Bedford Square Publishers Archives

Book review: Robert B Parker’s Showdown by Mike Lupica

January 25, 20262 min read

I stumbled across Robert B Parker’s Spenser in the early 2000s and devoured the series. Thankfully it’d kicked off in 1973 so I had a long backlist to read. I loved everything about the series (well, other than Spenser’s long-time girlfriend Dr Susan Silverman) who seemed like a rather vain and arrogant princess. Spenser was a fabulous character as was his sidekick Hawk, equally delightful was the witty writing and the repartee that characterised the books… Indeed, I’ve written about my love of Spenser and the Lost Art of the Gumshoe before (Part 1 & Part 2).

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Book review: No One Would Do What The Lamberts Have Done by Sophie Hannah

June 23, 20253 min read

No One Would Do What The Lamberts Have Done by Sophie Hannah is a hard book to review. Firstly it’s a book within a book. A cop purportedly finds a box containing a manuscript. It was out of order he tells his boss, but he puts it together and discovers it’s about a recent tragedy in the community. One the cop and his boss thought was resolved. However, the manuscript raises a number of questions.

At its most simple, it’s about two neighbouring families – the Lamberts and the Gaveys. Not even warring families, though we learn the daughters didn’t get along. It kicks off with a police officer knocking on the door of the Lamberts following an accusation that the Lamberts’s dog – Champ – has bitten the Gavey’s daughter (Tess).

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Book review: The Truth About the Devlins by Lisa Scottoline

July 8, 20242 min read

The Truth About the Devlins by Lisa Scottoline seemed familiar to me. I’m unsure if I started reading it at some point earlier… I even had the same thought in response to the opening pages – an assumption the narrator was a woman (one I’d had before).

TJ (a guy!) is the black sheep in a family of lawyers, having spent time in prison as a result of alcoholism that started in his teens. He’s on track now, though working in a tokenistic investigator job in the family company. Despite changing his ways he continues to feel inferior to his brother and sister and a disappointment to his parents.

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