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May 21, 20141 min read
211. C. P. Snow - Time Of Hope (Strangers And Brothers)
The last Bristol novel. Never read any Snow before. I found myself enjoying this more as it went on; a between the wars provincial middle...
Jul 5, 20131 min read
125. Gunnar Staalesen - The Writing On The Wall
A bit of Scandinavian crime pushed in the UK heavily a couple of years ago following the Wallander boom. OK-ish as a story, middle-class...
May 25, 20131 min read
108. William Shakespeare - Macbeth
Was aiming for 'Hamlet', but couldn't navigate the complete works. Read this as a play about order/disorder/order restored, and focussed...
Mar 29, 20131 min read
91. Jay Stringer - Runaway Town
Conned by Amazon's marketing, but I wanted a cheap thriller, so this is what I bought. Not bad as such - the hero is a Roma ex-cop,...
Jan 26, 20131 min read
74. Maj Sjowall & Per Wahlöö - The Terrorists
The last one in the series and pretty good. There is a wonderful lawyer whose name I can't remember who speaks I am sure with the authors...
Jan 11, 20131 min read
72. Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo - Cop Killer
Same schizophrenia. Main plot good; woman murdered in town inhabited by two different murderers who appear in no.54 and no.55, so both...
Jan 7, 20131 min read
71. Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo - The Locked Room
8/10 in the series ( I have just bought 9). The locked room is apparently analogous to a chess puzzle; how has someone been shot dead (in...
Dec 22, 20121 min read
65. Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö - The Abominable Man
The 7th and best so far. I like the way they fit different (in this case a very nondescript one) detectives around Martin Beck. A book...
Dec 8, 20121 min read
63. Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö - Murder At The Savoy
Another excellent book in this excellent series. It is hard to characterise what I enjoy in these books; slightly sardonic humour and...
Nov 25, 20121 min read
60. Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö - The Fire Engine That Disappeared
Pretty good, again. A book about an absent (for most of the book) criminal, the police spend most of the time looking for a murderer who...
Nov 19, 20121 min read
58. Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö - The Laughing Policeman
Very good, again; I do like these books (obviously). There is quite a gang of policemen, all with their individual quirks, and because...
Nov 14, 20121 min read
56. Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö - The Man On The Balcony
This one is very Ed McBain police procedural. You get to know a lot of Beck's colleagues a lot better. Child sex murderer loose in...
Nov 12, 20121 min read
55. Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö - The Man Who Went Up In Smoke
The 2nd book in the series. Wonderful descriptions of Budapest, when Beck sent over there and very much a spy story while he is there...
Nov 10, 20121 min read
54. Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö - Roseanna
The first Martin Beck novel was written by a Swedish communist husband and wife team in the 1960's. Well dramatised on Radio 4 recently,...
May 10, 20121 min read
8. William Shakespeare - King Lear
Haven't read this for about 40 years since studying it as an A-level set text. Found it surprisingly hard work; enjoyed it enormously at...