A regular winner . . . as smooth, swift and lean as ever

As a jockey, Dick Francis was unbeatable when he got into his stride. The same is true of his crime writing

Nobody does forensics thrillers like Kathy Reichs. She’s the real deal.

Kathy Reichs continues to be one of the most distinctive and talented writers in the genre. Her legion of readers worldwide will agree with me when I declare that the more books she writes, the more enthusiastic fans she’ll garner.

Each book in Kathy Reichs’s fantastic Temperance Brennan series is better than the last. They're filled with riveting twists and turns – and no matter how many books she writes, I just can’t get enough!

Gripping to the last page!

Thrilling

Clever

Taut and thought-provoking

Utterly gripping. A tautly coiled spring of suspicion and suspense which builds to a devastating ending

A wonderful plot, full of tantalising reasons to read on, and of course with a killer twist at the end. What impressed me most was (. . .) the impossibility of truly knowing those closest to us, the pressures of parenthood - in particular working motherhood, and the terrible loss at the heart of all parenting: they grow up and away

Gripping and disturbing

One of the most courageous literary endeavours of recent times … Perfidia is a crime novel but mainly in the sense that it investigates deeper than before the ultimate crime of war, and the meta-crime that is society itself … Perfidia is a brave and moral book. It is not a beautiful book. Its defining characteristic is honesty, its engine principle, qualities that are vanishingly rare in contemporary fiction. It may be set in the 1940s, at a very specific and not so very distant moment in historical time, but its real subject is now.

Master of the sharp, snarling, spare sentence James Ellroy kicks off another mighty four-book run…A bloody big read but every word’s made to count at gunpoint. Ellroy kicks ass all round the ballpark.

Perfidia is a brilliant, breakneck ride. Nobody except James Ellroy could pull this off. He doesn't merely write - he ignites and demolishes.

A war novel like no other…“Dark desires sizzle” and explode with a furious climax. Ellroy is not only back in form – he’s raised the stakes.

One of the most original and daring writers alive.

It’s an epic 687-page undertaking that is at times disturbingly violent – a must for noir fans.

Ellroy, writing in his signature telegraphic style, strives to depict reality, every dark aspect of it: there’s murder, apparent ritual suicides, hate crimes and a world of characters that you just cannot root for. Ellroy successfully establishes his four main characters, alongside a wealth of fully developed, clever and sophisticated secondary characters, within his own creation of a microcosm of a community challenged by politics and an unavoidable history.

James Ellroy is the best crime writer in the world.

A brash, two-fisted tour-de-force of spleen and invective which holds up a cracked and tarnished mirror to a turbulent period of American history … powerful in scope, theme and character … for blood and guts, he could give Beowulf a run for its money … it is impossible to deny the power and energy that has gone into Perfidia, which is more than a crime novel whilst showing, at the same time, what the crime novel is capable of.

The prose is as tight and fast moving as ever … If you are in pursuit of vintage Ellroy, this book is for you.

A sprawling, uncompromising epic of crime and depravity.

As unflinching and sharp as ever, even more so . . . Perfidia might be his [Ellroy’s] finest novel yet . . . Its story is full of tectonic movements, fascinating and dangerous characters with ambiguous morality, and events bigger than life itself. It’s brilliant in its complexity and vastness.

As abrasive and compelling as always.