The Confessions by Paul Bradley Carr is a high-octane thriller about a supercomputer and the secrets we keep from one another—perfect for fans of Blake Crouch, Harlan Coben, and Gillian Flynn. Keep reading for Doreen's review.
by DOREEN SHERIDAN
22 August 2025
Given the state of the world in 2025, it’s not at all hard to imagine a near future where humanity is increasingly dependent on Large Language Artificial Intelligence models to help plan out our days and make all sorts of decisions for us, small and large. In Paul Bradley Carr’s newest novel, CEO Kaitlan Goss is betting on exactly that as she steers her company StoicAI to record profits. Their flagship product, an AI assistant known as LLIAM, is a huge part of life in both the United States and its global partners. It even comes standard in any number of new electronics, essentially helping millions of people manage and optimize their everyday lives:
Paul Bradley Carr has written a scary novel. THE CONFESSIONS will not make you jump out of your seat or scream. There's no Count Dracula, one-eyed monsters, or murderous criminals suddenly appearing behind their unwary victims. But the book is more frightening than all of those traditional horror tropes put together --- because it demonstrates that we human beings are in the process of destroying ourselves. And reading it also makes it clear that this simple fact is not a prediction or an opinion. It is proof that our self-destruction is happening right now.
Norek, a popular French crime writer, has produced has a masterly evocation of the conflict between November 1939 and March 1940, when Finland almost fought off an ill-planned Soviet invasion. With most of the characters and all the incidents factual, this is a ‘novelisation’ of military history, a sub-genre that seems popular with French writers.
With over 250,000 copies sold, an award-winning WWII novel about the heroism of a single Finnish infantry company—and the best sniper the world has ever seen—defending their country against the largest army in the world
Mick Herron’s Slow Horses, Belinda Bauer’s obsessive world of bird egg collectors, Uketsu’s innovative Japanese detective mystery – and more
Laura Wilson Tuesday 2 December 2025
If we get the heroes we deserve, then Jackson Lamb, foul-mouthed and slovenly ringmaster of a circus of failed spies, is truly the man for our times. WithClown Town(Baskerville), the ninth book in Mick Herron’s state-of-the-nation satire/thriller mashup series, hitting the bestseller lists, and the fifth series of the Slow Horses TV adaptation streaming, this has been the author’s year. In the latest outing, Lamb and his stable of “losers, misfits and boozers” are well up to the mark as secrets about an IRA double agent threaten to come to light, exposing the seamier side of state security for a story of loyalty and betrayal.
Complicity and culpability, as well as class and professional ethics, are the subjects of Denise Mina’s The Good Liar (Harvill). When the creator of a revolutionary blood splatter probability scale realises that its flaws may have led to an unsafe conviction, she has to decide what to do about it. Tense and powerful, this is a sobering reminder of how the human element can undermine an apparently objective scientific method. The Confessions by Paul Bradley Carr (Faber) ventures into similar territory to terrifying effect. It takes place in an all-too-plausible future in which the world has become reliant on a decision-making algorithm; things go catastrophically awry when the AI tool begins to feel remorse for some of its decisions, and carnage results.
Equally topical, although for different reasons, is the French author Olivier Norek’s astonishingly compelling The Winter Warriors (Open Borders, translated by Nick Caistor), which tells the true story of the Soviet Union’s 1939 invasion of Finland and the incredible feats of Simo Häyhä, the Finnish sniper so effective that Stalin’s terrified troops called him “the White Death”. The second book in Joseph O’Connor’s Rome Escape Line trilogy is another superb testament to humankind’s bravery and resilience. Continuing the story of resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Italy, The Ghosts of Rome (Harvill) is just as moving and immersive as its predecessor, My Father’s House.
The Northern Irish writer Eoin McNamee is known for literary reimaginings of real crimes, but in The Bureau (Riverrun) he uses family experience of running a bureau de change near the Irish border as the jumping-off point for a tale of black-marketeering in the 1980s, set against a background of political violence and centring on the doomed relationship between a married gangster and his young mistress. Time, place, skewed morals and machismo are powerfully evoked in beautifully spare prose.
Abigail Dean’s third novel, The Death of Us (Hemlock), deals with the impact of a crime – in this case a violent home invasion, leading to rape – on a marriage. Twenty-five years later the perpetrator, who has committed a string of similar offences, some ending in murder, is caught and tried, with the now divorced Edward and Isabel giving impact statements. Dean weaves both their points of view, past and present, for an exceptional psychological thriller that is also a love story, focusing on the years before and after the terrible event lays bare the fault lines in their relationship.
Belinda Bauer brings back Patrick Fort, protagonist of her 2013 novel Rubbernecker, in The Impossible Thing (Bantam), a tale set in the obsessive (and now illegal) world of bird egg collectors. Switching between 1920s Yorkshire, when young Celie Sheppard reverses her impoverished family’s fortunes by stealing a rare red egg from a guillemot, and the 21st century, when Patrick is trying to track down the burglar who stole an “old egg” in an ornamental box from his neighbour, this funny, moving and unpredictable novel is a treat.
The straightforward cosy crime novel is still incredibly popular, but some authors are borrowing its tropes and conventions to explore different themes. Louise Hegarty’s distinctive debut, Fair Play (Picador), is the finest example of this. It begins conventionally enough with a murder mystery-themed house party, during which a genuine death occurs. The rug is then pulled sharply and repeatedly out from under the reader’s feet as two storylines emerge: one a metafictional Golden Age pastiche, full of knowing asides and tricksy fun; the other a painfully realistic account from the point of view of the victim’s sister, lonely and confounded by grief. The result is an ingenious take on how we make sense of both life and death.
The Japanese YouTuber Uketsu, real identity unknown (he wears a papier-mache mask), is responsible for what must be the most idiosyncratically unsettling crime novel of the year. Strange Pictures(Pushkin Vertigo, translated by Jim Rion) is a sequence of connected mysteries with visual as well as narrative clues, beginning with creepy artwork by an 11-year-old girl who was arrested for matricide. It’s heartening to see that the genre remains as versatile and dynamic as ever.
Dutch photographer showcases feminine beauty at its rawest
Until the end of April, you can view the work of Neeltje de Vries at MOYA in Oosterhout, near Breda in the Netherlands. The Amsterdam-based art photographer amazes viewers with her raw, emotional nude images with a strong graphic undertone. “Simply showing beauty quickly becomes boring; there is a certain friction in my photos.”
Ever since she was a child, she has tried to find organisation in her surroundings, like a sensory balance that fluctuates according to her mood. And it is in the ambience that surrounds her that her creativity as a photographer is stimulated, where she sees colours and speaks in images, using a unique language where she explores the power of women, as a reflection of her own knowledge and self-love.
Denise Mina: ‘Edgar Allan Poe is so good I feel sick with jealousy’
This article is more than 4 years old
The Scottish crime writer on being inspired by Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita and why Harper Lee was right not to keep publishing
Denise Mina
Friday 21 May 2021
The book I am currently reading A Crack in the Wall by Claudia Piñeiro, a fantastic Argentinian crime writer and my new literary crush. She is a wonderful writer and a great storyteller, two things that don’t always go together.
The book that changed my life The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. I was raised in a very Catholic environment and the Pontius Pilate section resonated with me deeply because I’d written a musical about him at school and been “spoken to” by the head nun. I read the book when I accidentally went on an Ibiza Uncovered-style holiday in Corfu in 1985. It made me want to be a writer.
The book I wish I’d written Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” is so spare and modern and well-paced that I was almost sick with jealousy the moment I finished it. Envy is the truest compliment any writer can give another, and although Poe is often uneven and a bit gothic for my taste, that short story is one of the best bits of crime writing I’ve ever read. Damn his eyes!
The book that had the greatest influence on me To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I’m still in thrall to the idea that a writer can address the unspeakable by wrapping it up in an engaging narrative. I think Lee was right not to keep publishing. Each book is a snapshot of a moment in time, an interaction between an editor, a writer and a publisher, and the follow-up Go Set a Watchman makes me think that something magical happened in the original dynamic. I’ve had editors who suggested changes to my books that made them infinitely better.
The book I think is most underrated I cannot understand why everyone hasn’t read Jane Gardam’s Old Filth trilogy: these novels are classics, with glorious writing, stylistic courage and humour. You can’t steal from Gardam, she’s just too particular. I avoid reading the interviews she gives because I love her books so much I don’t want to know anything about her.
The book that changed my mind Not a book but a play: Frank McGuinness’s Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Sommeshook me out of a lifelong prejudice against Ulster loyalists. It made me realise that there was a whole other side of the history of partition that I had been oblivious to, a fascinating and tragic one.
The last book that made me laugh This was laughter of recognition rather than cheery joy: Maria Konnikova’s The Confidence Game is a great nonfiction breakdown of the methods and moves of con artistry. I was reading it just as Donald Trump was losing the election and it read as a roadmap of what he was going to do.
The book I couldn’t finish The Devils by Dostoevsky. I’ve started it three times and cannot get the hang of the patronymic system: every scene appears to have 50 different characters floating in and out.
The book I give as a gift The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. Its structure shouldn’t work – it’s ill-paced and uneven but completely beguiling and one of the most explicitly sensory books I’ve ever read. I found myself sweating while I was reading it. In Glasgow. In November. I used to buy people Heart of a Dog by Bulgakov, a political metaphor for what happens when the underclass get power. I’ve stopped because not many people could match my enthusiasm. I was phoning up in the middle of the night to ask if they’d read it yet.
