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Jun 15, 20151 min read
313. Natsuo Kirino - Grotesque
Misleadingly packaged as a thriller (which it isn’t) this is the strangest book I've read on holiday. A very weird Japanese novel about...
Jun 10, 20151 min read
311. Attica Locke - Pleasantville
I wasn’t even aware I had this book – obviously a Radio 4 inspired impulse buy. But very good, even following Ms. Austen. Courtroom drama...
May 28, 20151 min read
306. Ed McBain - Nocturne
A much later book than no.304, and much longer and more ponderous. The central conceit is quite clever (an apparent murder, which...
Apr 21, 20151 min read
299. Tom Rob Smith - Child 44
I didn’t think much of this. A crime thriller of sorts set in Stalinist and post-Stalinist USSR. The problem I had with it is that...
Mar 7, 20151 min read
287. Peter Robinson - Abattoir Blues
The latest. I loved the expansiveness of the opening; apart from a stolen tractor and some blood in a disused aircraft hangar, there...
Jan 10, 20151 min read
276. Émile Zola - Thérèse Raquin
I enjoyed 'Germinal' hugely and 'La Terre' quite a lot, but this, at best was like an early Shakespeare if you had started with say 'King...
Jan 1, 20151 min read
273. Fred Vargas - Have Mercy On Us All
A Christmas present from Ben. I had read one of hers before, which I didn’t really enjoy, but this was excellent. A bizarre plot...
Dec 2, 20141 min read
268. Dashiell Hammett - The Maltese Falcon
I hadn’t understood this, but The Maltese Falcon is in fact a Red Herring. My reading of the plot, although Wikipedia doesn’t support...
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 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...
Oct 18, 20141 min read
254. James Ellroy - Perfidia
Another birthday present and a huge book at 700 pages. Quite a strange concept – blending real characters, as he often does, with...
Sep 20, 20141 min read
248. John Harvey - Darkness, Darkness
I think I have read one of the Resnick novels before, without really enjoying it. Jon Harvey is coming to speak at our local library in a...
Sep 18, 20141 min read
247. Henning Mankell - An Event In Autumn
Another very short book, a Wallander novella, previously unpublished in the UK. Poor old Kurt looks at a house to buy but finds a couple...
Sep 12, 20141 min read
243. James Ellroy - The Black Dahlia
Haven’t read this, or any other James Ellroy for years, but heard him on the radio. 'The Black Dahlia' is, I think, the first of a...
Sep 7, 20141 min read
242. Håkan Nesser - Hour Of The Wolf
Needed a proper novel, with a plot, after no.241. This has a great plot with apparently quite unrelated deaths (one not a murder) linked...
Aug 2, 20141 min read
231. Anne Zouroudi - The Messenger Of Athens
The author was recommended to Paddy by her friend Rod Lee. A detective series set in modern Greece; well this one on a tiny island....
Jul 23, 20141 min read
229. Håkan Nesser - The Mind's Eye
The 2nd Van Veeteren book and better and different from some of the later ones. Here we do have more of a Sherlock Holmes type of mystery...
Jul 11, 20141 min read
227. William Faulkner - Sanctuary
Found the plot very hard to follow, but probably no more so the ‘The Sound and the Fury' (no.220), although that was billed as difficult....
Jun 24, 20141 min read
224. Håkan Nesser - Woman With Birthmark
Maybe it is an unfortunate coincidence, but this is just too similar to 'Borkmann’s Point'. Again a killer on an apparently random...
Jun 21, 20141 min read
223. Håkan Nesser - Borkmann's Point
The last of the Nesser’s that I had taken on holiday. This one features Van Veetern pre-retirement, although called from holiday to...