<p><span class="full-image-float-right ssNonEditable"><span></span></span>There’s a lot of justifiable noise at the moment about the collapse of book reviewing in mainstream papers. Lots of book sections are shrinking or disappearing altogether as the world of print begins to fall in on itself.</p><p>But let me put some good news in front of you: while print is declining the web becomes more wonderful by the day. Some of the best web book sites of today don’t just compete with old-fashioned print, they beat it hands down. As an example you can take a peek at one of my reviews on BookBrowse, which is normally only available to members who pay $29.95 a year.</p><p><a href="http://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/nm_reviews/?detail=123690hp" class="offsite-link-inline" target="_blank">You can find the review here</a>. It’s about the sixth Nic Costa novel, <em>The Garden of Evil</em>, a book that’s had a lot of coverage, and recently won the American Library Association mystery of the year award. Like any author I’m really grateful for any review coverage I get. But BookBrowse’s coverage of the book beats everything else hands down, not in terms of praise and kindness, but in depth and pure quality. They haven’t just reviewed the book they’ve looked in detail at the background to it, linking paintings it mentions and bringing more depth to a few real-life background issues which I mention only briefly in my author’s note.</p><p> </p><p>Reviews like this don’t just point readers to books they might like, but also add more insight and enjoyment to works for people who are reading them. It’s a fantastic job and proof that BookBrowse’s subscription is a real investment for anyone interested in proper book reviews. Newspaper reviews aren’t going to come back in any volume. But if we can get coverage of this quality they won’t, perhaps, be missed as much as you’d expect.</p>