asked the boss why we were dancing around like this, when I could have taken Borubaev out of the world with a single well-placed shot. I could tell he wasn’t…
Tom CallaghanFebruary 13, 2023
The rain had decided to ease off when I left the morgue, with hints of clear blue sky over towards the mountains. The day was shaping up to be one…
Tom CallaghanJanuary 23, 2023
I put the call in, explained that Borubaev was in the city morgue, unfortunately only visiting rather than checking in. Presumably he’d gone to see Husam Umarov’s mortal remains. I…
Tom CallaghanJanuary 16, 2023
A large part of my job is waiting. Waiting for the next crime to occur, for witnesses to come forward and speak, waiting in damp doorways or in run-down bars…
Tom CallaghanDecember 26, 2022
I knew I couldn’t call on my colleagues back at Sverdlovsky to help me out. None of them would want to be within a hundred kilometres of a missing Uzbek…
Tom CallaghanDecember 19, 2022
I was parked across the road from the lawyer’s office when Borubaev emerged, holding the handrail as he made his way down the steps. Even from a distance, it was…
Tom CallaghanDecember 5, 2022
My idea of somewhere private to call Guliya Sabirova was a little unusual, but it always pays to keep everyone guessing. I was pretty sure that Guliya Sabirova wasn’t calling…
Tom CallaghanNovember 29, 2022
‘Inspector Borubaev?’ A woman’s voice, elderly, dry, rasping and hoarse, as if she’d damaged her vocal cords after decades of shouting. I got the sense of fifty untipped cigarettes a…
Tom CallaghanNovember 25, 2022
I’ve never understood why they call it hogtied when you fasten hands and feet together. In my village, when we slaughter a pig, we just leave a trail of apples…
Tom CallaghanNovember 14, 2022
I looked around the empty car park, hoping to see Saltanat walking towards me, hands held up in apology. Bit I knew she wouldn’t have decided on a whim to…
Tom CallaghanNovember 7, 2022
It’s always a pain in the arse if you end up having to take prisoners and keep them in reasonable shape, unharmed apart from a few cuts and bruises, that…
Tom CallaghanOctober 24, 2022
The Folio Society prides itself on the quality of the books it produces.
Tom CallaghanOctober 20, 2022
By rights, I should have made my way to Sverdlovsky Station, brushed the dust and cobwebs off my desk, filed a report and sent it to everyone I could think…
Tom CallaghanOctober 17, 2022
Inspector Banks meets Inspector Borubaev I was already a big fan of Peter Robinson’s DCI Banks books before I met him at the Emirates Literature Festival in 2015. My debut…
Tom CallaghanOctober 13, 2022
‘No-one else is to be admitted into the apartment until the crime scene officers arrive.’
Tom CallaghanOctober 10, 2022
"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the…
Tom CallaghanOctober 7, 2022
‘No answer.’ ‘Try again,’ I said. Saltanat hit redial, glared at the phone as if she were holding a scorpion. ‘Nothing.’ I reached into the wardrobe, pulled out my canvas…
Tom CallaghanOctober 3, 2022
I hadn’t intended giving a negative review two weeks in a row. But there you go. I try to always say something positive. And in the case of Lee Child…
Tom CallaghanSeptember 29, 2022
The only person I ever meet face to face is the boss. It’s one of my strictest rules. Talk to the top man or don’t talk at all. When you’re…
Tom CallaghanSeptember 26, 2022
The first three or four Kay Scarpetta novels by Patricia Cornwell were ground-breaking: CSI forensics together with an interesting character with lots of quirks and problems in her life, both…
Tom CallaghanSeptember 23, 2022
‘What do you think?’ We were walking down from Kiev Street towards Chui Prospekt and down through the trees of Panfilov Park on our way back to the hotel. Questioning…
Tom CallaghanSeptember 19, 2022
'Natalya Ivanova does for St Petersburg what Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko did for Soviet-era Moscow. . . taut, fast-moving and compellingly believable’
Tom CallaghanSeptember 15, 2022
The penthouse had floor to ceiling windows, all the better to enjoy the spectacular view up towards the mountains on the south side of the city. The main room was…
Tom CallaghanSeptember 12, 2022
The death of Mo Hayder last year from motor neurone disease at just 59 was a major loss to crime and thriller fiction, not just in Britain but internationally.
Tom CallaghanSeptember 8, 2022
‘What the fuck you mean, you missed them? And then lost them?’ I did my best to look sorrowful, repentant. ‘It wasn’t an easy shot. Snowing, and no knowing which…
Tom CallaghanSeptember 5, 2022
George Pelecanos may be best known for his television work on ‘The Wire’, ‘Treme’ and ‘We Own This City’ but his Nick Stefanos novels repay investigating.
Tom CallaghanSeptember 1, 2022
We must have been followed from the hotel,’ I said. ‘The question is, how did they know we were there?’ ‘I don’t think there would be a police alert for…
Tom CallaghanAugust 28, 2022
‘In the morning, I woke to feel the world on my shoulders, which is where it normally sits. I know there are other cops all over the planet who feel…
Tom CallaghanAugust 24, 2022
The boss wasn’t happy, not that he’s ever been a gleam of spring sunlight shining over the Tien Shan mountains. He only grunted when I handed over the thirty grand,…
Tom CallaghanAugust 22, 2022
For forty years, the East German State Security Service, better known as STASI, watched over its citizens with a brutal, repressive and highly effective regime that turned citizens into informants…
Tom CallaghanAugust 17, 2022
steel door frame. We both dived towards the trash skip, unholstered our guns, looked around. The attack could have come from anywhere, a parked car, a window in one of…
Tom CallaghanAugust 15, 2022
It’s sad that more people know of Eugene Izzi because of the nature of his death, but perhaps unsurprising.
Tom CallaghanAugust 11, 2022
The main character (and the most terrifying) in Jack O’Connell’s books is not a person, it’s a place.
Tom CallaghanAugust 4, 2022
Eight hours later, our car was doing its best to get through the ruts and puddles of the road that led into the apartment blocks of Alamedin. To describe Alamedin…
Tom CallaghanAugust 1, 2022
I admit to a weakness for location in the books I read: it’s one of the reasons I’ve set my books in Kyrgyzstan.
Tom CallaghanJuly 28, 2022
We knew we couldn’t return to the safe house. Too many police and four dead bodies to explain away. My new passport was in the glove compartment, and Saltanat, always…
Tom CallaghanJuly 25, 2022
Cliff Janeway is a retired cop – nothing new in the world of crime fiction, you might say.
Tom CallaghanJuly 21, 2022
We buried Orbek near the top of a mountain ridge overlooking the Charvak Reservoir, an hour’s drive outside Tashkent. It’s a popular weekend destination during the summer, but in the…
Tom CallaghanJuly 18, 2022
‘Unhook the delicate, crazy lace of flesh, detach the heart with a single cut, unmask the tissue behind the skin, unhinge the ribs, disclose the spine, take down the long…
Tom CallaghanJuly 14, 2022
Four of them, a team. One of them would have been the driver. Confident of taking us, otherwise he’d have stayed in the car, engine running, for a quick escape.…
Tom CallaghanJuly 11, 2022
When William McIlvanney wrote his Laidlaw trilogy, Scottish crime fiction was in short supply.
Tom CallaghanJuly 7, 2022
The window at the far side of the room shattered, and slivers of glass cascaded like ice across the floor. Arctic air slammed into the room, as the curtains billowed…
Tom CallaghanJuly 4, 2022
Homicide Detective Hoke Moseley might be based in Miami, but he’s a long way from the glitter and sophistication of TV’s Crockett and Tubbs.
Tom CallaghanJune 30, 2022
I never knew when Chinara would decide to come and visit me. Perhaps that’s one of the few privileges the dead still enjoy. I felt a hand shake my shoulder,…
Tom CallaghanJune 27, 2022
“The explosion sucked all the air out of the room in its wake. Dimitri slammed back into the wall, gut-shot. I …took a deep breath and walked around to where…
Tom CallaghanJune 24, 2022
Counting and splitting the take is where it usually goes wrong. Forget about bodyguards, armed police. Everything we do comes in a package marked danger; it’s all part of the…
Tom CallaghanJune 20, 2022
Meet a Cleveland plain-dealing P.I. Milan Jacovitch is a Slovenian-American ex-cop, ex-vet, ex-married, and that means he has a history like a lot of private detectives.
Tom CallaghanJune 16, 2022
‘Husam was my father’s half-brother, by my grandfather’s first wife. Twenty years older than me, already married to a Kyrgyz woman and living in Bishkek when I was a child.’
Tom CallaghanJune 13, 2022
Daniel Woodrell’s ‘The Death Of Sweet Mister’ could be described as falling into the same school of Southern Gothic as Flannery O’Conner and Carson McCullers, but I prefer Woodrell’s own…
Tom CallaghanJune 9, 2022
‘How did I end up in Tashkent?’ I asked, genuinely bewildered. Now I understood why neither the nurse nor the doctor had said a word to me. I wasn’t supposed…
Tom CallaghanJune 6, 2022
‘UNDERDOGS’, Rob Ryan’s first published novel, deserves to be better known.
Tom CallaghanJune 2, 2022
Saltanat stood in the doorway, arms folded, and I didn’t need to read body language to sense her mood.
Tom CallaghanMay 30, 2022
As you know, Monday blogs are dedicated to serialising A MORNING RESURRECTION. Which means that Thursdays can be whatever takes my fancy.
Tom CallaghanMay 26, 2022
Resurrection? Easy to say, harder to achieve. Even the acknowledged expert in the field took three days, and I was no expert. Then again, he wasn’t shot three times on…
Tom CallaghanMay 23, 2022
The banning of a book - any book - says more about those keen to silence debate, understanding and knowledge than anything on the printed page.
Tom CallaghanMay 19, 2022
An ordinary day, nothing to remember. A few problems with suppliers not delivering on time in spite of promises. A couple of payments still outstanding, even after three or four…
Tom CallaghanMay 16, 2022
Older readers of this blog may remember that in the past I’ve posted a couple of short stories featuring Akyl Borubaev.
Tom CallaghanMay 9, 2022
It’s been over a year since I posted anything here. And you’d be forgiven for thinking nothing more would ever appear. So a few words of explanation.
Tom CallaghanMay 3, 2022
For almost 25 years, Nodirbek Ganiev, an Uzbek citizen, was hiding in the Chui region with a fake passport. At home, he is suspected of murder with particular cruelty and…
Tom CallaghanJanuary 23, 2021
In the cargo compartment of the car, 42 boxes were found and seized, inside which there were containers with a liquid of unknown origin.
Tom CallaghanJanuary 20, 2021
“2 thousand 184 owners of firearms and 26 objects of the permit system were checked....
Tom CallaghanJanuary 18, 2021
Back in mid-September, I wrote about my admiration for the Laidlaw books by William McIlvanny.
Tom CallaghanJanuary 16, 2021
Employees of the South-West customs in the Osh region stopped an attempt to import a large batch of contraband cigarettes into the republic.
Tom CallaghanJanuary 16, 2021
The good thing about living in a country with two Christmases and three New Years (if you count the Chinese) is that the decorations stay up for longer...
Tom CallaghanJanuary 15, 2021
It’s one of the maxims of advertising (but one rarely followed) that you have to stand out in order to be successful.
Tom CallaghanNovember 5, 2020
In the village of Romanovka, a 27-year-old resident of the Chui region was threatened with a knife, and more than 50,000 soms ($600) and a mobile phone were taken from…
Tom CallaghanNovember 4, 2020
A Bishkek animal rights activist wrote, “Last night I saw a dog near the intersection of Yunusaliev and Dzhantoshev streets. She ran out of one of the many Korean restaurants…
Tom CallaghanOctober 26, 2020
In Batken, customs officers stopped the import of 11.5 tons of contraband fruits into the republic.
Tom CallaghanOctober 24, 2020
In the mountains of Issyk-Kul, a memorial installation was erected in memory of the victims of the 1916 uprising. The installation on Mount Zharylgan-Too, on the northern shore of Lake…
Tom CallaghanOctober 23, 2020
The reason why Mukhammedkalya Abylgaziev was summoned to the financial police is still officially unknown.
Tom CallaghanOctober 22, 2020
Officers of the State Committee for National Security, together with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, detained two citizens of Kyrgyzstan engaged in robberies to finance the terrorist underground.
Tom CallaghanOctober 21, 2020
In Bishkek, suspects in beating up a resident of the capital were detained. At 02.00, the police received a message that unknown persons were beating a man on Manas Avenue.
Tom CallaghanOctober 20, 2020
Every year, Penguin hold the Student Design Award: there were over 2,000 entries in 2020. This was the winner of the Adult Fiction category.
Tom CallaghanOctober 19, 2020
A car with contraband jewelry was detained at the Chaldybar - Avtodorozhniy checkpoint wth Kazakhstan on October 14.
Tom CallaghanOctober 18, 2020
The White House was seized on the night of October 5-6 as a result of thousands of protests disagreeing with the results of the October 4 parliamentary elections. There were…
Tom CallaghanOctober 16, 2020
In the Jalal-Abad region, the activities of an underground drug production workshop were suppressed.
Tom CallaghanOctober 15, 2020
Nurmat Bolponov, deputy head of the Drug Trafficking Service, shot at his subordinate Yesterday the head of one of the departments came to the office of the deputy head of…
Tom CallaghanOctober 14, 2020
Cliff Janeway is a retired cop - nothing new in the world of crime fiction, you might say. But the profession he’s taken up is not one you’d expect -…
Tom CallaghanOctober 12, 2020
I admit to a weakness for location in the books I read: it’s one of the reasons I’ve set my books in Kyrgyzstan.
Tom CallaghanOctober 9, 2020
Last night was quiet, and it’s reassuring to see the true nature of the Kyrgyz people at work.
Tom CallaghanOctober 8, 2020
Kyrgyzstan is now in complete chaos: various political forces are trying to seize control of the country. Almost all of them are illegal.
Tom CallaghanOctober 7, 2020
Elections were held on Sunday, and today, a crowd of around 6,000 people assembled in the main square for a peaceful protest about bribery and corruption leading to rigged ballots.
Tom CallaghanOctober 6, 2020
Would you read a book where the unnumbered chapters (except the first and last) can be moved around in any order?
Tom CallaghanOctober 5, 2020
In the Suzak district of the Jalal-Abad region, police officers had to shoot in the air while detaining a suspect.
Tom CallaghanOctober 4, 2020
A resident of Bishkek contacted the police and said that in January a man promised to help him sell a car for $ 10,800.
Tom CallaghanOctober 3, 2020
Three new covers for Orwell’s seminal ‘1984’. Not surprising, I suppose that all three feature the motif of an eye, taking as their inspiration from the slogan that dominates the…
Tom CallaghanOctober 2, 2020
The excellent crusading online magazine, ‘ColdType’ this month features ‘Catch Your Breath’, which first drew breath on this blog.
Tom CallaghanOctober 1, 2020
Erkin Bakirov, deputy director of the bankruptcy department under the Ministry of Economy, was detained, after being caught offering a bribe of 100,000 soms ($1,250) to an official.
Tom CallaghanSeptember 30, 2020