Fowler's latest bears all the hallmarks of the classic British mystery - think Edmund Crispin's 1946 novel The Moving Toyshop, but much funnier and more distinctive, with plenty of mordant humour, fascinating trivia about London past and present, and the basis for an epic pub crawl of your own. What more could you want?

The most endearing pair of old farts in crime fiction

... perhaps the most accomplished entry so far.

Scholarly and informative, cunningly put together - a real page-turner

Darkness Rising has a strong, intelligent plot and a terrific atmosphere of fin-de-siecle Vienna

fascinating

Whether you are an aficionado of fin-de-siècle Europe, compelling crime fiction or strong characterisation, Darkness Rising delivers healthy doses of all three

a thoroughly compelling piece of work

outstanding

A most enjoyable read and, as usual, Vienna sparkles with atmosphere

Don Winslow is the kind of cult writer who is so good you almost want to keep him to yourself

A fiction whose effect on the reader is almost as addictive as the slimming sweets on which Eugene becomes so disturbingly dependent

Ruth Rendell's sense of place and disdain for her characters elevates a sordid case of arson into an artful exploration of sinister self-delusion

She has made the city her own, and writes with both knowledge and compassion about its streets and buildings, its transport and its shops - and above all about its inhabitants ... As ever Rendell writes with wry and witty authority ... It's intelligent stuff, and very readable

Rendell is marvellous at psychological tension, and the suspicion that these ways will be sinister is what hooks the reader. Setting out her cast with conviction, she unrolls their lives at a stately, ominous pace

Psychologically acute and extremely disturbing, Ruth Rendell's work is outstanding

Rendell has a Dickensian empathy, informed by a prodigious love of London life. Her account, bursting with colour and vitality, is a treat to read