O'Neill is a contender for Martina Cole's crown with her cockney crime novels

A gritty portrayal of gangland violence and crime - A compelling and menacing page-turner

Gritty and menacing

The greatest American writers of the last century were William Faulkner and Saul Bellow

In a single brief decade, Faulkner had produced more lasting works of fiction than many great writers do in a lifetime

Impressive, brilliant, terrific

There are quite a few Ruth Rendells: the doyenne of the traditional English detective novel; the queen of the psychological thriller; the celebrated author of the literary thriller; and her most recent incarnation, as a writer of blackly comic fairy tales set in London.

To read her nowadays is akin to quaffing a glass of what the fake princess calls ‘TDTINW’ – the drink that is never wrong – champagne. She is exhilarating, makes you giggle yet leaves you with an acidic aftertaste.

Rendell is excellent on the delicate snobbery of the uneasy territory in between the social classes... The novel’s plot forms a complex web in which power sways back and forth between employer and employed.

Will leave the legion of Reacher addicts satisfied but craving for their next fix.

The most satisfying of all 17 thrillers in the series. The unfolding of events nudges along at just the right rate... toward an authentically gripping climax.

Settings don’t come much more Gothic than Wreaking, the derelict, decaying...psychiatric hospital of James Scudamore’s striking third novel

This is the work of a writer totally at ease with, and confident in, his powers. A wonderfully assured novel with scope and ambition and with enough of a mystery at its heart to keep the reader hooked till the end

We are left with the characters in our heads for days, and the sense of unease that Scudamore cleverly conjures up

A twisted, unsettling tale of family lies and lonely souls

An immersion in the physical and psychic ruins of a contemporary Britain which enchants and disturbs, lures and repels. The inner poetry and descriptive mastery of James Scudamore's Wreaking are riches which cannot be forgotten. If you only read one novel in coming times, make it this astonishing and deeply moving chronicle

This is an impressive work from the critically acclaimed author of Heliopolis