Standpoint magazine carried a Dalrymple essay containing reviews of three books in its October edition. Regretfully, we didn’t pick it up until now. (Many thanks to readers Michael and Dave for alerting us.)

The essay is a review of The Private Patient by P.D. James, Doors Open by Ian Rankin and A Most Wanted Man by John le Carré.

“…precisely because of the demands of the genre, crime fiction in particular is often very well written, much better written in fact than more self-­consciously literary fiction. Intellectuals are therefore by no means ashamed to acknowledge that they are aficionados of the literature of homicide; Bertrand Russell read one crime novel a day for long periods of his life.”

Read the full review