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Nov 19, 20191 min read
730. Alan Ross - Australia 63
A great cricket book, first published in 1963, at the end of this Ashes series, about 3 years before I got interested in cricket. Ross...
Oct 14, 20191 min read
722. Ian Rankin - In A House Of Lies
This is a long and quite complex novel; feels valedictory. Rebus has now retired, Siobhan is older, and the plot involves many of the...
Sep 2, 20191 min read
708. Peter Robinson - Past Reason Hated
I think this is the first Peter Robinson I ever read years ago and had little memory of the plot. I had forgotten about the lesbian...
Aug 3, 20191 min read
701. Peter Robinson - Careless Love
Really enjoyed this, Robinson back close to his best. Plot involves 2 rather obscure and apparently unrelated deaths, geographically...
Jun 21, 20191 min read
690. Peter Robinson - Aftermath
I read this years ago and really enjoyed it, despite relatively low expectations as I remembered most of the plot. But what I had...
Apr 5, 20191 min read
673. Peter Robinson - Friend Of The Devil
As Banks says at some point, the title ruins a [reasonably] good Grateful Dead song. The one (which I have read several times before)...
Mar 30, 20191 min read
671. Ian Rankin - Tooth And Nail
I have read this (and most of Rankin’s books) before, but unlike say Peter Robinson (and Rankin is I think a better writer) the titles...
Feb 7, 20191 min read
656. Ian Rankin - Strip Jack
An early (I think) Rebus novel, pre Siobhan Clarke and Cafferty. This is pretty good - about an up and coming (married) politician caught...
Jan 20, 20191 min read
652. Peter Robinson - Sleeping In The Ground
The new Peter Robinson. Structurally not unlike 652 above, in that the killer’s motivation is an event long in the past. Very slow...
Sep 17, 20181 min read
624. Ian Rankin - The Naming Of The Dead
This was my intended aeroplane read. Have read this before but a long time ago and muddled the plot in my mind with another of his books....
Jul 1, 20181 min read
609. Peter Robinson - Watching The Dark
Another of my favourite crime writers, although Robinson is more conventional and formulaic than Herron or Ellory. Robinson strikes me as...
May 27, 20171 min read
489. Peter Robinson - Gallows View
Read this when my kindle died, mid week. An early novel, but actually very good. Three plot lines, murder, at least manslaughter of an...
May 5, 20171 min read
485. Peter Robinson - The Price Of Love
Short stories, which I may have read before, but bought late night after finishing 484 above. The final one, which is probably a novella,...
May 4, 20171 min read
484. Peter Robinson - When The Music's Over
The new Banks novel, based (topically) on Jimmy Saville (the newly promoted Banks investigates and Winsome) and grooming white working...
Mar 10, 20171 min read
473. Pauline Réage - The Story Of O
The best book of erotica I have ever read. Serious sado-machocism, although overwritten in rather florid prose at times. Surprisingly...
Jan 15, 20171 min read
461. Ian Rankin - Even Dogs In The Wild
Read this, untypically, in parallel with 460 above. I have enjoyed Rankin recently but found this a little low grade and predictable,...
Nov 7, 20161 min read
442. Stella Rimington - Close Call
Went to Windsor on Saturday and used my birthday tokens on some spy thrillers recommended on an Andrew Marr BBC program, perhaps because...
Oct 11, 20161 min read
437. Peter Robinson - A Dedicated Man
He is a good writer this guy. Despite having read this before, I had no clue ‘whodunnit’ until the last chapter (perhaps a function of my...
Jul 22, 20161 min read
420. Simon Raven - The Judas Boy
This is number six in the series, and the only other one we have after no.392. So a lot of plot has flowed under the bridge. Fielding...
Jun 9, 20161 min read
410. Ian Rankin - Fleshmarket Close
A pretty good mature Rankin. I have come to enjoy him much more recently. This one I had bought and read quite recently, pretty good on...