james oswald book reviews

James Oswald Books In Order

Publication order of inspector mclean books, publication order of dc constance fairchild books, publication order of ballad of sir benfro books, publication order of short stories/novellas, publication order of christopher fowler short stories/novellas, publication order of anthologies.

James Oswald is, primarily, a Scottish farmer who doubles up as an author. He studied psychology at the Aberdeen University where he had a penchant for penning comic strip books. Among the literary figures that influenced Oswald are English authors J.R.R. Tolkien and Terry Pratchett, and American writers Robin Hobb and Tad Williams.

James Oswald, who is a livestock farmer, lives in North East Fife where he owns an expansive farm where he rears Highland cattle and New Zealand sheep. James had been writing for two decades albeit with little success. His own family gave scant credence to his writing ambitions. Friends of his parents thought he lack the hallmarks of a noteworthy author. His father, though somewhat helpful, was equally bewildered. He had his doubts about the career, but when his parents perished in a 2008 road accident, Oswald reinvigorated his writing ambitions.

Oswald’s debut book, a police procedural and the first entry in the Inspector McLean series, has over thirty five editions. The first edition of the book was initially published in 2012, titled Natural Causes, and the series is shelved as crime, mystery, and thriller genres.

The second book in the series is titled The Book of Souls of which the first edition, a Kindle version, was published in June 2012. Natural Causes was offered for free after being self-published on Amazon, after a quick succession of rejections from traditional publishers. The Book of Souls was also self-published on Amazon, albeit at a greatly discounted price. However, Penguin has since published hard copies of the two books and upped the prices.

The featured protagonist in the two aforementioned books is Anthony McLean, a police inspector. McLean is a homicide detective who was orphaned at an early age. He was reared by his grandmother who, after being in a comatose for quite some time, died of stroke.

The launching pad in the first book in the series, Natural Causes, is the murder of a renowned Edinburgh figure. The local police view it as godsend when they nab the murderer within a day. Unfortunately for the police, the murderer commits suicide shortly thereafter before it can go trial. However, it becomes more than a mere coincidence when the process is re-enacted. There is another murder and, by the same token, the murderer, owns up before taking his own life!

Six decades previously, a young girl died a grisly death; her murderers disfigured her body, disemboweled her, and preserved her body organs in containers. Fast forward to sixty years later, the young girl’s decades-old murder has been noticed and the old murder case has been assigned to police detective Anthony McLean. The death has the hallmarks of an age-old ritual wherein people sought immortality by trapping demons in a girl’s corpse. Detective McLean, who has so much on his plate, is juggling other cases of murders, burglar cases wherein cats are stolen from recently deceased people’s homes, and is striving to reconcile these all the while.

The second book, The Book of Souls, revolves around a series of gory deaths wherein the serial killer has been striking during Christmas every year for a decade. The victims, who are all youthful women, are murdered in the same way: their throats cut, undressed, and their corpses sparkling clean. However, when detective McLean’s fiancee, Kirsty Summers, is targeted and the perpetrator seemingly leaves a clue, the detective is happy to finally nab the perpetrator. McLean has nipped the killings in the bud, or so he thinks.

Another inmate murders the perpetrator, who has been jailed for over a decade. As such, detective McLean is surprised to discover a reenactment of the festive season serial killings, prompting him to conclude that he either arrested the wrong person or the act was imitated.

James Oswald Awards In 2014, James Oswald’s debut book, Natural Causes, was nominated for the Dagger Award, proffered by the Crime Writers’ Association. Furthermore, the said book was among the nominees for the National Book Awards in the Newcomer of the Year category.

Best James Oswald Books Natural Causes, The Book of Souls, and The Hangman’s Song are the three best books in the bibliography of James Oswald. Natural Causes and The Book of Souls have just been described and thus no need to revisit them.

The Hangman’s Song, which is the third book in the Inspector McLean series, was initially published in February 2014. In this book, there is a series of seemingly suicide cases wherein three Edinburgh residents take their own lives. But their suicide notes point to a creepy helical trail, implying that a murderous person or thing is on the loose. Detective McLean is on the quest for reconciling the suspicious murders and sleuthing organized crime all the while.

Other Books You May Like Ardent readers of the Inspector McLean series penned by James Oswald also sought these book series.

The first one is the DCI Gilchrist series authored by Frank Muir. The featured protagonist, called Andy Gilchrist, is a detective inspector domiciled in St Andrews, a coastal town in Scotland.

The second one is the Diana Poole series penned by Melodie Johnson Howe. The protagonist, aptly named Diana Poole, is a wannabe actress. Poole is startled to see a stranger beckoning to her before letting herself be ran over by a car. Soon a man turns up and starts questioning her, specifically asking about an object worn by the deceased but which, curiously, Poole’s mother once wore.

The third one is the Wesley Peterson series authored by Kate Ellis. Protagonist Wesley Peterson, a police detective, is a Devon-based sergeant who is later on promoted to a detective inspector.

2 Responses to “James Oswald”

Really enjoyed Inspector McLean ‘All The Lives’. Is there a later Inspector McLean please?

thoroughly enjoying the Inspector McLean audio books – mesmerizing – love the detail and the bit of weirdness

Leave a Reply

The links beside each book title will take you to Amazon where you can read more about the book, check availability, or purchase it. As an Amazon Associate, I earn money from qualifying purchases. If you would like to link to us, Get the Code Here .

I often get asked by readers if they can donate to the site as a thank you for all the hard work. While I appreciate the offer – please support one of these great causes instead (list rotates monthly): Almost Home It Gets Better Procyon Wildlife Read With Malcolm

• Jack Reacher
• Court Gentry / Gray Man

I just want to thank everyone for visiting the site. Any issues at all don’t hesitate to use the contact form. To read more about the site or if you want a graphic to link to us, see the about page for more details.

• ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

THE HANGMAN'S SONG

by James Oswald ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 6, 2015

Tony’s third (The Book of Souls, 2014, etc.) reads like a police procedural with supernatural overtones. Despite plenty of...

DI Tony McClean may think his life is in turmoil, but it’s about to get worse.

Since Tony’s first girlfriend was murdered by a serial killer, he'd found solace with a young lady working for the Edinburgh police. But then an attack by a crazy colleague left her in a coma. Now Emma is awake but has little memory of the past and needs constant care and therapy. Tony, who inherited a lot of money from his grandmother, takes Emma in and hires Jenny Nairn, a student specializing in physical trauma, to live in his home and work with Emma. When her physician suggests shock treatment, Jenny convinces Tony to take her to Dr. Eleanor Austin, who specializes in regression therapy and hypnosis. At work, things have gone from bad to worse. CID Acting Superintendent Duguid, who’s not really up to the job, dislikes Tony and transfers him to the sex crimes unit. He orders Tony to quickly close the hanging he’s stumbled upon, even though the medical examiner isn’t satisfied that it’s a suicide. More men are found hanged, all with the same type of rope, but Tony has to sneak around in order to keep the case alive. Meanwhile, he’s also officially working on the case of several prostitutes due to be shipped overseas, one of whom is willing to talk to Tony. Soon her pimp is beaten to death, she’s badly injured, and Tony suspects that his fellow officer DS Buchanan is involved. When Buchanan tries to attack Tony, he dies in a freak accident and Tony is put on desk duty. Once he realizes that there may be a connection to Emma, he refuses to back off either case.

Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-544-31950-9

Page Count: 496

Publisher: Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014

MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | POLICE PROCEDURALS

Share your opinion of this book

More by James Oswald

BOOK REVIEW

by James Oswald

A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice ( The Bone Collection , 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | DETECTIVES & PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS | SUSPENSE | GENERAL & DOMESTIC THRILLER

More by Kathy Reichs

by Kathy Reichs

by C.J. Box ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 2015

A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...

Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series ( Stone Cold , 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.

Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.

Pub Date: July 28, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Minotaur

Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015

GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE

More by C.J. Box

by C.J. Box

• Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
• News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
• Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
• Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
• Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
• More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
• About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy

© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Popular in this Genre

Hey there, book lover.

We’re glad you found a book that interests you!

Please select an existing bookshelf

Create a new bookshelf.

We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!

Please sign up to continue.

It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!

Already have an account? Log in.

Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.

Almost there!

• Industry Professional

Welcome Back!

Sign in using your Kirkus account

Contact us: 1-800-316-9361 or email [email protected].

Don’t fret. We’ll find you.

Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )

If You’ve Purchased Author Services

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.

• Kindle eBooks
• Crime, Thriller & Mystery

Promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

Buy for others

Buying and sending kindle books to others.

• Select quantity
• Choose delivery method and buy Kindle Books
• Recipients can read on any device

These Kindle Books can only be redeemed by recipients in your country. Redemption links and Kindle Books cannot be resold.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet or computer – no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

For Our Sins (The Inspector McLean Series) Kindle Edition

The wages of sin is death. The partial collapse of a disused Edinburgh church reveals a dead body in the rubble, his head badly smashed by falling masonry. Soon identified as an old ex-con - Kenny Morgan - his death is put down to a heart attack and deemed non-suspicious. Tony McLean is approached by a notorious crime lord who suggests the police should be looking into Morgan's death more closely. Despite struggling with his recent retirement, he is reluctant to involve himself. But when a second man is found dead in another disused church, his forehead branded with a cross, this time it is clearly murder. There's a killer stalking the streets of Edinburgh. Is it time for McLean to get back to doing what he does best? Praise for James Oswald: 'The new Ian Rankin ' Daily Record ' Creepy , gritty and gruesome ' Sunday Mirror 'Crime fiction's next big thing ' Sunday Telegraph

• Book 13 of 13 Inspector McLean
• Print length 401 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher Wildfire
• Publication date 15 Feb. 2024
• File size 3995 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
• See all details

Customers who read this book also read

From the Publisher

Product description

Book description, from the inside flap.

The partial collapse of a disused Edinburgh church reveals a dead body in the rubble, his head badly smashed by falling masonry. Soon identified as an old ex-con - Kenny Morgan - his death is put down to a heart attack and deemed non-suspicious. Tony McLean is approached by a notorious crime lord who suggests the police should be looking into Morgan's death more closely. Despite struggling with his recent retirement, he is reluctant to involve himself. But when a second man is found dead in another disused church, his forehead branded with a cross, this time it is clearly murder. There's a killer stalking the streets of Edinburgh. Is it time for McLean to get back to doing what he does best? [Wildfire logo] £20

From the Back Cover

The return of Inspector McLean and the Sunday Times bestselling series, from one of Scotland's most celebrated crime writers. PRAISE FOR JAMES OSWALD: 'THE NEW IAN RANKIN' DAILY RECORD 'OSWALD'S WRITING IS A CLASS ABOVE' EXPRESS 'CRIME FICTION'S NEXT BIG THING' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'A MASTER OF THE MACABRE' VASEEM KHAN 'A WONDERFUL, FAST-PACED THRILLER' MICHAEL WOOD

About the Author

James Oswald is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling Inspector McLean series of detective mysteries, as well as the new DC Constance Fairchild series. James's first two books, NATURAL CAUSES and THE BOOK OF SOULS, were both short-listed for the prestigious CWA Debut Dagger Award. ALL THAT LIVES is the twelfth book in the Inspector Mclean Series. James farms Highland cows and Romney sheep by day, writes disturbing fiction by night.

Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BWRD5G9F
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Wildfire (15 Feb. 2024)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 3995 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 401 pages
• 756 in Crime Thrillers (Kindle Store)
• 1,032 in Suspense Thrillers
• 1,748 in Mysteries (Books)

About the author

James oswald.

James Oswald is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling Inspector McLean series of detective mysteries. The first two of these, Natural Causes and The Book of Souls were both short-listed for the prestigious CWA Debut Dagger Award. Set in an Edinburgh not so different to the one we all know, Detective Inspector Tony McLean is the unlucky policeman who can see beneath the surface of ordinary criminal life to the dark, menacing evil that lurks beneath.

James has also introduced the world to Detective Constable Constance 'Con' Fairchild, whose first outing was in the acclaimed No Time To Cry.

As J D Oswald, James has written a classic fantasy series, The Ballad of Sir Benfro. Inspired by the language and folklore of Wales, it follows the adventures of a young dragon, Sir Benfro, in a land where his kind have been hunted near to extinction by men. The whole series is now available in print, ebook and audio formats.

James has pursued a varied career - from Wine Merchant to International Carriage Driving Course Builder via Call Centre Operative and professional Sheep Shit Sampler (true). He moved out of the caravan when Storm Gertrude blew the Dutch barn down on top of it, and now lives in a proper house with two dogs, two cats and a long-suffering partner. He farms Highland cows by day, writes disturbing fiction by night.

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings, help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyses reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Reviews with images

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from United Kingdom

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• UK Modern Slavery Statement
• Sustainability
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell on Amazon Business
• Sell on Amazon Handmade
• Sell on Amazon Launchpad
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect and build your brand
• Associates Programme
• Fulfilment by Amazon
• Seller Fulfilled Prime
• Advertise Your Products
• Independently Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• › See More Make Money with Us
• Instalments by Barclays
• Amazon Platinum Mastercard
• Amazon Classic Mastercard
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Payment Methods Help
• Shop with Points
• Top Up Your Account
• Top Up Your Account in Store
• COVID-19 and Amazon
• Track Packages or View Orders
• Delivery Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Amazon Mobile App
• Customer Service
• Accessibility
• Netherlands
• United Arab Emirates
• United States
• Conditions of Use & Sale
• Privacy Notice
• Cookies Notice
• Interest-Based Ads Notice

• Craft and Criticism
• Fiction and Poetry
• News and Culture
• Lit Hub Radio
• Reading Lists

• Literary Criticism
• Craft and Advice
• In Conversation
• On Translation
• Short Story
• From the Novel
• Bookstores and Libraries
• Film and TV
• Art and Photography
• Freeman’s
• The Virtual Book Channel
• Behind the Mic
• Beyond the Page
• The Cosmic Library
• The Critic and Her Publics
• Emergence Magazine
• Fiction/Non/Fiction
• First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing
• Future Fables
• The History of Literature
• I’m a Writer But
• Just the Right Book
• Lit Century
• The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan
• New Books Network
• Tor Presents: Voyage Into Genre
• Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast
• Write-minded
• The Best of the Decade
• Best Reviewed Books
• BookMarks Daily Giveaway
• The Daily Thrill
• CrimeReads Daily Giveaway

5 Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week

“the novel runs on an engine that relentlessly converts suffering, usually of the inner-turmoil variety, into comedic relief.”.

Our cauldron of commendable reviews this week includes Dwight Garner on Blake Butler’s Molly , Lauren Michele Jackson on Percival Everett’s James , Eman Quotah on Fady Joudah’s […] , Emily Witt on Lucy Sante’s I Heard Her Call My Name , and Hannah Gold on Alexandra Tanner’s Worry .

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s home for book reviews.

“It’s an atrocity exhibition. Butler taps a vein of garish and almost comic malevolence that keeps flowing … It’s a disordered book, almost Lovecraftian at times in its airless luridness. By the end, the writing has become both tedious and odious. But the first 125 pages or so are electric and sharply observed. These pages have a midnight sort of impact many novelists would kill to smuggle into their fiction … He is unsparing about Brodak’s flaws, but his tone is warm and sympathetic. If you squint, you can see this tell-all, train-wreck memoir as an act of love. This is true even though, as the observant writer and undertaker Thomas Lynch reminds his readers, ‘the dead don’t care’ … In some respects, they are a typical couple in their 30s. They own a decent house. Their work—writing—matters most to them both. In other respects, they are the Morticia and Gomez of the ATL, edgelords with good power cords, with a neurotic need to flee anything that evokes, to borrow from Luis Buñuel, the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie … It is all so much that, near the end, when Butler’s suffering, self-loathing, addiction to cliché and self-help verbiage extend to dozens of pages, you want to send him up on a Ferris wheel and strand him at the top for an hour or two … People often mistake dark things for deep things. My feelings about this book are mixed, but I won’t forget reading it. It makes you look up at the sky, fearful of what might fall out of it. That sky might seem to bellow, to borrow one of the many maledictions in Cormac McCarthy’s 2022 novel Stella Maris : ‘Your life is set upon you like a dog.’”

–Dwight Garner on Blake Butler’s Molly ( The New York Times )

“In conferring interiority (and literacy) upon perhaps the most famous fictional emblem of American slavery after Uncle Tom, Everett seems to participate in the marketable trope of ‘writing back’ from the margins, exorcizing old racial baggage to confront the perennial question of—to use another worn idiom—what Huck Finn means now. And yet, with small exceptions, James meanders away from the prefab idioms that await it … Jim’s worries for his own family, a wife and child he’s left behind in bondage, must be slotted into the spaces between the boy’s gabbing, his questions, his anxieties. Jim’s sentiment toward Huck is unruly in its ambivalence: he is simultaneously protective and resentful, both relieved and uneasy when the two are separated, which in Everett’s novel they often are. With the boy in tow, Jim is mobile but stuck.

Writing himself into being means leaving Huck, and much of Huck , behind … he shows how nineteenth-century America (no less than present-day America) plays fast and loose with its most valued idioms—that is, race and money—and the material consequences, alternately grave and fortuitous, of doing so … Everett, like Twain, has often been called a satirist, but ‘satire’ is ultimately a limp and inadequate label for what Everett is up to with this searching account of a man’s manifold liberation. ‘ How much do I want to be free?’  Jim asks himself early in the novel. Huck won’t be of much assistance in answering that question, and neither will Twain, for that matter.”

–Lauren Michele Jackson on Percival Everett’s James ( The New Yorker )

“Palestinian American poet, translator, and physician Fady Joudah’s […] , his sixth collection of poetry, takes on the inadequacy and necessity of language to convey the pain and hope of Palestinians right now … How do we read and understand these lines when we perceive them to have been preceded by a blank space? A line we cannot make meaning of because of its absence? Does the missing line suggest the tens of thousands of missing Palestinians in Gaza, buried under rubble or buried anonymously? Or the thousands of Palestinians Israel has detained, the thousands missing from their homes and families and communities? Does it suggest endless displacement? Does the silence force you to listen? …

In his collection, Joudah pushes against a challenge Palestinian poetry faces, perhaps especially poetry written in English, where poets, as much as they resist doing so, are expected to explain the Palestinian condition. The problem, of course, is not the poetry itself or the Palestinian-ness of the poet, but rather the ongoing, relentless occupation and Nakba. The feeling of being stuck in a time loop, so that a poem written in 2021 or 2014 or 2011—or 1982—about the state of occupation and apartheid, bombardment, and impending Palestinian death, reads like it could have been written today, and vice versa … Joudah’s poems and the work of these other poets cannot simply be words we read. To read the work of Palestinians now and not also speak out or take action to end the genocide, to return all Israeli and Palestinian hostages home, and help strive for freedom and liberation for all is a betrayal of epic proportions. We can’t allow ourselves to feel catharsis. We must really listen so the future we look back from is the future we want and need.”

–Eman Quotah on Fady Joudah’s […] ( The Markaz Review )

“In a work that is otherwise marked by clarity and self-awareness, there is something willful about these efforts to avoid appearing ‘defensive.’ The logistics of a recent transition in upstate New York, where Sante lives, are different than they would be in a story about transitioning in Florida right now; the national context in which dozens of laws have been passed with the intention of erasing trans people from public life and hindering their access to health care goes unmentioned in her memoir, and there’s little acknowledgment that transition is not only a reckoning with the self but with a society. But it’s understandable to want to shield one’s own life story from right-wing hatred or identitarian jargon, and to downplay the entanglement of gender and government in order to focus on the quieter experience of self-inquiry, to hold it separate from the outrage cycle. Sante’s experience speaks to how transphobia gets metabolized in the mind, even for someone in a social circle in which she was rarely exposed to outright bigotry.”

–Emily Witt on Lucy Sante’s I Heard Her Call My Name ( The New Yorker )

“In a much-memed scene from the second season of Fleabag , the protagonist is in the middle of confession with her hot priest crush and divulges a flash of what feels like genuine, abject self-discovery. ‘I just think I want someone to tell me how to live my life,’ she says. Now picture the Father is replaced by a Mother (or, better yet, a Mommy), the confessional by a cellphone screen in a Brooklyn apartment, the 30-something British antihero by a 20-something Jewish American woman, and you can begin to imagine the essence of Alexandra Tanner’s fabulously revealing debut novel, Worry …

Tanner works wonders with little character development (I’d call it ‘character entrenchment’) and hardly any plot (eventually, Jules and Poppy go to Florida for Thanksgiving), trusting humor to structure the story all the way through. The novel runs on an engine that relentlessly converts suffering, usually of the inner-turmoil variety, into comedic relief … Speaking from experience, Worry also nails what it was like to be a youngish media worker in Brooklyn in 2019—desperate for meaningful success in a crumbling industry, addicted to the fleeting dopamine hits of social media, online shopping and clicking ‘send’ on grant applications. It’s funnier than it should be … Some stories give you the unvarnished truth, some the varnished one. Worry is generous and wise enough to give both.”

–Hannah Gold on Alexandra Tanner’s Worry ( The New York Times Book Review )

• Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)

Previous Article

Next article, support lit hub..

Join our community of readers.

to the Lithub Daily

Popular posts.

Follow us on Twitter

The 22 Best Book Covers of March

• RSS - Posts

Literary Hub

Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature

Sign Up For Our Newsletters

How to Pitch Lit Hub

Advertisers: Contact Us

Privacy Policy

Support Lit Hub - Become A Member

Become a Lit Hub Supporting Member : Because Books Matter

For the past decade, Literary Hub has brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall. But our future relies on you. In return for a donation, you’ll get an ad-free reading experience , exclusive editors’ picks, book giveaways, and our coveted Joan Didion Lit Hub tote bag . Most importantly, you’ll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving on the internet.

Become a member for as low as $5/month

Advertisement

Supported by

Review: ‘3 Body Problem’ Is a Galaxy-Brained Spectacle

The Netflix sci-fi adaptation has done its physics homework, even if it sometimes falls short on the humanities.

• Share full article

By James Poniewozik

The aliens who menace humankind in Netflix’s “3 Body Problem” believe in doing a lot with a little. Specifically, they can unfold a single proton into multiple higher dimensions, enabling them to print computer circuits with the surface area of a planet onto a particle smaller than a pinprick.

“3 Body Problem,” the audacious adaptation of a hard-sci-fi trilogy by Liu Cixin, is a comparable feat of engineering and compression. Its first season, arriving Thursday, wrestles Liu’s inventions and physics explainers onto the screen with visual grandeur, thrills and wow moments. If one thing holds it back from greatness, it’s the characters, who could have used some alien technology to lend them an extra dimension or two. But the series’s scale and mind-bending turns may leave you too starry-eyed to notice.

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, partnering here with Alexander Woo ( “The Terror: Infamy” ), are best known for translating George R.R. Martin’s incomplete “A Song of Ice and Fire” fantasy saga into “Game of Thrones.” Whatever your opinions of that series — and there are plenty — it laid out the duo’s strengths as adapters and their weaknesses as creators of original material.

Beginning with Martin’s finished novels, Benioff and Weiss converted the sprawling tomes into heady popcorn TV with epic battles and intimate conversations. Toward the end, working from outlines or less, they rushed to a finish and let visual spectacle overshadow the once-vivid characters.

In “3 Body,” however, they and Woo have a complete story to work with, and it’s a doozy. It announces its sweep up front, opening with a Chinese scientist’s public execution during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, then jumping to the present day, when a wave of notable physicists are inexplicably dying by suicide.

The deaths may be related to several strange phenomena. Experiments in particle accelerators around the world suddenly find that the last several decades’ worth of research is wrong. Brilliant scientific minds are being sent futuristic headsets of unknown provenance that invite them to join an uncannily realistic virtual-reality game. Oh, also, one night all the stars in the sky start blinking on and off.

It all suggests the working of an advanced power, not of the cuddly E.T. variety. What starts as a detective mystery, pursued by the rumpled intelligence investigator Clarence Da Shi (Benedict Wong), escalates to a looming war of the worlds. What the aliens want and what they might do to get it is unclear at first, but as Clarence intuits, “Usually when people with more advanced technology encounter people with more primitive technology, doesn’t work out well for the primitives.”

Most of the first season’s plot comes straight from Liu’s work. The biggest changes are in story structure and location. Liu’s trilogy, while wide-ranging, focused largely on Chinese characters and had specifically Chinese historical and political overtones. Benioff, Weiss and Woo have globalized the story, shifting much of the action to London, with a multiethnic cast. (Viewers interested in a more literal rendition of Liu’s story can watch last year’s stiff but thorough Chinese adaptation on Peacock.)

They’ve also given Liu’s heavy science a dose of the humanities. Liu is a brilliant novelist of speculative ideas, but his characters can read like figures from story problems. In the series, a little playful dialogue goes a long way toward leavening all the Physics 101.

So does casting. Wong puffs life into his generically hard-boiled gumshoe. Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth in “Thrones”) stands out as Thomas Wade, a sharp-tongued spymaster, as does Rosalind Chao as Ye Wenjie, an astrophysicist whose brutal experience in the Cultural Revolution makes her question her allegiance to humanity. Zine Tseng is also excellent as the young Ye.

More curious, if understandable, is the decision to shuffle and reconfigure characters from throughout Liu’s trilogy into a clique of five attractive Oxford-grad prodigies who carry much of the narrative: Jin Cheng (Jess Hong), a dogged physicist with personal ties to the dead-scientists case; Auggie Salazar (Eiza González), an idealistic nanofibers researcher; Saul Durand (Jovan Adepo), a gifted but jaded research assistant; Will Downing (Alex Sharp), a sweet-natured teacher with a crush on Jin; and Jack Rooney (John Bradley of “Thrones”), a scientist turned snack-food entrepreneur and the principal source of comic relief.

The writers manage to bump up Liu’s one-dimensional characterizations to two-ish, but the “Oxford Five,” with the exception of Jin, don’t feel entirely rounded. This is no small thing; in a fantastical series like “Thrones” or “Lost,” it is the memorable individuals — your Arya Starks and your Ben Linuses — who hold you through the ups and downs of the story.

The plot, however, is dizzying and the world-building immersive, and the reportedly galactic budget looks well and creatively spent on the screen. Take the virtual-reality scenes, through which “3 Body” gradually reveals its stakes and the aliens’ motives. Each character who dons the headset finds themselves in an otherworldly version of an ancient kingdom — China for Jin, England for Jack — which they are challenged to save from repeating cataclysms caused by the presence of three suns (hence the series’s title).

“3 Body” has a streak of techno-optimism even at its bleakest moments, the belief that the physical universe is explicable even when cruel. The universe’s inhabitants are another matter. Alongside the race to save humanity is the question of whether humanity is worth saving — a group of alien sympathizers, led by a billionaire environmentalist (Jonathan Pryce), decides that Earth would benefit from a good cosmic intervention.

All this attaches the show’s brainiac spectacle to big humanistic ideas. The threat in “3 Body” is looming rather than imminent — these are not the kind of aliens who pull up quick and vaporize the White House — which makes for a parallel to the existential but gradual threat of climate change. Like “Thrones,” with its White Walkers lurking beyond the Wall, “3 Body” is in part a collective-action problem.

It is also morally provocative. Liu’s novels make an argument that in a cold, indifferent universe, survival can require a hard heart; basing decisions on personal conscience can be a kind of selfishness and folly. The series is a bit more sentimental, emphasizing relationships and individual agency over game theory and determinism. But it’s willing to go dark: In a striking midseason episode, the heroes make a morally gray decision in the name of planetary security, and the consequences are depicted in horrifying detail.

Viewers new to the story should find it exciting on its own. (You do not need to have read the books first; you should never need to read the books to watch a TV series.) But the book trilogy does go to some weird, grim — and presumably challenging to film — places, and it will be interesting to see if and how future seasons follow.

For now, there’s flair, ambition and galaxy-brain twists aplenty. Sure, this kind of story is tough to pull off beginning to end (see, again, “Game of Thrones”). But what’s the thrill in creating a headily expanding universe if there’s no risk of it collapsing?

James Poniewozik is the chief TV critic for The Times. He writes reviews and essays with an emphasis on television as it reflects a changing culture and politics. More about James Poniewozik

Explore More in TV and Movies

Not sure what to watch next we can help..

“X-Men ’97,” a revival on Disney+ that picks up where the ’90s animated series left off, has faced questions after the firing of its showrunner  ahead of the premiere.

“3 Body Problem,” a science fiction epic from the creators of “Game of Thrones,” has arrived on Netflix. We spoke with them about their latest project .

For the past two decades, female presidential candidates on TV have been made in Hillary Clinton’s image. With “The Girls on the Bus,” that’s beginning to change .

“Freaknik,” a new Hulu documentary, delves into the rowdy ’80s and ’90s-era spring festival  that drew hundreds of thousands of Black college students to Atlanta.

If you are overwhelmed by the endless options, don’t despair — we put together the best offerings   on Netflix , Max , Disney+ , Amazon Prime  and Hulu  to make choosing your next binge a little easier.

Sign up for our Watching newsletter  to get recommendations on the best films and TV shows to stream and watch, delivered to your inbox.

Trump promotes Lee Greenwood's 'God Bless The USA Bible': What to know about the book and its long journey

• Former president Donald Trump encourages supporters to buy Lee Greenwood's "God Bless The USA Bible," a project inspired by Nashville country musician's hit song.
• Resurgent version of Greenwood's Bible project a modified version from original concept, a change that likely followed 2021 shake-up in publishers.

After years with few updates about Lee Greenwood’s controversial Bible, the project is again resurgent with a recent promotion by former President Donald Trump.

“All Americans need to have a Bible in their home and I have many. It’s my favorite book,” Trump said in a video posted to social media Tuesday, encouraging supporters to purchase the “God Bless The USA Bible.” “Religion is so important and so missing, but it’s going to come back.”

Greenwood — the Nashville area country musician whose hit song “God Bless the USA” inspired the Bible with a similar namesake — has long been allies with Trump and other prominent Republicans, many of whom are featured in promotional material for the “God Bless The USA Bible.” But that reputational clout in conservative circles hasn’t necessarily translated to business success in the past, largely due to a major change in the book’s publishing plan.

Here's what to know about the Bible project’s journey so far and why it’s significant it’s back in the conservative limelight.

An unordinary Bible, a fiery debate

The “God Bless The USA Bible” received heightened attention since the outset due to its overt political features.

The text includes the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, Pledge of Allegiance, and the lyrics to the chorus to Greenwood’s “God Bless The USA.” Critics saw it as a symbol of Christian nationalism, a right-wing movement that believes the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation.

A petition emerged in 2021 calling Greenwood’s Bible “a toxic mix that will exacerbate the challenges to American evangelicalism.” From there, a broader conversation ensued about the standards by which publishers print Bibles.

Gatekeeping in Bible publishing

Greenwood’s early business partner on the project, a Hermitage-based marketing firm called Elite Source Pro, initially reached a manufacturing agreement with the Nashville-based HarperCollins Christian Publishing to print the “God Bless The USA Bible.”  

As part of that agreement, HarperCollins would publish the book but not sell or endorse it. But then HarperCollins reversed course , a major setback for Greenwood’s Bible.

The reversal by HarperCollins followed a decision by Zondervan — a publishing group under HarperCollins Christian Publishing and an official North American licensor for Bibles printed in the New International Version translation — to pass on the project. HarperCollins said the decision was unrelated to the petition or other public denunciations against Greenwood’s Bible.

The full backstory: Lee Greenwood's 'God Bless the USA Bible' finds new printer after HarperCollins Christian passes

A new translation and mystery publisher

The resurgent “God Bless The USA Bible” featured in Trump’s recent ad is an altered version of the original concept, a modification that likely followed the publishing shake-up.

Greenwood’s Bible is now printed in the King James Version, a different translation from the original pitch to HarperCollins.

Perhaps the biggest mystery is the new publisher. That manufacturer is producing a limited quantity of copies, leading to a delayed four-to-six weeks for a copy to ship.  

It’s also unclear which business partners are still involved in the project. Hugh Kirkman, who led Elite Service Pro, the firm that originally partnered with Greenwood for the project, responded to a request for comment by referring media inquiries to Greenwood’s publicist.

The publicist said Elite Source Pro is not a partner on the project and the Bible has always been printed in the King James Version.

"Several years ago, the Bible was going to be printed with the NIV translation, but something happened with the then licensor and the then potential publisher. As a result, this God Bless The USA Bible has always been printed with the King James Version translation," publicist Jeremy Westby said in a statement.

Westby did not have the name of the new licensee who is manufacturing the Bible.

Trump’s plug for the “God Bless The USA Bible” recycled language the former president is using to appeal to a conservative Christian base.

“Our founding fathers did a tremendous thing when they built America on Judeo-Christian values,” Trump said in his video on social media. “Now that foundation is under attack perhaps as never before.”

'Bring back our religion’: Trump vows to support Christians during Nashville speech

Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean. Reach him at [email protected] or on social media @liamsadams.

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Book Reviews

'james' revisits huck finn's traveling companion, giving rise to a new classic.

Carole V. Bell

An enslaved man debates John Locke. A Black man pretends to be a white man in blackface to sing in a new minstrel show. In a fever dream of a retelling, the new reigning king of satire , Percival Everett, has turned one of America's best loved classics, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, upside down, placing Huck's enslaved companion Jim at the center and making him the narrator. The result is strangely new and familiar – an adrenaline-spiking adventure with absurdity and tragedy blended together.

Percival Everett gives Mark Twain's classic story about Huck a new voice in 'James'

Re-imaginings of classic literature are challenging, often unnecessary endeavors. This one is different, a startling homage and a new classic in its own right. Readers may be surprised by how much of the original scaffolding remains and how well the turnabout works, swapping a young man's moral awakening for something even more fraught. A kind of historical heist novel about human cargo, as in the original, James is an enslaved man in antebellum Missouri. James loves his wife Sadie and their 9-year old daughter Lizzie, and keeps them safe by not just adhering to – but mastering – the racial codes of an inhumane system.

Advice from a critic: Read 'Erasure' before seeing 'American Fiction'

Despite those efforts, one day Jim learns the unthinkable — the mistress is planning to sell him down the river but keep Sadie and Lizzie. James can't have his family separated, so he runs to nearby Jackson Island, planning to hide out until he can figure a way to secure their freedom. Jim's unlikely friend, young Huckleberry Finn also has reason to hide and to run with his abusive and alcoholic father back in town. After faking his own death (an action that unintentionally puts James under suspicion), Huck begs to come along, offering to pretend to be Jim's owner. This alliance launches a delirious odyssey, two runaways navigating a treacherous river on a raft.

A subtle but significant change is that while the events of Twain's 1884 novel take place in the Mississippi Valley "forty to fifty years ago," in the 1840s, Everett advances the timeline by two decades, putting the nation on the cusp of civil war, though James and Huck don't know it.

More importantly, Everett provides what Twain could not: Jim's deep interior life. The entire story is narrated in his voice. Getting inside James's head is a remarkable experience. Though they're sometimes parted, James (as he prefers to be called in Everett's novel) and Huck somehow always find each other again, and that creates a sense of surreality.

Along with shifting states of consciousness and reality, identity is a crucial and an explicitly slippery thing. Twain wrote Huck Finn in region-, race- and even age-specific dialect and pushed back on critics who found the language objectionable by explaining each dialect contained was researched with anthropological attention to detail. Everett, like Twain, is similarly obsessed with the link between language and identity. James plays the role of the docile and ignorant slave, whose speech to white people is barely intelligible, while inside he's savvy, literate, and nursing a bubbling rage. Every chance meeting with white folks is a performance, a private minstrel show in which James code switches his style of speaking for white comfort.

The artifice serves a crucial purpose, and James is a consummate trickster – the cooperative slave, play acting exaggerated subservience, with his voice and diction morphing to character. And despite their growing connection, James's audience is all white people, old and young – including Huck. James only holds fast to only one true thing: His vow to his family: to "get me a job and save me sum money and come back and buy my Sadie and Lizzie."

Every now and then Huck can sense the falseness and it destabilizes their partnership. Their connection is real and tenuous, undermined by who they are – or appear to be to society – and the gap between them. Those contradictions are hard for a boy to grasp. It would be poignant but the repetition of those scenes of code switching uncertainty also renders this comic. As narrator, James recounts this moment when Huck got close to discovering his act:

"Jim," Huck said. "What?" "Why you talking so funny?" "Whatchu be meanin'?" I was panicking inside. "You were talkin'—I don't know—you didn't sound like no slave."

'Dr. No' is a delightfully escapist romp and an incisive sendup of espionage fiction

Again and again. In true Everett fashion, the intertwined artifice of race and language is stretched to self-reflexive absurdity. On top of the issue of interracial, interpersonal performance, the author mimics and pokes fun at the self awareness and calculus of slave narratives like the one James is himself secretly trying to craft (or maybe, rather modern literary analysis of slave narratives) and what James explicitly calls "the frame" in storytelling. James knows he's smarter than those who would consider themselves his betters and, sometimes, as long as he's safe and among other Black people, he secretly enjoys having some fun with his expertise.

Book News & Features

Percival everett's latest grounds racial allegory in history, horror and blood.

The earliest and most self-conscious example of this linguistic play and reflexivity occurs before James and Huck go on the run. James was careful to approach Huck and Tom like any other white folks – with caution and concealed distance. When the boys think to play a trick on James while he's sleeping, the truth is "Those boys couldn't sneak up on a blind and deaf man while a band was playing." But James spins a story letting the boys think their trick of moving his hat while he was sleeping has been so successful that he believes he was visited by a witch. He's telling a tale to another Black man, but he knows that he's being overheard by the two white boys. This is the dual frame of which James is explicitly aware. Similarly, when teaching his daughter Lizzie how to manage the expectations of white people and avoid insulting Miss Watson about her terrible cooking, James advises the girl: "'Try'dat be,' I said. 'That would be the correct incorrect grammar.' "

James takes pride and pleasure in these deceptions. But fluidity of language and role playing can never be just a game. This 19th century linguistic shape-shifting can become a matter of life or death in an instant. So the intimacy between him and Huck is worrying: "spending time with Huck alone had caused me to relax in a way that was dangerous." Plus, the people James and Huck encounter are also, more often than not, playing with their own roles. When James meets Norman, a man with white skin who seems to see through his racial performance, he finds it a "terrifying notion." James's horror and fear are so obvious that Norman feels compelled to reassure him: "'You didn't slip," he said. I'se jest knows.'" James is impressed: "His accent was perfect. He was bilingual, fluent in a language no white person could master." But Norman has his own secrets of identity and language. He's actually of mixed race passing for white, and James just doesn't detect it.

Like James and Norman's encounter, the novel is exquisitely multilayered. A brilliant, sometimes shocking mashup of various literary forms, James has the arc of an odyssey, with the quest for home, and an abundance of absurdly comical humor. Con men and tricksters like the Duke and the Dauphin are borrowed from Twain. But even with the humor, Everett weaves in signature touches, like dream sequences with John Locke, whom James criticizes over his position on slavery. As James recounts, "I knew I was dead asleep and dreaming, but I didn't know whether John Locke knew that." So they debate in his dreams, the famous philosopher from which America's "inalienable and natural rights" flow defending his contradictions. When Locke says, "Some might say that my views on slavery are complex and multifaceted," James counters that his positions are "Convoluted and multifarious." Locke says: "Well reasoned and complicated;" James says: "Entangled and problematic." Locke: "Sophisticated and intricate." James: "Labyrinthine and Daedalean."

The back and forth is virtuosic in a scene that will make you smile if not laugh out loud. At other moments, especially those involving James's evolution and the enslaved women inside and outside of his family, James is devastating. Eventually, the story crescendos to a paroxysm of violence that is simultaneously inevitable and shattering. That combination of moral philosophy, absurdity and tragedy is very Everett. But James's situation is so bleak, his character so flesh and blood so fully realized, his pain so visceral and poignant, that at times the farce and telegraphing of inside jokes can seem jarring.

Still, I'm not sure if that dissonance is truly a bug or a feature. In addition to addressing language and identity, James is very convincingly and movingly a book about two runaways' quest for freedom and the relationship between human beings that society says should not have any connection. James works shockingly well in all those dimensions. America's original sin and contradictions are his subject, and this riveting riff on a similarly complex American classic that even Toni Morrison called "this amazing troubling book" is his most challenging and maybe even his best canvas. With the previous high water marks of Telephone, The Trees, and Erasure , Everett has long been an American literary icon. But in the wake of an Oscar-winning adaptation , this time the world is watching. James expands the Everett canon in a way that will have to be reckoned with come award season.

A slow runner and fast reader, Carole V. Bell is a cultural critic and communication scholar focusing on media, politics and identity. You can find her on Twitter @BellCV .

• Kindle Store
• Kindle eBooks
• Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

Buy for others

Buying and sending ebooks to others.

• Select quantity
• Buy and send eBooks
• Recipients can read on any device

These ebooks can only be redeemed by recipients in the US. Redemption links and eBooks cannot be resold.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

The Gathering Dark: Inspector McLean Book 8 Kindle Edition

• Book 8 of 13 Inspector McLean
• Print length 333 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publication date January 26, 2020
• File size 2133 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
• See all details

Customers who bought this item also bought

Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08491CT3H
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ DevilDog Publishing (January 26, 2020)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 26, 2020
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 2133 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 333 pages
• #1,409 in Noir Crime
• #7,120 in Police Procedurals (Kindle Store)
• #11,417 in Police Procedurals (Books)

About the author

James oswald.

James Oswald is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling Inspector McLean series of detective mysteries. The first two of these, Natural Causes and The Book of Souls were both short-listed for the prestigious CWA Debut Dagger Award. Set in an Edinburgh not so different to the one we all know, Detective Inspector Tony McLean is the unlucky policeman who can see beneath the surface of ordinary criminal life to the dark, menacing evil that lurks beneath.

James has also introduced the world to Detective Constable Constance 'Con' Fairchild, whose first outing was in the acclaimed No Time To Cry.

As J D Oswald, James has written a classic fantasy series, The Ballad of Sir Benfro. Inspired by the language and folklore of Wales, it follows the adventures of a young dragon, Sir Benfro, in a land where his kind have been hunted near to extinction by men. The whole series is now available in print, ebook and audio formats.

James has pursued a varied career - from Wine Merchant to International Carriage Driving Course Builder via Call Centre Operative and professional Sheep Shit Sampler (true). He moved out of the caravan when Storm Gertrude blew the Dutch barn down on top of it, and now lives in a proper house with two dogs, two cats and a long-suffering partner. He farms Highland cows by day, writes disturbing fiction by night.

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Start Selling with Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

Inspector McLean #4

Dead men's bones, james oswald.

459 pages, Paperback

First published July 3, 2014

About the author

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think? Rate this book Write a Review

Friends & Following

Community reviews.

Join the discussion

Can't find what you're looking for.