Pelecanos’s storytelling prowess has long been second to none and he continues his peerless writing with this tale observing a criminal force of nature, a remorseless spree killer out to make a name for himself and the men who join together to try to stop him. Every character is well developed, foibles and all, the dialog is Elmore Leonard sharp, the plot finely tuned. What can I say, he’s long been in the zone and, well, it seems that every word he writes should be read and re-read. Simply effortless.

An astute and playful take on travel writing in the shadow of Conrad. She’s especially good on Boyle and Boyd and the delicacy of their writing although she finds that even such skilled wordsmiths reproduced the colonial tropes. That I suppose is why she terms them weary sons. The issue is projection, the danger is the lurking Other and how to write novels on Africa (or rather set in Africa) in a way that avoids Kipling-esque tropes.

The best part is the chapter titled The Battered Boys of Rice Burroughs: Tarzan and Jane Goodall which delves into the motifs of apes. She even throws in King Kong.

It’s surprising that this novel isn’t so widely known or indeed celebrated for it is really one of the best that has come out of Nigeria in the past 20 years. It might well be the canonical dark immigrant drama; the comic twists and deep cynicism that gird the narrative serve to portray a kind of bleak and hardboiled corruption that is the lot of Nigeria.

It’s also a tale of two countries, the US (Oakland/Berkeley) as seen through the eyes of a new immigrant and Nigeria during the reign of locusts and the boom and bust of the money for nothing years of military dictatorship and plain looting. It is a very skillfully told tale and an unflinching look societies in decay. All that glitters and all that…

It is hard for me to acknowledge that I could find a fiction novel by Martin Amis so unbearably bad as to place it in my Best Left Unread category. Perhaps it is because it is quite obviously autobiographical, but also I suppose, because I cared not one with for the characters and their goings-on. It is still hard to believe that one of my favourite authors could misfire so badly.

Apparently the path to the Ghanaian novel in this century leads through the crime, mystery, procedural genre. Like Nii Ayikwei Parkes, Kwei Quartey has been writing deep police stories the plumb the dark depths of Ghanaian life. This time it is literal, the subject is slums and street children. You can feel the dirt and the stench of Sodom and Gomorrah and the various other locales where a serial killer is doing his worst. Even when he is didactic, he has a heart; his protagonists have a warmth that makes you want to follow their story. I suppose he’s aiming to become Ghana’s Arthur Conan Doyle.

As wryly observed as can be, a wonderful book on war, childhood, innocence lost and Africans fighting for King George and country. It reminds me of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Sozaboy and that is high praise.

I like my satire savage yet this spare, nasty piece of work is more hardboiled than almost anything that I’ve read – and the obvious notion that this is based on real life doesn’t make it any less scabrous. If Evelyn Waugh took on the English upper classes with a frontal attack and damned them with vicious aplomb, Edward St. Aubyn goes further, the brutish snobbery, the pompous self-regard of the English is fully demolished. The language is perceptive, the humour is as bleak as can be, and, well, the subject matter tinged with awfulness. Thoroughly nasty; I loved it.

Vicious satire that takes no prisoners. It’s quite remarkable how jaundiced a view can be expressed simply with minimal dialog and an unerring aptitude for choosing the most felicitous name.

Hardboiled to the core, this is pulp fiction at its best. Not a word wasted, with a delightfully sleazy and amoral narrator, this is a treat of cynicism. Whores, gangsters, religious cults, femmes fatales, over the top violence, gratuitous sex, hey there’s even grave robbing if you’re that way inclined. Tarantino should take this up.

Haunting stories about a society wrenching itself apart. The effects of civil war are felt everywhere even if obliquely. A portrait of walking wounded, stories of dislocation and life as exiled souls. Call it internally displaced.