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Mar 4, 20161 min read
382. Louise Penny - How The Light Gets In
Pretty good and a lot better than no.376, which it follows. This is, I think, the culmination of the Gamache/Francoeur conflict which...
Feb 9, 20161 min read
376. Louise Penny - The Beautiful Mystery
I didn’t like this much either; not set in Three Pines but in a monastery where of course there are murderous monks killing each other...
Feb 1, 20161 min read
374. Louise Penny - Still Life
As the madness of 31st January approached, I thought I’d stick with the writer I know and enjoyed and re-read the first book (no.362)...
Jan 29, 20161 min read
373. Louise Penny - A Trick Of The Light
Must be no.7 and another wonderful book; this time about Clara’s eventual success as a painter and the corruption inherent in the art...
Jan 24, 20161 min read
372. Louise Penny - Bury Your Dead
No.6 in this series and I loved this as well, although it was long and at times difficult. A lot about the history of Quebec, about which...
Jan 16, 20161 min read
370. Louise Penny - A Brutal Telling
I loved this; I think it is number five in the Three Pines series. Unlike no.366, this is much more localised within Three Pines, so you...
Dec 30, 20151 min read
366. Louise Penny - A Murder Stone
This is the first not centred in Three Pines, and I found it less appealing. A slightly Agatha Christie closed community novel – a...
Dec 26, 20151 min read
365. Louise Penny - The Cruelest Month
This is a lot better than Harkin Nasser, although the plot in this one was a bit overloaded as there is a back plot about corruption in...
Dec 19, 20151 min read
363. Louise Penny - Dead Cold
This is much better. Gamache revisits Three Pines for another murder – you could wonder if there are enough inhabitants – so we meet many...
Dec 17, 20151 min read
362. Louise Penny - Still Life
An author I discovered on an online ‘Best recent crime’ list. A very gentle book, set in a village somewhere outside Montreal /Quebec,...
Aug 14, 20151 min read
329. Leonardo Padura - Havana Blue
Read this before (no.262), but rushed through all his books too fast. On re-reading, this strikes me as a fairly simple (and ultimately...
Nov 29, 20141 min read
267. Leonardo Padura - Havana Black
Similar, but Mario falls in love in this one and his amorata turns out to be a married woman whose husband is absent and after a brief...
Nov 28, 20141 min read
266. Leonardo Padura - Havana Gold
Because I have slipped into arrears with this text and read these books in quick succession, I am struggling to remember plot lines. My...
Nov 26, 20141 min read
265. Leonardo Padura - Havana Red
This guy is a great writer, although annoying at times. This (he acknowledges) owes a big debt to 'The Maltese Falcon' (no.268 below); it...
Nov 18, 20141 min read
262. Leonardo Padura - Havana Blue
I loved this, it is dedicated to ‘Lucia, with love and squalor’. Beautifully written/translated (reads as if written in English), the...
Nov 9, 20141 min read
259. Kevin Pietersen - KP: The Autobiography
Hard to comment on this. Of course as a cricket fan, interested to read his book. But it is such an apologia for KP, and such a...
Oct 24, 20121 min read
51. Ann Patchett - State of Wonder
Another recommended by P, I preferred it to no.49. About a scientist sent off to the depths of the Amazon to investigate the death of a...