A star of Scotland's burgeoning crime fiction scene

Crime fiction's next big thing

Literary sensation...James' overnight success has drawn comparisons with the meteoric rise of EL James and her Fifty Shades of Grey series

Fifty Shades of Hay

Oswald is among the leaders in the new batch of excellent Scottish crime writers

The new Ian Rankin

The hallmarks of Val McDermid or Ian Rankin: it's dark, violent, noirish

Chilling stuff

A chilling read

A grisly, gripping thriller

Gruesomely realistic, intriguing and relentless. Arlidge's fledgling army of fans is about to grow

Expertly pulled off. It has a devious premise. DI Helen Grace is fiendishly awesome. It's scary as all hell. And it has a full cast of realistically drawn, interesting characters that make the thing read like a bullet

A fast-paced, twisting police procedural and thriller that's sure to become another bestseller

This is the innocent-seeming start of a journey into the very darkest recesses of the human mind; for such a nice woman, Rendell had an amazing empathy with psychotic killers. Dark Corners is Rendell at her incomparable best; talk about going out in style!

Rendell was a prolific and hugely popular writer of intricately plotted mystery novels that combined psychological insight, social conscience and, not infrequently, teeth-chattering terror.

Rendell was unequivocally the most brilliant mystery writer of our time.

When many of the literary novelists of our time are forgotten, Ruth Rendell’s books will remain, and future generations will see that not only did she keep her readers on tenterhooks with every book, she also wrote stories which held up a mirror to her times.

Rendell’s work, mapping the manic and malevolent extremes of human behaviour, was distinguished by terse yet elegant prose and sharp psychological insights.

Rendell’s novels have been a major force in lifting crime writing out of genre fiction and into both cutting-edge and mainstream literature.

Ruth Rendell: one of the all-time greats.

Every aspect of Ruth Rendell’s dark art is splendidly showcased in Dark Corners. One can’t say she saved the best for last, because a great many books by Ms Rendell and her alter ego Barbara Vine are so splendid, but it’s among the best. You won’t put it down. I loved it.

Rendell set an extraordinarily high benchmark in crime fiction that continued throughout her long career. She is revered by all who came after her.

Rendell transformed what had become a staid and formulaic genre into a different kind of crime novel. She turned it into a prism for examining the world around her with a critical eye.

Pleasurable narrative and thoughtful prose

This subtle, off-kilter foray into John le Carré territory—a chilling, thoughtful, deeply romantic drama about the collateral damage suffered by those on the periphery of world events—displays Dunmore's gifts as one of today’s most elegant and versatile storytellers.

Exposure is a beautifully written novel that really showcases this author’s talents.

Exposure is a great spy thriller with an emotional side to it ... it gives you great character's and a beautiful setting. Lily Carrington is one of the best character's I have read about in a book in a long while.

A wonderfully descriptive tale of three rich characters and serves as a great way of bringing the private fears and realities of the Cold War period to life and this novel is a story of that time, as much as anything else.

Exposure is about the drive to protect one’s family and the devastating consequences of abruptly finding oneself on the wrong side.

Exposure is a brilliantly plotted novel, it’s enormously compelling and I gulped it down. Dunmore builds the tension slowly, the atmosphere of fear and creeping shadows is chillingly well done.

Just as thrilling and just as unputdownable as any Le Carré

A compelling read

A surprising and fulfilling read

Exciting, with a touch of Graham Greene

Few novelists can rival Dunmore

With a poet’s intensity for minutia and symbolism and an always hungry precision for the right word, she creates a real and thoroughly vivid world, a living place, grim and claustrophobic, full in small ways of menace.

Reading Helen Dunmore is like uncovering an old, intimate secret. Her historical detail is flawless. Her narrative focus is never so much on the big public bluster as it is on the private fragility of the human heart - and her latest novel might be her finest yet.

Clever and moving

[It is] gripping… The writing is brilliant.

A very dark, morbid tale… I loved it, because it’s a really original voice that draws you into a dark psychology.

A clever, eloquent and captivating debut novel.

[It is] thrillingly playful.

The most grimly compelling fiction came from a new voice: Ottessa Moshfegh’s Man Booker-shortlisted Eileen. It takes nerve to create such a thoroughly dislikeable narrator… It is like someone reaching into a bottomless bag of gifts.

I loved its refreshingly dark and complicated protagonist and grubbily vivid sense of time and place. Eileen reads like a smart, feminist take on Hitchcock or Highsmith and was, for that reason, impossible to put down.

[Eileenis] compulsively deviant and utterly delicious… I savoured every single word of it.