A hearty bloodstained handshake, then, for John Niven’s The Sunshine Cruise Company, in which a group of women aged from their mid-teens to advanced eighties get to behave in a thoroughly disreputable fashion…This new novel, Niven’s seventh, breaks with his usual habit of laying bare the male psyche, but retains his celebrated strengths: sparky, unfussy writing; a fast-moving plot; and, most notably, an ability to be thoroughly outspoken about matters sexual and scatological whilst retaining a surprising degree of empathy for the human trials of his characters…Comic fiction that reduces all its personnel to mere caricatures can be a trial to read, but this book, for all the amped-up extremity of the events it portrays, works because its characters get a grounding in emotional reality as well as a bunch of outrageous events with which to contend…Engaging, utterly accessible and boundary-bending: middle-aged chick lit that follows none of the conventions of middle-aged chick lit; lad lit that features no lads. In other words, it’s for pretty much anyone, provided they can stomach Ethel’s vocabulary and the unsavoury details of Barry’s exit from life…It would be a major thrill to see a story like this in movie form. Might the ladies of the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel be persuaded to consider a slightly racier residence…?

The fun is considerable…a caper…it may well be the funniest thing you’ll read this year.

John Niven manages the trick of being both profane and humane.

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