Books, Issue 613

Ian Rankin - Doors Open

CRIME NOVEL After 18 novels, John Rebus retired in his last outing, Exit Music. Whether the detective inspector will return is unclear, but in the meantime Ian Rankin is having some fun spreading his authorial wings. This heist story was first…

Adrian Tomine - Sleepwalk and Other Stories

COLLECTION There is a lightness of touch and simplicity that is both brave and endearing in the work of Adrian Tomine. He created Optic Nerve, an outlet for his stories and art from his university dorm in the mid 90s and was picked up by underground…

John Dolmayan

There are plenty of famous faces who love comics: Jonathan Ross, Edward Norton, Sam Raimi, Jon Bon Jovi, Simon Pegg, Jerry Seinfeld, Quentin Tarantino and Nicolas Cage. Even Anthrax wrote ‘I am the Law’ about Judge Dredd. But not many are as passionate…

Art Spiegelman - Breakdowns

BIOGRAPHY Subtitled ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@*!’, this was the first collected book of comic art which the Jewish-American Spiegelman had published. Created between 1972 and 1977, the volume is reissued with an illustrated 20-page…

Harry Hill - Tim the Tiny Horse at Large

KIDS STORY You can virtually smell Harry Hill at his keyboard, big collar tickling his neck, tongue flicking in and out (‘hmm, hmm, yeah, hmm?’), eyes blinking maniacally as the ideas bristle through his cranium. There is a chance, of course, that he…

Andrew Davidson - The Gargoyle

GOTHIC TALE With so many books on all our to-read lists, brevity is a virtue. The Gargoyle flouts this with great success. Framed by the sceptical voice of a severely burned car crash victim, events swing from medieval times to the present, from…

Also Published - 5 Celebrity Memoirs

Roger Moore - My Word is My Bond Seems like it’s 007 memoir season as Alan Partridge’s favourite Bond suavely knocks out his story, an all-true tale of a childhood in WW2 London and hanging out with the stars in Tinseltown. Michael O’Mara. Julie…

Marilynne Robinson - Home

FAMILY DRAMA With its groaningly slow pace and scriptural debate-heavy prose, labouring through Marilynne Robinson’s thick-set third novel – a companion piece of sorts to 2005’s Pulitzer Prize winning Gilead – is an experience recommended only to the…

Various (Ed: Paul Gravett) - The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics

ANTHOLOGY Lead by Frank Miller’s nightmare-noir Sin City series, crime comics are enjoying a resurgence in creativity and popularity the like of which hasn’t been seen since the genre dominated the American newspaper ‘funnies’ in the 1930s. Which…

James Buchan - The Gate of Air

GHOST STORY James Buchan’s most recent main protagonist isn’t the most likeable of chaps. Jim Smith – an emotionally closed, ex-London business entrepreneur with a love of complete solitude – moves to the Brackshire countryside, taking early…

Mat Johnson & Warren Pleece - Incognegro

DRAMA Comics of course can tackle any subject matter – it’s a medium not a genre after all (despite the predominance of superhero titles), and Vertigo at DC has been pushing leftfield stories into the mainstream since its inception in 1993. Set…