Reviews 

A birthday present from D. I read this years ago when it first came out (pub 1989). It is very much an 80’s book about greed rampant...

I am not really sure that I like these. The character Ruth is interesting and attractive, but the plotting is weak – a couple of murders,...

This is a good gothic/modern crime novel, about several murders in a school. There are three narrators who intersperse, Clare, a teacher...

Recommended by Eve, our librarian. Crime meets archaeology. The crime is a plus for me, the archaeology less so. Ruth, the central figure...

I have enjoyed most of these books, but not this one. The Strike/Robin relationship continues to be well chronicled and on a ‘Will they,...

Bought this in error, read it before as a library book (no.980), but it is very good, long and complex with a huge cast of characters. A...

The fourth (I think) Cormoran Strike book and the best I have read so far. Begins with Robin marrying Matthew (reluctantly) but they have...

I didn’t enjoy this much, although expected to, after a heavy diet of thrillers. There is a bit in the introduction by John Updike who...

The first of the Cormorant Strike novels in which the eponymous hero and Robin his P.A, business partner and romantic partner are...

JK Rowling writes as Robert Galbraith, and I have seen some of the Strike books on the TV, but never read one. This is incredibly long,...

I love Patrick Gale, but struggled initially with this. The plot is very linear with few of the surprising plot twists that one expects....

One of his ‘entertainments’ which I don’t on the whole enjoy. The conceit is quite amusing, a vacuum salesman in Havana is recruited by...

One of my favourite of his books, despite my copy having been in the bath some years ago. Thematically, very John le Carré – set possibly...

I can’t pretend to have read this cover to cover, as it is half recipes and half Sophie Grigson’s emigration from the UK to Puglia, which...

Never heard of the author, but this was very good, and beautifully written. A crime novel, set possibly in Edwardian or late Victorian...

Embarrassingly, I have read this before but had (have) no memory of this until I said to P. ‘If I was still on speaking terms with [a...

Quite a strange, but interesting, book. Anne Glenconner is a typical upper class English girl, born into the aristocracy, marries another...

Paddy loves this but I found it pretty hard work. It is well written (the prose is streets above 809 above), but I just couldn’t warm to...

I am not reading very well at the moment and have trouble following the plots of lots of books, this is really a novella written for a...

We bought this in Lymington in September 1978 and if I have read it before, it won’t have been since shortly after then. Gaskell is a...