Source: Review copyPublication: 23 October 2025 from ZaffrePP: 384ISBN-13: 978-1804188651 My thanks to Zaffre for an advance copy for review Vaseem Khan’s Quantum of Menace is a bold, entertaining spin-off that takes the James Bond universe and explores the world of Q, the MI5 gadget genius. The story opens with Major Boothroyd being unceremoniously ejected from MI6. BeHe’s hardly begun to adjust to the quiet calm of his hometown, Wickstone-on-Water, before his forced retirement is interrupted by the death of an old friend, Peter Napier.

The Five By Five Interview with AK Benedict Alexandra/AK Benedict was on a panel one of the first years I went to Bloody Scotland, around the time of Jonathan Dark or The Evidence Of Ghosts. I bought it, and loved it; a police procedural and ghost story and so much more, blended into something entirely different. (She was also fabulously dressed, and delighted when I complimented her on her boots!) Publishing has finally cottoned on to the fact readers like genre-fluid stories, and her novels are finding the audience they so richly deserve - her name on the cover tempted me to read…