Arkady is older - though not perhaps quite as old as he ought to be - and wiser and driving a desk in Putin's Moscow. Asked to fnd a gangster's missing daughter, he finds himself caught up in political activism and government suppression. Though also an nvestigation, this turns into a short, tight political thriller set on the eve of hte invasio of Ukraine, and ends up just trying to survive the utterly ruthless and cynical machinations of the Russian state. 

Though shorter than usual - though they have been getting shorter - this is masterful and packs a punch, and Renko remains a reliable likeable, if slightly worn and grubby, guide through the vagaries of Russian history and society.

An archipeligo with three islands, one where the eite live in comfort and luxury, one where support staff live in squalor and repression, one where old people go and young people come back. Director Proctor, the Ferryman of the title, is responsible for the old folk side of things, but when it's his sort-of-father's turn, things start to fall apart in his comfortable world. So what's that all about, then? 

In terms of story and genre, there's only a handful of ways these sorts of stories can go, so you either roll with it or you don't. This is very well written, and Cronin drops hints here and there such that the inevitable revelation makes narrative sense. No complaints there, it's a good read if not stunningly original. Bits of it felt overwritten, but the male narrator, Brick, may have contributed to that, being a rather expressive reader, leaning equally fulsomely into the language and the action, which is not to my taste; I do like strong readers, but with a more understated approach, conveying rather than occupying the text. Still, it feels like it'll be a satisfying summer blockbuster beach read for lots of people.

I somewhat approve of accomplished writers producing shorter books rather than leaning into the usual bloat. Not that I'd turn down a doorstopper by Harkaway or Cruz Smith, but their current offerings feel well crafted and expertly accomplished.

In this vaguely dystopian world - although it doesn't differ apreciably from our own except in a few crucial ways - the very rich can afford a medical treatment that prolongs thier lives and enlarges their bodies. They are the Titans, and when a dead body turns out to be one of them, a specialist consultant is called in to sort it out. This particular case will take him raight back to his own connections with the original and still controlling Titan family, with all the dangers that go with that, including emotional, given that one of them is his ex.

This is cool sci-fi noir fun in Harkaway's distinct style, voice and outlook.

Almost exactly as if he'd planned it that way, the third Fault Lines volume draws together the first and second in an epic conclusion to the saga. The King Of the West is dad (that's a mis-type, but I'm leavng it in because it looks like a Dad joke, as in hello King Of the West, I'm Dad), murdered by a woman with multiple personality disorder currently languising in a mental hospital under the sinister care of a creepy psychiatrist. Meanwhile the body of the dead king, which shows no sign of decay, has turned up at the home of Cootie, the presumptive heir. This is all very upsetting for everyone involved, but things are only going to get worse as efforts to revive Scott Crane involve various dangers and heavy costs. This is as motley a collection of the lost, the weird and the broken as have ever graced a Powers novel, and the history of wine-growing in America and the msyterious Winchester House and the god Dionysius all play a part in the grueling quest. Grueling for the characters, that is. The reader just goes along with wide eyes and/or ears if they're listening. 

This is still early Hap and Leonard, when Lansdale didn't mind pouring the sheer nasty brutality on the lovable pair, especially Hap, but Leonard gets his fair share too. This one opens with him getting bitten, in a scene of macabre hilarity, by a rabid squirrel no less, and things don't exactly pick up from there on in, with the notable exception of his love life,, which is one bright spot in the vista of murder and torture and brutality and sheer bad luck that follows as Leonard gets implicated in the murder of a biker and Hap has to try and sort it out, with the affable assistance of one Joe-Bob Briggs. Don't want to spoil the ending, but there's a massive twist. Er.

Sequel, of sorts, or at least the first Culture novel to directly refer back to the Idiran War which was, of course, the backdrop of Consider Phlebas. An elaborate, intricate, carefully compartmentliased plot against the Culture is being carried out by a suicidal agent from a planet that was victim to one of Special Circumstances more disastrous interventions. Meanwhile, the Mind of an Orbital prepares to mark the arrival of the light from twin supernovae set off as part of one of the final actions in the Idiran War with an orchestral composition by an self-exiled composer from the same planet. Out on the rim of the galaxy a scientist studying an ancient alien species glimpses a dark shadow in the depths of the floating world. It all comes together in a mix of grand spectacle and muted contemplation of guilt, death, lost love and atonement. Wasn't sure about the reader of the audio book at first, but as soon as he started doing the voices and handling the dialogue I could see why he was a good choice.

Hap and Leonard set out to retrieve Brett's daughter from a bad situation gotten considerably worse. Enounters with mobsters and lowlives of various stripes and persuasions ensue as the trail leads them across the border to a vicious biker gang and whole heap o' violence. Everything that can go wrong generally does, but they keep on truckin'

A Big Dumb Object pops into existence in a far off corner of space, and the Culture is interested because it's the sort of weird anomaly that can come along and transform civilisations in all sorts of ways, including into not existing any more. Also interested are the Elench, a Culture offshoot, and the Affront, a pain in the Culture's neck, and a secret conspiracy with a hidden agenda involving ship's Minds being clever and manipulative and ruthless. Characters, ships, fleets and aliens all beging toconverge on the Excession, even though nobody knows what it actually is.

Slightly unusually for a Hap and Leonard novel, though not uncharacteristic of Lansdale's style, this is a rambling yarn that encompasses a savage fight at a chicken plant, a cruise, a stranding in Mexico, a beach fight with machetes, a fishing trip with assholes, brutal murders, and a vengeance trail. All that and still a tight plot that has our put-upon duo wondering what, exactly, they've done to deserve all this. 

One of my favourite epic small-town horror novels. A wealthy Connecticut enclave is besieged by a supernatural menace that grows to full strength every hundred years. Whether the man-made cloud of chemicals that drifts over the town causing madness and melting is part of that or just a lucky coincidence is left ambiguous. As the situation deteriorates with murders and suicides gradually escalating to the decimation of foremen and policemen and the complete isolation of the town from the rest of the world and dead people wandering around making more dead people, four brave not-dead-yet people with connections to the town's past struggle to understand what's going on and try to find a way to fight it.

It's big and sweeping, with lots of characters and lots of horrible things happening. I've never been quite sure it comes together properly by the end, inasmuch as there's the evil entity and the people who fight it, but despite lots of historical stuff there's never any actual rationale, however mythic and made-up, for why it's happening, what it actually is and why these four have the power to stand up to it. 

It might seem like an odd criticism, but the rest of the book is quite meticulous in its depiction of people and places and dramatic scenes. Like in It, a succesor small-town horror novel that ten-ups Floating Dragon, we eventually had a vision of where, exactly, the monster came from and what it was, sort of, and that was enough to be satisfying, here it just ends up being literalised as a dragon. That's it. Okay, before we get there there's more than enough to enjoy and this doesn't spoil any of it, it does leave things noticeably woolly, though. Straub is quite good at ambiguities (like with the cloud of chemicals) and not necessarily spelling everything out for the reader, but it definitely works better in his non-supernatural books. Nonetheless, a beloved classic of the genre.