Culture America explained: Douglas Kennedy’s strangely mesmerising new novel The Great Wide Open reads like an old friend recounting a tale over dinner. By Ian Sansom
Culture William Boyd’s Love is Blind: the story of a sweet-natured outsider told at a cracking pace By Ian Sansom
Culture Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight is like watching a Wes Anderson film through a telescope By Ian Sansom
Throwing up the dead: the novelists mimicking Ian Fleming and Stieg Larsson Anthony Horowitz and David Lagercrantz have produced two crime novels that stick to the tried and tested formulas. By Ian Sansom
If you think you know Howard Jacobson, prepare to be disappointed The author’s new novel J confounds one’s expectations but confirms Jacobson’s reputation. By Ian Sansom
Watching the detective: how John Banville perfected the Raymond Chandler sequel John Banville's Benjamin Black novels are irresistable. It's as if Henry James were writing under the pseudonym of Arthur… By Ian Sansom
A lot of Gaul: why Asterix is better than Tintin We are living through a glorious age of rewrites, reversions, pastiches and homages, and the continuation of the Asterix… By Ian Sansom
The quiet commissaire: the extraordinary ordinariness of Maigret Georges Simenon's detective is one of literature’s most exceptional characters. Or, rather, one of literature’s most unexceptional characters: the… By Ian Sansom
The consolations of crime fiction, past and present In a world now dominated by vast, mysterious forces that none of us understands or can control, the comforts… By Ian Sansom