That amongst these practitioners of healing there can and do lurk, thankfully on very rare occasions, the odd twisted and weak individual.
In this case a brilliant surgeon who harbours a secrete grudge against life itself, a grudge which has grown and blossomed inside him like a huge cancer. His feelings are so raw and strong that they demand to be satisfied, feeding on an ever more unpalatable diet as time passes.
During working hours Dean Lynch displays his quite remarkable skills with the knife, whilst off duty an altogether different side of his character emerges. So much so that he becomes a living nightmare to all who cross his path. And certain death stalks anyone who discovers his secret.
The secondary plot line within this novel, which is skilfully interwoven with the story of Dean Lynch, is that of Tommy Malone. Here evil is counteracted by the pathetic figure of this small-time crook, a loser by anyone's terms, who believes he is still capable of pulling off “the big one”, by blackmailing one of the richest industrialists in Ireland, whose wife has just given birth to a son and heir. The very actions of this uneducated gang of mixed personalities have a tragic air - not only for the victim - but also for the gang who are so utterly inept.
Enter lovely Detective Sergeant Kate Hamilton - young rising star and career officer. Since fate snatched the man in her life to leave her a single mother, Kate is trying to do the best for both her son and the police force, watched over by her ageing father who is helping her to pick up the pieces of her life. Finally she is given the chance to prove herself as the forces of law and order have to follow up two crimes at once. She comes close to death in the final heart-stopping drama when she becomes the killer's intended victim.
This is a mixture of fast-moving crime coupled with hospital drama set in Ireland.  Those of you who, like me, have been satiated by both genres - not least on TV - should not be deterred from reading this book.
Indeed, if only all first novels were as good as this, able to keep me riveted throughout with an extremely good plot plus excellent dialogue and description! This writer know his way around the world of hospitals and their procedures, can paint a vivid portrait of that world as well as society's seamy low life. Set in and around Dublin, areas which he must know well, this is a drama filled with all the right mix of ingredients: suspense, violence and passion. You feel that the writer has gone to great lengths not to allow the plot or pace to slacken from one page to another and it was hard to find any part of the book that is dull or slow.
If this is 'the book' that all budding authors are said to have in them, then I reckon this particular one could have plenty more left in him. And I for one shall be looking out for them with profound interest.
Kelvin Mew

 Review
Java Spider by Geoffrey Archer
Arrow Pbk £5.99
The story begins with the disappearance of a British Foreign Minister after the signing of a successful trade deal to supply arms to Indonesia.
Using "News Channel", a struggling and poorly-financed cable TV station as its conduit, a terrorist organisation reveals that the disappearance has become kidnap! This must be the ultimate dream of every fifth estate editor! As well as the Government knocking at the door for information updates on events, the station is able to broadcast directly to the nation, uncut!
Cobra, the innermost Government body for handling national emergencies - comprising personnel from various branches of politics, the Civil Service, intelligence and the military, defence and civil forces - brings its immense international pressure to bear in order to discover the whereabouts of this particularly 'wayward' minister, who is well known for his gambling and sexual foibles.
Nick Randall is chosen by his political masters because of his previous experience in a part of the world he has known well. Although he is serving with the SAS, he is seconded from current duties to make discreet inquiries on behalf of HMG among the islanders of Kutu, where it is believed the victim may be being held. The only problem is that the island imposes restricted access to foreigners, following a political move by the government in Jakarta to build a power station there and so ruin the economy of the paradise island.
In the meantime, Charlotte Cavendish is a rising star on the “News Channel” and just happens to be the first person to tape the unknown satellite feed, which comes in with horrific pictures of the victim being tortured. “Charlie” pushes her editor to be allow her to go under cover and investigate the story further from the Indonesian end. However shrinking funds in the station's accounts are causing problems.
Eventually collaboration between these two dedicated individuals, who come from totally different social and career backgrounds, solves the problem for both of them, although the obvious conflict of interest between their opposing professions is clearly going to cause some major headaches.
Posing as newlyweds, Nick and Charlie are only able to fool some of the people some of the time due to tight military control. This has been imposed by a high ranking general who is determined - with the help of the Chinese People's Republic - to effect a peaceful coup to topple the incumbent who favours trade with the Western powers.
Charlie Cavendish is captured by the enemy during a fire fight with the island's resistance movement, which is opposed to the government and its power station policy. Nick Randall, acting on information received and with local help, begins planning to rescue both Charlie and the Cabinet minister...
There is a sting in the tail that is worth waiting for and to my mind adds a reallyworthwhile ingredient to this book.
It is the first time I have read this author and I found his story line very good, which is the result of excellent research. Despite this, for some reason, I was unable to “get into” the book and felt it lacked some sort of punch or drive to keep it moving along.
It has all the right ingredients for a super thriller, yet doesn't quite come off. Perhaps it was that - with hundreds, if not thousands, of islands in the Indonesian archipelago - I felt a little disappointed by the story in being able to identify the right one so quickly.
I am certain that this book is based a little on the Purgo Dam affair and the troubles in East Timor...unfortunately neither of which really seems to have excited the British public that much. Kelvin Mew