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…
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...
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…
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 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…
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.
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…
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…
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.
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…
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…
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…
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.
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.
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.
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…
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…
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…
'This is a bookshop. We sell books' In Saturday's Guardian, a publisher, Sharmaine Lovegrove wrote that about publishers should work in bookshops to discover the unexpected pairings between readers and…
Unless a bookcase collapses and buries you under a landslide of paperbacks, collecting books will rarely kill you (although they will damage your wealth, eyesight and marital harmony).
Looking at the cover, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Stephen King’s forthcoming book, ‘Later’ came out in the late 50s. The vintage pulp style of illustration reeks of bad…
It seemed an innocuous habit at first, one my parents even encouraged. Harmless to begin with. The odd Puffin paperback here and there, and then later, Penguin Classics, before moving…
Except here, it seems. The virus appears not to like sunlight, fresh air and open spaces that people can enjoy while still keeping their distance. Children seem to be the…
It's two years ago today since I went to the Ata-Beyit memorial complex outside Bishkek, where the great Kyrgyz writer, Chingiz Aitmatov is buried. It's a beautiful place, with a…
The world of crime/ noir/ thriller books is, understandably, dominated by a few best-selling authors. You know, the ones whose covers stare out at you in every airport, promising distraction…
In reality, I normally spend my days on my private terrace overlooking Montego Bay, sipping a cold Red Stripe and enjoying exotic sushi. But I want you to believe that…
As you might expect from a novelist, I'm keenly interested in book cover design. Not least because the success or failure of a book cover has a direct impact on…
Yesterday’s post showed me standing in the dark and the snow outside Derevyashka, a local bar facing Gorky Park (no, not that one). *Derevyashka means ‘wood’, and as I described it…
To anyone who’s wondered about my silence: I’m still writing, even if I haven’t published anything for a while, and I hope my revitalised blog will keep people up to…