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LATEST REVIEWS

Read the transcript of Calum McLeods review "Moolighting on the Forth" from Sherlock Magazine.

The Scottish Best Sellers List for May 2002 shows Bitter End at number four.
Click on the image opposite to view the top 10.

"It gives me great pleasure to write a few lines for Joyce Holms' fan-dabby-dozy new web-site. Like me, Joyce lives in Edinburgh; like me, she takes a lot of her inspiration from the city. And while Edinburgh probably isn't as rough tough and gangster strewn as I represent it in the Rebus novels, it almost certainly is as quirkily humorous as Joyce shows it to be.

Unlike some comic writers, Joyce is every bit as witty in real life as she is on the page. She tells a good story precisely because she's lived some good stories herself.

It's an extraordinary time to be a crime writer in Scotland. We've got everything from the dystopian future (as written about by Paul Johnston) to historical mysteries (Alanna Knight) we've got grim urban visions (Quintin Jardine, Denis Mina) and strong- stomached satire (Christopher Brookmyre).For Joyce's stories you don't need a strong stomach, though you may find your sides aching with laughter.

Her humour is sharp without being nasty; her characters are well drawn; her Edinburgh is a place you'll want to spend time in.

So … welcome to the Joyce Holms web-site. And if you haven't read her books, stop spending all your time on the computer and go buy some. Cheers, IAN RANKIN."

"Joyce Holms the Intelligent reader's Janet Evanovich. Classy, funny, fast moving and full of really great characters, Crime writing at it's best. "
ALANNA KNIGHT

Crime novels pour out by the thousand. And the majority of them are, to be frank, pretty well interchangeable. None the worse for that. If you want a few hours undemanding relaxation, pick any one of them and get as much enjoyment as you can. But every now and then we are lucky enough to be given a crime writer whose work has that cherishable mark of difference. Joyce Holms is one of that rare band.

Her secret is simple. She contrives to write two quite different types of book bound up in the one cover. Or, more than bound up: indistinguishably mingled. On the one hand you have the douce Edinburgh writer giving us the sort of story Agatha Christie made popular, about the kind of people the reader of novels meets every day, but with the savourable addition of gentle Scottishness. That part of Joyce Holms' writing is as toothsome as oatcakes. But, on the other hand you have a writer well-acquainted with the dirty side of life.

Not for nothing was Joyce Holms born, not in douce Edinburgh, but in Glasgow, the city of hard men, and as hard women. And not for nothing, in her CV, do you find the line 'working for an Edinburgh detective agency', because Edinburgh is not only the
city of nice elderly ladies and worthy burghers, it is also the city where an Ian Rankin can let loose his undeniably tough Inspector Rebus to war with drug-dealers and worse. And Joyce Holms writes about that side of life with as much ease as she writes
about scones for tea.It is when these two sides of life, both perfectly valid, each as 'real' as the other, are combined together that you get the altogether different world
of Joyce Holms, and it is a world worth taking into one's heart and mind."

HRF KEATING
http://www.twbooks.co.uk/authors/hrfkeating.html.