Reviews

Jun 21, 20211 min read

871. Oyinkan Braithwaite - My Sister The Serial Killer

I had seen this in the bookshops years ago, but avoided it as the marketing made it look luridly unpleasant. But it is repeatedly praised...

Jun 12, 20211 min read

867. Peter Robinson - Many Rivers To Cross

Good, but not one of his best. Murders in N Yorkshire meet sex trafficking and people smuggling from central Europe. Banks apart, the...

May 30, 20211 min read

863. Håkan Nesser - Intrigo

I have read a lot of the Inspector Van Veeteren books, but these were five stand alone novellas in which he doesn’t feature. Three have...

Mar 10, 20211 min read

852. Paul Ferguson - Killing The Dead

This must have been a present from one of the kids, as it has sat in my bookcase for years and I have no memory of having read it before....

Feb 4, 20211 min read

846. Susanna Moore - In The Cut

I have read this before, I think many years ago and it is very good. Full of quite graphic sex, but a lot better than Shades of Grey. The...

Jan 31, 20211 min read

845. Marcia Muller - Pennies On A Dead Woman's Eyes

Don’t know where this came from, possibly one of my Dad’s? Don’t think I have read it, or any of her (many) books before. About a female...

Jan 21, 20211 min read

843. Richard Osman - The Thursday Murder Club

Good, and very different, despite feeling slightly negative about the author as a clever dick TV quiz show presenter. Set in a retirement...

Jan 2, 20211 min read

840. Ian Rankin - A Song For The Dark Times

Xmas present from Dan, signed by the author. Parallel plot lines; Clarke in Edinburgh doing conventional police work; Rebus now...

Dec 24, 20201 min read

837. Émile Zola - Thérèse Raquin

I am reading these in chronological order as I find the complete works pretty un-navigable on my kindle. I have read this before, but...

Dec 8, 20201 min read

832. R. J. Ellory - Three Bullets

I think he is quite patchy and this is not one of his best (which are very good). A fictionalisation of the Kennedy assassination in (I...

Nov 28, 20201 min read

830. Denise Mina - The Less Dead

I like Denise Mina, with her weird punk hair, and enjoyed her on the TV recently with Frank Skinner on Boswell & Johnson’s tour of...

Nov 24, 20201 min read

829. Evie Wyld - All The Birds, Singing

A wonderful book, read it before (177 & 8) and still difficult. So, just to help out any other baffled reader, the even numbered chapters...

Nov 13, 20191 min read

728. Tana French - The Likeness

This is a case of ‘make a really poor TV adaptation of a book (Dublin Murders BBC 1)’ and drive a reader back to the original book. This...

Oct 4, 20191 min read

718. Ed McBain - Lullaby

I have enjoyed a couple of McBain’s recently, but not this one. The main plot (about the murder of both a baby and her child minder) was...

Sep 8, 20191 min read

713. Agatha Christie - The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd

Haven’t read any for many years but 707 sparked my interest. This is a good and really brilliantly plotted whodunit – if you haven’t read...

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...

Jun 2, 20191 min read

688. Olivia Kiernan - Too Close To Breath

I wanted a modern crime thriller after all this 19th century stuff and picked this (or rather her next book – I will always go back to...

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 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...

Jan 25, 20191 min read

653. C. J. Sansom - Dissolution

Never read any of these before, but very very good. Quasi detective novels set in Tudor England whose heroine/ detective Shardlake is a...