This is the second samplers edition, and Mal will be looking at two samplers picked up from the Theakston's Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival: Stuart MacBride's 'Rust, Blood and Steel' and Deon Meyer's 'Scorpio Rising', which has been translated from Afrikaans by K. L. Seegars. MacBride's novel is a new novel and is already available in the UK, while the translation of Meyer's novel will be available early next year in the UK.

In this episode, I'll take a look at the novelists and their series then talk about some of the questions I had when reading these samplers and whether that could impact how or if I read the full novels. These are two authors with long running series, but the novels are very different in tone. Interestingly, though, the questions I had were quite similar when it came to the central character. Please prepare yourself ...