Reviews 

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

A thank you present for Paddy from Cristina next door, whose novel Paddy ‘proof read’ to anglicise the prose. (Cristina is Italian but...

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...

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...

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...

Have read this before, and it is a lot more fun than no 735. The family drama is very good, and both Maureen and Leslie are good, strong...

Haven’t read any of her more recent books; this is quite unlike the (as I remember it) rather gritty working class realism of her early...

Heard about this guy on Radio 4’s ‘A Good Read’. Apparently quite a well known writer, has written loads, Nobel Prize listed, but I, like...

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...

This was on the radio a few weeks ago and is her much heralded 3rd book. I found it hard work, and not frankly that good. The narrative...

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...

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...

This was far better and I devoured it far faster. A debut novel about kids at university and their beguiling lecturer Lorna, who teaches,...

I may not have been in the right mood, but thought this was one of his weaker books. Weak and slowly developed plot line and just not a...

One of Paddy’s – this pretty good. Sounds a bit Dorothy Sayers from the title and not that dissimilar in certain ways. Nine (perfect...

I enjoyed this less and less as it progressed, and found the ending completely incomprehensible as the plot unravelled. It starts off...

Insomniac night after finishing 697, grabbed another short book from the (crime) bookshelf. Despite, I think, what people would say,...

Needed something easy to read after the rigours of 696 so plucked this off the bookshelf. It is pretty low grade really – a tiresome...

These books are (becoming, for me) a bit repetitive. This (I think) is no.14 and I have missed 13, so bits of plot. The Three Pines...

The return of Jackson Brodie. This was good, but not as rich as some of the previous books; read a bit as if her agent or backers had...