Margery Allingham has worked her way up to a worthy place among the tiny hierarchy of front-rankers in the detective world

The real queen of crime

Margery Allingham has precious few peers and no superiors

Fast-moving, acerbic, occasionally tasteless but never dull, this will delight anyone who thinks old people get a raw deal…A great comic romp with deft touches.

The wild man of literature… [The Sunshine Cruise Company is] Fast and furious and, characteristically, brutal in places.

[I was] hooked by this tale of rampaging women growing old disgracefully…An enjoyable romp spiced up by the author’s sharp and perceptive eye.

Featuring the greatest female duo since Thelma and Louise, John Niven’s novel is a total gem.

This is a bawdy, gaudy, rock ‘n’ roll spree of a book. The first chapter reads like a Radio 4 afternoon play, but we’re soon off and running (or should I say lurching?), burping, boozing, cursing and carousing our way through the high jinks. It’s as filthy as a weekend in Clacton-on-Sea, with the requisite pain and loss hidden just beneath the bedsheets.

A rollicking road caper…hugely enjoyable.

A broad tongue-in-cheek comedy that rattles along.

A hysterically funny book…and [it] combines the humour with a tight, gripping plot.

This is a high-speed comedic chase novel which shows women entering their later years misbehaving in the most fantastic way…The Sunshine Cruise Company enthusiastically smashes stereotypes of women heading into retirement and it’s a funny fast-paced thriller.

[A] hugely enjoyable comic crime romp.

And for his next trick, Johnson delivers a taut, Conrad-by-way-of-Chandler tale about a spy who gets too close to the man he's shadowing in Africa . . . As in any good double-agent story, Johnson obscures whose side Roland is really on, and Roland himself hardly knows the answer either: Befogged by frustrations and bureaucracy, his lust for Davidia and simple greed, he slips deeper into violence and disconnection. Johnson expertly maintains the heart-of-darkness mood . . . his antihero's story is an intriguing metaphor for [post-9/11 lawlessness]

A dangerously good thriller

This thriller gets under your skin and won't let you go. One thing is very clear at the end: we want to read more about Holger Munch and Mia Krüger!

A very sophisticated and terrifying thriller, which keeps the reader guessing and gasping to the very last page. The story is powerful, the style is fluent, and the cast of characters is simply irresistible