GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
Crime fiction round-up with MAT COWARD: March 22, 2023
Underfunded cops, sleight of hand, murder qualifications and fascist infidelity
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an excellently crafted new musical that explores the life and death of Ruth Ellis
PAUL DONOVAN is tickled by the excruciating take-downs of one of the funniest, wittiest, political writers around.
RON JACOBS points out, via a transcription of Kissinger’s secret recordings, that Trump could never have existed without Nixon and Kissinger
ELLIS RAE is persuaded that the advantages of the ‘talking cure’ are superior to the treatment of mental illness with drugs
JOHN GREEN, MICHAL BONCZA and BELLA KATZ review The Good Boy, Broken English, and Don't Be Prey
LOTS of people talk about defunding the police, but it’s taken a decade of Tory austerity to actually achieve it.
BAD FOR GOOD (Allison & Busby, £8.99), the first novel by Graham Bartlett, former divisional commander of Brighton and Hove police, is as angry a debut as you could hope for.
It’s set in a fictional version of the author’s old bailiwick, where ever fewer cops, deploying ever dwindling resources, are scarcely capable any more of responding even to emergency calls. Meanwhile, politicians demand better results at the same monthly meetings where they order more cuts.
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MAT COWARD introduces the creator of the Good Food Guide, communist and crime fiction writer – Raymond Postgate
High quality pulp, rollicking online murders, Abnorman Britain, and high skates drama: reviews of The Get Off, Everyone In The Group Chat Dies, Pagans and First To Fall