Book Reviews

First published 1988.  Fontana paperback, 1989, pp 256, c.80,000 words. The first third of this classic Kyle thriller is top-notch: a great set-up in an interesting location with a plausible cast of characters.  The reveals are nicely paced...

First published 1972.  Sidgwick and Jackson paperback, 1979, pp 188, c.77,000 words. Imagine Woody Allen in his heyday, in Manhattan or Annie Hall say: New Yorker through and through, neurotic, Jewish, intellectual.  This is pretty much David...

First published 1988.  New English Library paperback, 1988, pp 480, c.185,000 words. This is book one of ‘The Cadwal Chronicles’ and by the last page there are more loose ends than in a big bowl of spaghetti.  It is a great sprawl of a book which leaves...

First published 1978.  Pan paperback, 1996, pp 307, c.70,000 words. This is not the usual Innes thriller.  It is an imaginary diary of Captain James Cook’s third and last voyage of discovery.  Cook, and others, kept logs of their activities during the...

First published 2015.  Springer paperback, 2015, pp 434, c.140,000 words (main text). The subtitle of this book is ‘Seventy-Five Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life’;  which just about encapsulates what...

First published 1987.  Legend paperback, 1989, pp 473, c.145,000 words. This is a classic ‘first encounter’ story.  Initially one of Jupiter’s moons disappears, then strange features appear in the landscape in the USA and Australia.  The former turns...

First published 1895.  Pan paperback, 1966, pp 123, c.43,000 words. With this book Wells launched himself as a science fiction author of note.  The Time Traveller launches himself from late Victorian Britain and describes to sceptical and astonished...

First published 2009.  National Geographic hardback, 2009, pp 309, c.88,000 words. The subtitle to this book is ‘A scientist’s search for extraterrestrial intelligence’, and with that Shostak is keen to reassure us that this isn’t some wacko’s alien...

First published 1972.  Fontana paperback, 1981, pp 220, c.85,000 words. This is a classic, straight-forward thriller of the period.  It follows Alistair Maclean’s formula of taking an ordinary man and placing him in an extraordinary situation, and then...

First published 1989.  Penguin paperback, 1991, pp 347, c. 115,000 words (main text) + . Gould was a paleontologist at Harvard University and a science communicator.  This work summarises his interpretation of the results of other’s research on the...