Bookgasm reviews A Vengeful Longing

My google blog alert showed up a new review of A Vengeful Longing on the Bookgasm website.

I'm extremely pleased with it, especially this bit:

This is period fiction of the best kind: accurate in its details; staying within its appropriate time; even managing to teach us a bit about the society’s norms. And on top of that, you get a rousing good mystery that keeps you thinking until the end. More, please, from Mr. Morris. —Mark Rose

Okay, Mark, I'm working on it! On which note, back to the edit.

My starred review!

The Publishers Weekly review is now online. You can find it here.

In yesterday's Express.

If you click on the image you should get an enlarged version which is easier to read:



I spotted a couple of good quotes: "right from the start we are hooked by his storytelling panache"

"the pungently vivid recreation of pre-Soviet Russia is painted with a master's touch".

Another early review for A Vengeful Longing.

My thanks to crime fiction reader for this one.

My name is Roger and I'm addicted to...

... googling myself. To be fair, it's not so much myself as my book titles that I go a-googling.

Why do I do it? Because I'm a vain, self-obsessed ego-monster desperate not to miss out on his fifteen minutes of cyber-fame, of course. I can justify it to myself - just about - on the grounds that I'm doing it for professional reasons. You know, checking up on the internet buzz. It's a gauge of something, surely, if A GENTLE AXE has been acquired by the Penang Club Library. Not sure quite what, though.

Also, I'm interested to know which reviews present themselves in what order at any given time to anyone who goes looking for me. I like it when the good ones come first. Perhaps I can even manipulate this by clicking on the good ones obsessively, and totally ignoring the - uh, how can I put it? - less enthusiastic ones, hoping thereby to consign them to the very outer circles of cyber-hell.

I get forwarded review links and quotes from my publicity people (sounds a bit grand that, doesn't it?) and I'm more than happy to share them with all you good folk. But I have to accept that Maggie (Penguin) and Anna (Faber) are simply not as obsessed with me (or my book) as I am. And frankly, they never will be. If I don't google me, no one will.

So I go hunting just to see if someone somewhere has mentioned my book. Of course, sometimes, I find stuff that I wish I hadn't. Like the South African journalist who accused me of all manner of crimes.

But sometimes, you stumble across something that is so unexpected, and pleasing, that it makes the long hours of joyless trawling seem worthwhile. One such discovery was this mention in the Journal of the Police Association of South Australia. Somehow the idea of all these Ozzie coppers rushing out to buy a copy of my book just tickles me pink. Bonza, as they say.

The New York Times weighs The Axe.

Thanks to everyone who has alerted me to this review in the New York Times. You may have to register to see it. It's free to do so.

Otherwise you can look at the same article that also ran in the International Herald Tribune.

The Moscow Times reviews the St Petersburg novel.

I was thrilled by this one. It's a wonderful review by Saul Austerlitz. I say wonderful not just because it's positive, but because the writer just seems to get what I was trying to do. What's more, he's really engaged with the book. So I'm very happy.

It's been a crappy day in other respects. A lot of stress, mostly self-induced and in fact still on-going (I shouldn't really be here). But I had to share.


Oh, and another truly marvellous thing happened - possibly even better than getting a great review in The Moscow Times. Daughter Claire and her friends won the overall egg decoration prize in their school's eggy diorama competition. You may remember it was for Yoka from Egg Wars.

Shotsmag reviews Axe.

"[A] pretty impressive achievement which succeeds on its own terms as a well written literary thriller with loads of chilly Russian atmosphere and even plays fair as a murder mystery."

Read the full review here.


I'm back to just posting review excerpts. Sorry.

Fancy a bit of 'lurid'?

According to Doug Southard, who has reviewed The Gentle Axe for the Library Journal, "[r]eaders with an appetite for the occasional lurid scene will enjoy". Let's face it. Which one of us doesn't have the appetite for a bit of lurid now and then.

The York Press reviews the Axe.

Lovely review from Stephen Lewis in the York Press.

"Morris has dug deep into the Russian soul in this book, and his dark, dank, dangerous St Petersburg, with its snowbound, windswept streets and stinking slums, is brilliantly recreated.

The hunt for the murderer is tense and atmospheric: the denouement brutally shocking and moving.

A worthy sequel to one of the greatest novels ever written: and a cracking thriller in its own right."

I think he liked it.

Read the whole thing here.

Read the full Independent review...

... by Virginia Rounding online here.

Another review of the Axe.

My thanks to Jim Younger, author of the amazing High John The Conqueror, for alerting me to this one.

Oh, it's in Japanese, by the way.

Staring me in the face.

On my way to the day job, walking from Tottenham Court Road station to Soho Square, I have to pass the Waterstones on Oxford St.

I used to find going into bookshops - well, the big chains at least - a very depressing experience. And even just looking into them was fraught with envy and other bitter feelings. But now I find I'm one of the bastards I used to hate. One of the bastards with a book not only published, but also displayed in a prominent position.

As I pass the big wide open entrance I can glance in and see the wall of racks, with the new titles, the bestsellers, the staff favourites, etc. There under the 'new fiction' heading, with a second placard announcing 'new talent', are two piles of A Gentle Axe, cover out. They're giving £3 off, I see.

I dunno. Somehow it doesn't seem real. Maybe it isn't. I'm feeling more and more like I'm wired up to the matrix.

Another early review.

This one appeared originally in the Birmingham Post and Mail, though I found it reproduced here. I wasn't googling, honest. Well, okay, I was.

It's by Mike Ripley. Very brief, just a couple of paras in a round-up (I'm the second book mentioned).

The matrix doing its work again?

World scoop.

The world's first review of A Gentle Axe is now up on Crimeficreader's 'It's a Crime' website.

You can also read an interview with R.N.Morris there too. That's me, by the way.

I'm also interviewed on Jennifer Prado's blog.

My thanks to both Crimeficreader and Jennifer.