Reviews 

Featured on Radio 4’s ‘A Good Read’, a novel about transsexuals in New York. There were points of interest but the subject didn’t really...

Very different and quite strange. A fictionalised documentary history of a singing duo, Nev a brummie who escapes to the US to pursue...

I found this very slight. An Irish girl, struggling to find work in her hometown, goes to New York at the instigation of her local...

I enjoyed this although it started slowly and ponderously. Illyria is a country estate, somewhere near New York, to which leading artists...

A serious and classic novel in response to the above thoughts; I am not sure if I have read this before, although we bought it in 1978!...

This could have been called 'Gangs of New York', but I think someone else got there first. A long and at times hard work book. The...

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

McBain is a very good writer and I have lots of his books on the bookcase, which I haven’t read for years. I have wasted a lot of money...

Mc Bain is undoubtedly a clever writer and the general ‘police procedurals’ summary masks this. Here we have a play within a play within...

A midnight flit downstairs to find a book having finished 663 at 83% on the kindle; an annoying habit of the modern publishing industry...

Emergency purchase at WH Smiths in Gatwick, as kindle won’t accept my card for some reason. Wildly controversial at the time, now perhaps...

A library book via P. I thought, for most of this book, which is quite a hard work read, that ‘the interestings’ (5 or 6 student-y...

The 2nd long library book in 4 days. This one was much better written than the last, although I was disappointed by the ending. A woman...

The 6th DS McAvoy book. This one was certainly different; set not in Hull but New York, and with a splenetic plot involving the Mafia,...

A Christmas best seller for middle aged men (I am told). I thought this was very good; Springsteen is a pretty honest guy, not at all...

Another book unread (by me) since May 1977, when we bought it. I couldn’t (quite) get into it; it was good in parts, but the narrative...

Another attic book. Started this before no.395 as it and the next three were all library books. This was OK, but had a very slow start. A...

Very readable, but a little similar to other (I think W Boyd) books; the 20th century seen through the developing life of an individual....

P enjoyed this, but I didn’t much. You can tell it is a ‘good quality’ novel, but I just didn’t warm to it. The Burgess' are a couple of...

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...