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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...
Nov 17, 20151 min read
355. Ian Rankin - Fleshmarket Close
I enjoyed this, particularly the element focussing on the refugee crisis, with added topicality today, 10 years after publication. The...
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 24, 20151 min read
317. R. J. Ellory - Ghostheart
Started no.318 in Spain, but poor eyesight and less than gripping plot enforced a substitution. I have read this before; the only book of...
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...
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...
Apr 2, 20151 min read
293. Charles Cumming - A Colder War
Marketed (a bit) as the new John Le Carré, I thought perhaps it was at first, but it is actually quite derivative (of Le Carré). The plot...
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...
Feb 27, 20151 min read
285. Ian Rankin - Tooth And Nail
Need something easy to read so picked an early Ian Rankin, which I didn’t remember. Rebus is seconded to London, to help the Met out on a...
Nov 2, 20141 min read
258. Michael Connelly - The Gods Of Guilt
John Harvey is obviously a friend of Connelly and recommended him. This was one of the courtroom, as opposed to more overt, thrillers,...
Oct 6, 20141 min read
252. John Harvey - Cold In Hand
Another John Harvey from the library; there are lots. They are well plotted, and one of the interesting aspects is that the narration is...
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...
Jun 26, 20141 min read
225. Graham Greene - Stamboul Train
Pretty good. A relatively early Greene, about a rail trip from London to Istanbul in the 1930’s. As the train progresses — Ostende,...
Jun 15, 20141 min read
221. Jonathan Kellerman - True Detectives
Truly awful, but I needed a bit of a light read and found this in the villa. Kellerman is the worst type of US psycho-crime babble...
May 27, 20141 min read
212. Ian Rankin -The Falls
Needed a bit of a detective, after all that rather literary stuff. I have come to enjoy Ian Rankin rather more second time round,...
Mar 26, 20141 min read
191. Keigo Higashino - The Devotion Of Suspect X
Marketed as ‘The Japanese Steig Larsson’, which it isn’t. But it is good - more Conan Doyle than Larsson. Difficult to describe without...
Mar 23, 20141 min read
190. Ian Rankin - The Black Book
Felt as if I had read this quite recently; could index this document somehow. Never really been able to make up my mind about Rebus — I...
Feb 16, 20141 min read
184. Ian McEwan - Sweet Tooth
Marketed as a spy thriller, this was, at best, a very literary take on the genre. I can’t pretend I liked it much; poorly written...
Feb 11, 20141 min read
183. James Lee Burke - Creole Belle
L used to be a big fan of James Lee Burke (and James Ellroy), but Burkes’ more recent books seem to me have to become very repetitive...
Jan 10, 20141 min read
175. David Baldacci - King And Maxwell
Complete tat; airport fiction for a poor airport. Get this on Amazon