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
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
In September, the AKS GKNB detained the head of the Kulundu frontier post in the course of operational-search measures when giving a bribe to an employee of the state committee…
Tom CallaghanSeptember 29, 2020
The capital's police have detained the suspects in the robbery at Keremet Bank, the press service of the city's police department said.
Tom CallaghanSeptember 28, 2020
At four in the morning, no phone call is ever good news. A patrol car had stopped in front of an alley off Frunze so the driver could empty his…
Tom CallaghanSeptember 26, 2020
Tennessee Williams wrote ‘America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.’
Tom CallaghanSeptember 25, 2020
The State Committee for National Security detained a police colonel trying to sell drugs.
Tom CallaghanSeptember 24, 2020
In Jalal-Abad, two members of an organized criminal group were recently detained, suspected of committing robberies.
Tom CallaghanSeptember 23, 2020
The former Minister of Health, Kosmosbek Cholponbaev, is charged with negligence and abuse of office during the coronavirus pandemic.
Tom CallaghanSeptember 22, 2020
A David Mitchell novel is always a delight, if not always an unalloyed one. For me, ‘Ghostwritten’ is still his best work, even if ‘The Bone Clocks’ is perhaps his…
Tom CallaghanSeptember 21, 2020
I may not care much for this type of mystery or thriller novel, but the covers for this British Library Crime Classics series are a testament to the ability of…
Tom CallaghanSeptember 20, 2020
On September 11, a citizen applied to the State Committee for National Security with a request to take action against the judge of the Kara-Suu region "A.Zh.S.", who extorted money…
Tom CallaghanSeptember 19, 2020
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 CallaghanSeptember 17, 2020
Abror Sabirov, son of Shukhrat Sabirov, the director of the State Agency for Antimonopoly Regulations of Kyrgyzstan, was placed in jail-1 in Bishkek for two months.
Tom CallaghanSeptember 16, 2020
The smell hits you first, so you know what lies ahead, even before you enter the room.
Tom CallaghanSeptember 15, 2020
In the village of Khunchi, Chui oblast, a truck driver was detained, transporting almost 500,000 packs of cigarettes without excise stamps.
Tom CallaghanSeptember 14, 2020
The future of Kyrgyzstan depends, in part, on the rise of ecotourism; of people wanting to travel to discover the natural beauty and wildlife of this small, mountainous and remote…
Tom CallaghanSeptember 13, 2020
Kyrgyzstan is about to have elections in a couple of weeks time. The Central Election Commission checked 1,912 registered parliamentary candidates for criminal records.
Tom CallaghanSeptember 12, 2020
When William McIlvanney wrote his Laidlaw trilogy, Scottish crime fiction was in short supply.
Tom CallaghanSeptember 11, 2020
In Bishkek, a man illegally kept almost five kilograms of drugs at home. Maybe it helped him solve his puzzles…
Tom CallaghanSeptember 10, 2020
Despite the text being the same (apart from spelling), the UK and US book markets are clearly very different.
Tom CallaghanSeptember 9, 2020
The SCM GUVD of Bishkek received information that citizen E.E., born in 2000, carried the skin of a rare wild animal, and was making attempts to illegally sell it.
Tom CallaghanSeptember 8, 2020
I’ve written before about how a book cover can make or break the success of a book.
Tom CallaghanSeptember 6, 2020
The Internal Affairs investigator of the Tokmak police department was placed under house arrest after demanding a bribe.
Tom CallaghanSeptember 5, 2020
There are some extra categories not covered here: Forgot I already had a copy Given to me, but I forget by whom Bought as a present but decided to keep…
Tom CallaghanSeptember 4, 2020
Although the 18 titles in the Burke series by Andrew Vachss tail off in impact towards the later novels, the intensity of earlier books such as ‘Flood’, ‘Blue Belle’ and…
Tom CallaghanSeptember 3, 2020
https://youtu.be/BUjJ26rPiZ8 Last night's firework's display to celebrate 29 years of Kyrgyz independence
Tom CallaghanSeptember 1, 2020
Three officers of the Service for Combating Illicit Drug Trafficking were detained in Bishkek, after being found with 3 kilos...
Tom CallaghanAugust 30, 2020
I’ll be honest: I haven’t read ‘Gallows Court’ by Martin Edwards. And books set in pre-war London, the Golden Age of crime fiction, tend not to feature high on my…
Tom CallaghanAugust 29, 2020
In Kadamjay, four men robbed and beat residents, threatening them with a pistol
Tom CallaghanAugust 28, 2020
The main character (and the most terrifying) in Jack O’Connell’s books is not a person, it’s a place. Quinsigamond, a post-industrial New England city, where derelict warehouses, porn theatres and…
Tom CallaghanAugust 27, 2020