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Jul 22, 20191 min read
698. Ed McBain - Kings Ransom
Insomniac night after finishing 697, grabbed another short book from the (crime) bookshelf. Despite, I think, what people would say,...
May 16, 20191 min read
683. William McIlvanney - Strange Loyalties
A book whose provenance I don’t know; must have been my father’s if the marginal jottings are in his handwriting. Not unlike a Rebus...
May 11, 20191 min read
681. Ian McEwan - Sweet Tooth
The only one we had in the house; I had read before but had no memory of it, perhaps a bad omen. I felt quite cheated by this; an...
May 7, 20191 min read
680. Ian McEwan - Machines Like Me
This was a good, big and difficult book. The basic plot premise is that a man buys a humanoid type machine, I believe for £85k. He and...
Apr 13, 20191 min read
677. Simon Mawer - Prague Spring
This was as good as the other 2 (665 & 666 above), and despite my negative comments about e-reading above, you can buy these without...
Apr 12, 20191 min read
676. Ed McBain - Nocturne
McBain is a very good writer and I have lots of his books on the bookcase, which I haven’t read for years. I have wasted a lot of money...
Mar 17, 20191 min read
668. Ed McBain - Romance
Mc Bain is undoubtedly a clever writer and the general ‘police procedurals’ summary masks this. Here we have a play within a play within...
Mar 11, 20191 min read
666. Simon Mawer - Tightrope
Well, close on the title. Very much the successor to 663 (which I think you would have to have read first) but, for me, less compelling....
Mar 7, 20191 min read
665. Simon Mawer - The Girl Who Fell From The Sky
I loved this – book of the year so far. It began with her parachute drop into France in 1942 or 3, and then bounced back into her...
Mar 2, 20191 min read
664. Ed McBain - Long Time No See
A midnight flit downstairs to find a book having finished 663 at 83% on the kindle; an annoying habit of the modern publishing industry...
Feb 22, 20191 min read
661. Daphne Du Maurier - Rebecca
This was very good; neither Paddy nor I had read it before, but it is a rattlingly good plot with bits of Jane Eyre influence. A gauche...
Feb 17, 20191 min read
660. Peter May - I'll Keep You Safe
This was well plotted but really it ran into melodrama. My memory of May’s earlier books is of dense plotting, linguistic challenges...
Feb 27, 20181 min read
575. Jon McGregor - Reservoir 13
This is a strange book. A girl disappears in a small village, and one assume abductions, or worse. The style of the book is to ‘hover...
Dec 23, 20171 min read
560. Henning Mankell - After The Fire
Mankell’s last book, completed I think not long before he died. Unsurprisingly, quite a gloomy book, about an elderly retired doctor...
Jul 12, 20171 min read
507. Fiona Melrose - Midwinter
Another of P’s from the library. Totally different from 506 - if that was a quasi 18th century novel about society, this was very 20th...
Jun 19, 20171 min read
502. David Mark - Cruel Mercy
The 6th DS McAvoy book. This one was certainly different; set not in Hull but New York, and with a splenetic plot involving the Mafia,...
Jun 13, 20171 min read
497. David Mark - Dead Pretty
The 5th Aector McAvoy book, and although I think flagged by Richard & July, I thought the weakest. Otherwise as 494!. Get this on Amazon
Jun 7, 20171 min read
494. David Mark - Taking Pity
The 4th book. As 493 above! Get this on Amazon
Jun 6, 20171 min read
493. David Mark - Sorrow Bound
The 3rd Aector McAvoy novel. On holiday so I didn’t write up book notes every time I finished a book, so I can’t remember much of the...
Jun 2, 20171 min read
491. David Mark - Original Skin
Did indeed! This guy is very good, and these are high class police procedurals, with a good variety of police colleagues of McAvoy, who...