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Oct 23, 20201 min read
822. Mark Billingham - Sleepyhead
I have read this guy before, with slightly mixed feelings, but heard him on the radio so gave him another try. Can’t really make my mind...
Jul 18, 20201 min read
800. Walter Mosley - Devil In A Blue Dress
The first in this series and thematically similar, a beautiful woman throws herself into Rawlins' arms/bed. She is also caught up in...
Jul 17, 20201 min read
799. Walter Mosley - A Little Yellow Dog
The 4th (?) in the Easy Rawlins series; I have no memory of reading this before. These books are OK, a black working class central...
Jul 4, 20201 min read
796. Ian Rankin - Even Dogs In The Wild
This was brilliant. Must have read it before and quite recently as published in 2016, but didn’t remember it at all. Three plot elements...
Jun 19, 20201 min read
792. Leonardo Padura -Havana Black
The last of the quartet. Young rock & roll Cuba vs its past. You do learn implicitly about Cuban history; the wealthy upper/middle class...
Jun 13, 20201 min read
790. Raymond Chandler - The Little Sister
Didn’t plan to read another immediately, but finished 789 in bed on Thursday. These are quite hard work, but maybe reading late at night...
Jun 7, 20201 min read
788. Sara Paretsky - Deadlock
I think what I said at 786 above is correct; these books do seem to me to be quite structurally and thematically repetitive. We again...
Jun 4, 20201 min read
787. Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep
I have read this many times before but never really understood it; the plot is quite complex, but essentially it is a novel about a sex...
Jun 2, 20201 min read
786. Sara Paretsky - Indemnity Only
Haven’t read any of these for years. V.I. Warshawski is a feminist updated Philip Marlow PI, with much of the same personal ambience, run...
May 31, 20201 min read
785. Leonardo Padura - Havana Blue
I do like these books, although they take a bit of getting into, but are easier 2nd time round. This one features the downfall of a top,...
May 22, 20201 min read
781. Ruth Rendell - A Demon In My View
Another easy read book for the Tesco queue. Not a Wexford book but I thought this was better- Wexford is annoyingly English middle class...
May 18, 20201 min read
778. Kate Atkinson - Big Sky
I had read this before, but Paddy convinced me it was a new book, so I decided to buy and read it before finding it on my Kindle. It is...
May 15, 20201 min read
777. Ruth Rendell - An Unkindness of Ravens
Another detective novel to start in the Tesco’s coronvirus queue and finish mostly in the garden on a sunny Saturday afternoon. This was...
May 7, 20201 min read
774. Reginald Hill - A Pinch Of Snuff
Quite good. A ‘gang’ of crooks involved in pornography and other sexually deviant stuff, interact inadvertently with gritty Yorkshire...
May 1, 20201 min read
771. Ruth Rendell - Road Rage
These books are quite good, and a welcome change. This has a fairly complex plot, about protests against a by- pass, and a series of...
Apr 1, 20201 min read
761. Elizabeth Gaskell - Mary Barton
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...
Mar 29, 20201 min read
760. Leonardo Padura - Havana Gold
Felt like trying one of these again. The central figure (the Count, Conde, he seems to go by various names) despite being a policeman in...
Mar 23, 20201 min read
757. Dorothy L Sayers - Strong Poison
I am not sure that I have read any before, and am not sure I would read any more. I thought this was pretty trite and trivial in...
Dec 14, 20191 min read
735. Tana French - The Wych Elm
This was a very long and quite difficult book and I can’t pretend I really enjoyed it. The central character (Toby) gets beaten up (for...
Nov 2, 20191 min read
726. Peter James - Dead At First Sight
I heard this guy on the radio and thought ‘Here’s a crime writer I have never heard of’. But a poor writer. The plot theme was...