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Colin Falconer is nothing if not versatile.

The Folio Society prides itself on the quality of the books it produces.

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…

"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…

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…

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…

'Natalya Ivanova does for St Petersburg what Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko did for Soviet-era Moscow. . . taut, fast-moving and compellingly believable’

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.

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.

‘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…

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…

It’s sad that more people know of Eugene Izzi because of the nature of his death, but perhaps unsurprising.

The main character (and the most terrifying) in Jack O’Connell’s books is not a person, it’s a place. 

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.

Cliff Janeway is a retired cop – nothing new in the world of crime fiction, you might say.

‘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…

When William McIlvanney wrote his Laidlaw trilogy, Scottish crime fiction was in short supply. 

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.

“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…

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.

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…

‘UNDERDOGS’, Rob Ryan’s first published novel, deserves to be better known.

As you know, Monday blogs are dedicated to serialising A MORNING RESURRECTION. Which means that Thursdays can be whatever takes my fancy.

The banning of a book  -  any book  -  says more about those keen to silence debate, understanding and knowledge than anything on the printed page.

For followers of Inspector Akyl Borubaev of the Bishkek Murder Squad...

Older readers of this blog may remember that in the past I’ve posted a couple of short stories featuring Akyl Borubaev.

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.

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…

In the cargo compartment of the car, 42 boxes were found and seized, inside which there were containers with a liquid of unknown origin.

“2 thousand 184 owners of firearms and 26 objects of the permit system were checked....

Back in mid-September, I wrote about my admiration for the Laidlaw books by William McIlvanny.

Employees of the South-West customs in the Osh region stopped an attempt to import a large batch of contraband cigarettes into the republic.

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...

It’s one of the maxims of advertising (but one rarely followed) that you have to stand out in order to be successful.

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…

Over the weekend, I managed to fall and fracture my humerus.

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…

In the village of Arashan, a feast ended in tragedy.

In Batken, customs officers stopped the import of 11.5 tons of contraband fruits into the republic.

The reason why Mukhammedkalya Abylgaziev was summoned to the financial police is still officially unknown.

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.

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.

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.

A car with contraband jewelry was detained at the Chaldybar - Avtodorozhniy checkpoint wth Kazakhstan on October 14.

Kyrgyzstan develops a vaccine for Covid-19

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…

In the Jalal-Abad region, the activities of an underground drug production workshop were suppressed.

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…

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 -…

Last night was quiet, and it’s reassuring to see the true nature of the Kyrgyz people at work.

Kyrgyzstan is now in complete chaos: various political forces are trying to seize control of the country. Almost all of them are illegal.

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.

Would you read a book where the unnumbered chapters (except the first and last) can be moved around in any order?

In the Suzak district of the Jalal-Abad region, police officers had to shoot in the air while detaining a suspect.

A resident of Bishkek contacted the police and said that in January a man promised to help him sell a car for $ 10,800.

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…

The excellent crusading online magazine, ‘ColdType’ this month features ‘Catch Your Breath’, which first drew breath on this blog.

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.

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…

The capital's police have detained the suspects in the robbery at Keremet Bank, the press service of the city's police department said.

With many books comes much responsibility.

Tennessee Williams wrote ‘America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.’

The State Committee for National Security detained a police colonel trying to sell drugs.

In Jalal-Abad, two members of an organized criminal group were recently detained, suspected of committing robberies.

The former Minister of Health, Kosmosbek Cholponbaev, is charged with negligence and abuse of office during the coronavirus pandemic.

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…

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…

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…

Jimi Hendrix 27.11.42 - 18.9.70

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.

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.

In the village of Khunchi, Chui oblast, a truck driver was detained, transporting almost 500,000 packs of cigarettes without excise stamps.

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…

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.

When William McIlvanney wrote his Laidlaw trilogy, Scottish crime fiction was in short supply.

In Bishkek, a man illegally kept almost five kilograms of drugs at home. Maybe it helped him solve his puzzles…

Despite the text being the same (apart from spelling), the UK and US book markets are clearly very different.

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.

Kyrgyzstan has many problems at the moment.

I’ve written before about how a book cover can make or break the success of a book.

The Internal Affairs investigator of the Tokmak police department was placed under house arrest after demanding a bribe.

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…

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…