Review - Like a Bullet by Andrew Cartmel

Andrew Cartmel
Titan Books, 8 July 2025
Available as: PB, 304pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781803367941

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Like a Bullet to consider for review.

The return of Cordelia Stanmer, aka The Paperback Sleuth (she's had cards made and everything) is always welcome. Unlike her counterpart in the world or rare record collecting, Cartmel's Vinyl Detective, Cordelia's got few scruples (she's certainly up for a bit of burglary) when it comes to securing down a rare, pristine paperback volume, so life is always exciting when she's around. These books are a third mystery, a third scavenger hunt, and, perhaps, the other third has a distinct flavour of mild hedonism, Cordelia employing her gains in the pursuit of pleasures both licit and... not. 

In Like a Bullet, Cordelia's been engaged by wealthy, retired rock star Erik Make Loud (known to those who've been reading the Detective's adventures) to locate a copy of the legendary 1960s novel Commando Gold. This is a book so rare that online wars break out over whether it even exists. How can she resist that challenge (and the promised reward for achieving it)? 

Especially since, on acquiring the previous books in the series, she finds them eminently readable (not really what she'd expected from an author called "Butch Raider").

As ever, though, Cordelia doesn't really know what she's getting into. Someone really, really doesn't want that book found. There's more at stake here than a musty, mouldering volume of war stories. Soon, she' dodging a very determined enemy... one very familiar with the kinds of techniques described in the books.

As ever, I had great fun with Cartmel's latest. Cordelia's a very distinct, very well-formed character, more of a loner than the Detective (while she eventually has to ask for help in this story from her ex hard-man landlord Edwin, she generally handles things herself rather than travelling with an entourage like the Detective). She's a planner, often (but not always) one step ahead of everyone else. She inhabits the same slightly raffish south west London. Cartmel also has a good eye for location and geography, mapping out backstreets, pubs and routes into and out of London, as well as giving us glimpses of the strange characters (never quite too strange to be believable) who live there.

An excellent addition to the series.

For more information about Like a Bullet, see the publisher's website here.