THE EYRE AFFAIR by Jasper Fforde

THE EYRE AFFAIR Jasper Fforde (www.jasperfforde.com) Hodder (www.hodder.co.uk) £7.99 The following review is the first in a series of reviews for the Hodderscape Review Project, a project that I’m very happy and proud to be a part of. Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair, for anyone that has already read it, will seem the obvious choice […]

PLAN D by Simon Urban

PLAN D Simon Urban (www.simonurban.de/) Translated by Katy Derbyshire Harvill Secker (www.vintage-books.co.uk/about-us/harvill-secker/) £14.99 October, 2011. Much of the gas used by Western Europe comes from Russia, via a pipeline network that runs through the middle of the German Democratic Republic. Weeks before the leaders of the two Germanys are due to come together to discuss […]

THE STRING DIARIES by Stephen Lloyd Jones

THE STRING DIARIES Stephen Lloyd Jones (www.stephenlloydjones.com) Headline (www.headline.co.uk) £14.99 In 1979 Charles Meredith meets Nicole Dubois, a Frenchwoman on the run from what he at first takes to be a fantasy: a man over 100 years old that Nicole claims has been hunting her family for most of the past century, a man with […]

An Interview with SETH PATRICK

Name: SETH PATRICK Author of: REVIVER (2013) On the web: sethpatrickauthor.blogspot.co.uk On Twitter: @SethPatrickUK A native Northern Irishman living in England, Seth Patrick is an Oxford mathematics graduate who now works as a programmer in a games company. His first novel, Reviver, was recently published by Macmillan. Thank you, Seth, for taking the time to […]

REVIVER by Seth Patrick

REVIVER Seth Patrick (sethpatrickauthor.blogspot.co.uk) Macmillan (www.panmacmillan.com) £12.99 "Sometimes Jonah Miller hated talking to the dead." Jonah Miller is a reviver. As part of the Forensic Revival Service, his job is to bring the recent dead back to life – briefly – to obtain a witness statement from them concerning the circumstances of their death. When […]

THE SHINING GIRLS by Lauren Beukes

THE SHINING GIRLS Lauren Beukes (laurenbeukes.com) HarperCollins (www.harpercollins.co.uk) £12.99 When Harper Curtis murders an old woman, he finds the key to a house to which he instinctively knows the way. In the bedroom of the house he finds the names of girls scratched on the walls next to mementoes and trophies, threads linking them together […]

Hospital Reading Round-up, or: A Letter of Apology

Dear Reader, I hope you will forgive this break from the usual straightforward literary(?) criticism for this personal note to explain the relative quiet at Reader Dad of late, and to apologise to authors, publishers, publicists and potential readers for the lack of reviews written and published on the site since mid-February. Anyone who follows […]

NO WAY BACK by Matthew Klein

NO WAY BACK Matthew Klein (matthewklein.org) Corvus (corvus-books.co.uk) £12.99 Jim Thane is a restart executive, a Silicon Valley veteran who specialises in taking on failing companies and turning them around, making them profitable. Jim’s latest assignment has taken him to the oppressive heat of Florida, where Tao Software needs his specialist skills. Within days, Jim […]

SEAL TEAM 666 by Weston Ochse

SEAL TEAM 666 Weston Ochse (weston-ochse.blogspot.co.uk) Titan Books (titanbooks.com) £7.99 Four weeks from completion, Jack Walker is pulled from his Navy SEAL training on Coronado Island, and assigned to SEAL Team 666. Highly classified and known to only a few key people, the five-man team which specialises in operations against supernatural threats has just lost […]

WE ARE HERE by Michael Marshall

WE ARE HERE Michael Marshall (www.michaelmarshallsmith.com) Orion Books (www.orionbooks.co.uk) £16.99 On a visit to New York to meet his publisher, David bumps into a man on the street – the sort of innocent collision that happens all the time on busy city pavements – who follows him back to Penn Station and confronts him. He […]