Michael Connelly: Void Moon Review

An interesting change of focus by Connelly - Void Moon's hero is a crook and a female crook at that. Cassie Black is on probation after serving part of a sentence for robbery and felony murder. She and her now-dead partner Max used to specialise in stealing the winnings from high-rollers in Las Vegas, until their last caper ended in Max falling a couple of hundred feet through an interior window.

Cassie was pregnant at the time, else she'd have been the one trapped in a hotel room. Convicted and imprisoned, bereft of lover Max, depressed, she gives her baby up for adoption but keeps track of her. She wangles a probation in the child's home city and watches from afar - a glimpse at the school gates just feeding the ache. Now the adoptive family is planning a move abroad.

Shame On Mitt Romney

Some of you will know that I do occasionally stray from book reviews as and when politicians annoy me. I normally try for a bit of humour but today's subject doesn't inspire many of the better or lighter emotions.

Ladies and gentlemen, please be upstanding for the man who was second choice to Sarah Palin a few years ago, asset stripper and all-round forgetter of facts, Mr Mitt Romney.

Paul Doherty: The House Of Shadows Reviewed

Five Kentish knights gather annually at the Night in Jerusalem tavern in Southwark, a reunion of old soldiers. Good food, good drink, a doxy or two to hasten the blood, then back to their families. This year, though, is different, as one by one the knights are found dead, in mysterious and misleading circumstances.

Other murders occur, muddying the waters to be investigated by Sir John Cranston, Coroner of the City of London, and his scrivener Brother Athelstan. Underlying all is the tale of a stolen fortune, the Lombard treasure. Borrowed to pay for a war, gone missing with its escort on the night it was sent to a waiting fleet, many want the treasure - not least the Machiavellian Regent, John of Gaunt.