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Feb 9, 20161 min read
376. Louise Penny - The Beautiful Mystery
I didn’t like this much either; not set in Three Pines but in a monastery where of course there are murderous monks killing each other...
Feb 1, 20161 min read
374. Louise Penny - Still Life
As the madness of 31st January approached, I thought I’d stick with the writer I know and enjoyed and re-read the first book (no.362)...
Jan 29, 20161 min read
373. Louise Penny - A Trick Of The Light
Must be no.7 and another wonderful book; this time about Clara’s eventual success as a painter and the corruption inherent in the art...
Jan 24, 20161 min read
372. Louise Penny - Bury Your Dead
No.6 in this series and I loved this as well, although it was long and at times difficult. A lot about the history of Quebec, about which...
Jan 16, 20161 min read
370. Louise Penny - A Brutal Telling
I loved this; I think it is number five in the Three Pines series. Unlike no.366, this is much more localised within Three Pines, so you...
Dec 30, 20151 min read
366. Louise Penny - A Murder Stone
This is the first not centred in Three Pines, and I found it less appealing. A slightly Agatha Christie closed community novel – a...
Dec 26, 20151 min read
365. Louise Penny - The Cruelest Month
This is a lot better than Harkin Nasser, although the plot in this one was a bit overloaded as there is a back plot about corruption in...
Dec 23, 20151 min read
364. Hakån Nesser - The G File
I normally like this guy, but thought this was poor, particularly the first half where the plot was telegraphed from about ½ way through....
Dec 19, 20151 min read
363. Louise Penny - Dead Cold
This is much better. Gamache revisits Three Pines for another murder – you could wonder if there are enough inhabitants – so we meet many...
Dec 17, 20151 min read
362. Louise Penny - Still Life
An author I discovered on an online ‘Best recent crime’ list. A very gentle book, set in a village somewhere outside Montreal /Quebec,...
Nov 5, 20151 min read
351. Ray Celestin - The Axeman's Jazz
Lots of books to read at the moment, as I cashed in my Waterstones voucher which D gave me for my birthday. This was shortlisted in some...
Oct 11, 20151 min read
344. Lawrence Block - A Dance At The Slaughterhouse
A lot more fun than Conrad, despite the title. Block writes a very good story and Matt Scudder is an interesting character. The ending is...
Sep 11, 20151 min read
336. Kate Atkinson - When Will There Be Good News
Enjoying these so much, I immediately bought the 3rd Brodie novel (no.335 is the 1st and no.336 the 2nd). This took a bit of time to get...
Aug 1, 20151 min read
325. Ed McBain - Romance
Needed something lighter, so reverted to a McBain. He is a very good writer; I had forgotten having read a few many years ago. Unusually,...
Jul 5, 20151 min read
320. Sarah Hilary - Someone Else's Skin
Nominated for a Theakstons Crime Book of the Year award, this was certainly different, with a good plot, but for me totally let down by...
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...
Jan 2, 20151 min read
274. Fred Vargas - The Chalk Circle Man
This is the one I had read before; it has a very clever ending, although I found there was too much interior monologue from Adamsberg,...
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...