Hot on the heels of his high fantasy meets urban fantasy meets noir detective debut The Last Smile in Sunder City, Luke Arnold has delivered its sequel Dead Man in a Ditch. Arnold returns to his post-magical-apocalypse world and in particular Man for Hire Fetch Phillips. Once again Arnold manages to deliver a pitch perfect…
Savage is brutal, devastating, powerful. It features a war of attrition borne of a tyrannical upbringing in New Zealand told in three time-frames over 24 years. Savages is the name given to a patched-up gang started by a couple of cell mates from juvenile detention. But let’s go back a step, Danny – known in…
In New York, a crotchety, chain-smoking Chinese-American grandmother gets lucky after leaving a casino … and then all hell breaks loose. Sasie Sealy’s black comedy, Lucky Grandma, places granny in the middle of a turf war between rival gangs. It all starts when Lei Lei the Fortune Teller (Wai Ching Ho) tells Grandma (Tsai Chin)…
Turquoise Jones (Nicole Beharie) works hard – in a bar and at a mortuary – to keep her head above water and make something of herself. But, of course, the bills keep coming in. In 2004 it looked like the world was at her feet. That was when she won the title of Miss Juneteenth*…
The British crime fiction industry is a little obsessed with the elderly solving crimes. Going back to the seemingly doddering but sharp Miss Marple, through to more modern efforts like The TV series New Tricks. Fixed firmly in that tradition is Richard Osman’s debut novel The Thursday Murder Club, which features a group of retirees…
Benjamin Stevenson’s first book featuring documentary maker Jack Quick was a revelation, particularly when considered again, in hindsight, from the viewpoint of the second novel in the series. Quoting from my own review of GREENLIGHT at the time: “There’s a something about GREENLIGHT that feels like a non-too-subtle dig at the commercialisation of true crime….
Director Egor Abramenko delivers a creepy creature-feature with Sputnik. It starts with two cosmonauts planning to return to Earth, but quickly morphs into something else entirely. It’s 1983. After a Soviet space mission returns into barren Kazakhstan, the support team find one of the intrepid travellers hasn’t make it and the other – the commander…
The Babysitter: Killer Queen is a hybrid of gory horror, coming-of-age tale and black comedy. It’s the sequel to 2017’s cult favourite The Babysitter. In that film, teen Cole (Judah Lewis) discovered his babysitter was involved in a satanic blood cult. Two years after the events of that film the angst-ridden Cole is still traumatised,…
Much ado about nothing; or a quirky film of substance? My strong inclination about On the Rocks is toward the former. Suspicion is a dangerous thing. Often it is realised. Sometimes it is not. It can drive a person crazy. Laura (Rashida Jones) is an author with a case of writer’s block. She’s married to…
Victorian-era detective fiction gets turned on its head in Nexflix’s charming Enola Holmes. Based on the YA novels of Nancy Springer, this engaging – if a bit muddled – film sees the legendary Sherlock Holmes sidelined in favour of his precocious little sister. Throw in more than a liberal dose of danger, a foppish love…
