Chandler’s novel is vague about the plot. Scriptwriters have to work hard to make the story work on screen.
Category: books
Charles Dickens and the idea of Christmas
Charles Dickens didn’t invent the Victorian Christmas. But he shaped it in ways that are still with us.
Red Team Blues
Red Team Blues starts out as if it’s about big tech. But it’s really a thriller about following big money.
‘The ones we love… are enemies of the state’
Kamila Shamsie’s 2017 novel Home Fire plays with ideas of belonging and nationality. It’s a very contemporary take on Englishness.
Life and death in theatreland
Margery Allingham was one of the Golden Age’s ‘Queens of Crime’. But I’d never read her, until now.
The High Mountains of Portugal
Yann Martell’s novel draws you in until you have nowhere to go to but the distant village of Tuizelo.
Alif the Unseen
It’s unusual to read an entertaining English language novel that takes Islam seriously.
Billy Wilder and Me
Billy Wilder and Me is an engaging meditation on what happens when an artist loses their touch.
A Time of Gifts
Patrick Leigh Fermor’s classic travel book takes you to 1930s Europe. It evokes a lost world and a lost time.
Cantering with the ‘slow horses’
Mick Herron’s spy series is also about every large organisation everywhere: low stakes, but everything has to be played for.