Category: Crime

The Lie Tree, Francis Hardinge

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I am coming to adore Frances Hardinge! I've only read this and Cuckoo Song to be fair, but there's something about her imagination and her writing which chimes with me: dark, intensely personal, yet somehow mythic at the same time. She captures a sense of wonder,  of terror, of awe which is simultaneously so childlike… Continue reading The Lie Tree, Francis Hardinge

The Pure In Heart, Susan Hill

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I'm genuinely unsure of what to make of this book. Don't get me wrong. It's not a bad book; listening to it as an audiobook was a pretty pleasant way to spend my journeys to work. But it didn't seem to be what it was packaged as and marketed as: a crime mystery. It felt… Continue reading The Pure In Heart, Susan Hill

Shadows of Self, Brandon Sanderson

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Opening with a murderous rampage at a party held by a corrupt politician, once again, Sanderson plumbs the possibilities of his Mistborn universe in Scadriel extending the reach of the characters Waxillium Ladrian,  Wayne and Marasi, whom he had introduced in The Alloy Of Law. The feel of this novel is distinctly Industrial Revolutionary with… Continue reading Shadows of Self, Brandon Sanderson

Storm Front, Jim Butcher

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literary lineage going back to Sherlock Holmes and Sam Spade and Philips Marlowe. Dresden is in that line of hardboiled detectives; however, Butcher is not a writer of the same calibre as Hammett, Chandler or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Lost In A Good Book, Jasper Fforde

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 The second Thursday Next book picks up immediately after the end of The Eyre Affair and is a fun and joyful thing! A bit of lovely fluff: light, quick and just fun.  It does perhaps suffer from its role in the series: The Eyre Affair was pretty self-contained; it has spawned a series of - I… Continue reading Lost In A Good Book, Jasper Fforde

In The Woods, Tana French

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This is my second Tana French novel, and it was her debut with the Dublin Murder Squad series. And I do enjoy her writing style.    We have here, ostensibly, a crime novel. A twelve year old girl, Katy Devlin, is discovered dead on the altar stone at an archeological dig. Detective Rob Ryan and… Continue reading In The Woods, Tana French

The Secret Place, Tana French

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I've noticed this book creep into the recommended reads of the local Waterstone's and into the supermarkets. Well... I was reading it first!   So, what do we have here?  It is a murder set in Dublin, Ireland revolving around the Murder Squad. It's the fifth in French's series which, as I understand from other reviews,… Continue reading The Secret Place, Tana French

Blood On Snow, Jo Nesbø

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This was not what I had expected from Nesbø. And I'm saying that in a good way. Nor is it what the sticker on the front proclaims it to be, "The Brand New Thriller" from the author of The Snowman. Well, it obviously is from the author of The Snowman, which is the only other Nesbø… Continue reading Blood On Snow, Jo Nesbø

The House Of Silk, Anthony Horowitz

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Anthony Horowitz, for me as an English teacher is almost synonymous with his teenage spy Alex Rider. Although probably with fewer helicopters, assassins and explosions. And more writing. The series is a very boy friendly, speedily paced series of novels which are one out go-to series for reluctant boy-readers. So it was with some surprise… Continue reading The House Of Silk, Anthony Horowitz

Lamentation, C. J. Sansom

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I do love a book with a map in its cover! I must confess I'm not entirely sure what this map adds to the book, but at a personal level, I used to live pretty much where Shardlake's house is! Inside Lincoln's Inn. Abutting Chancery Lane. And that, pretty much, sums up the appeal of… Continue reading Lamentation, C. J. Sansom

Foxglove Summer, Ben Aaronovitch

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I've been reading some weighty books recently. Miéville. Ali Smith. Haruki Murakami. All brilliant. But sometimes, just sometimes, a slightly lighter read is called for: fun, engaging, escapist. And Aaronovitch delivers exactly that in his Peter Grant novels. An authentic police procedural with an engaging first person narrator whose wit is warm and genuine. With… Continue reading Foxglove Summer, Ben Aaronovitch

The Paying Guests, Sarah Waters

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There is so much to admire about this book that I feel almost guilty that I didn't love it. And I feel I might struggle to explain why without losing sight of the fact that it is a great book and beautifully written in places. As you'd expect from Waters, The Paying Guests inhabits a… Continue reading The Paying Guests, Sarah Waters

Summer Reading

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With a week to go before the summer holidays, my reading list is starting to grow. Currently queued up on the ereader I have the following: These are crime thrillers penned, under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, by John Banville who wrote The Sea. I was particularly intrigued by The Black-Eyed Blonde as a new Raymond… Continue reading Summer Reading

The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton

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Ahhh, Eleanor Catton's Man Booker winning The Luminaries. It's certainly not a quick read! It took such a time to read it - and admittedly my reading coincided with a stroppy baby and a hectic few weeks at work - that the beautiful cover started to wear off! The M of LUMINARIES on the front… Continue reading The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton

Room, Emma Donoghue

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This book had been on my to-read list since it was listed for The Booker Prize. The copy I had was electronic and just stopped about 20 pages in... And I never got round to replacing it. Until it cropped up whilst I was browsing on Audible. This was a perfect book for an audio… Continue reading Room, Emma Donoghue

Harvest, Jim Crace

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I loved this book, for so many reasons!! It is the story of a week in an unnamed village in an unspecified part of England at an unspecified period. And I loved the timelessness of Crace's prose: his narrator's language is lyrical and deeply informed by the landscape but not archaic or faux-authentic. If we… Continue reading Harvest, Jim Crace

Various Haunts Of Men, Susan Hill

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I've enjoyed various Susan Hill novels: The Woman in Black and The Little Stranger in particular and so it was that I was looking forward to picking up on the Simon Serrailler crime series which I hadn't come across before. In honesty, I picked up A Question of Identity first which is the seventh in… Continue reading Various Haunts Of Men, Susan Hill

Broken Homes, Ben Aaronovitch

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This is the fourth in Aaronovitch's Peter Grant series - see previous blog posts for my thoughts on Rivers of London, Moon Over Soho and Whispers Under Ground. There is a different feel to this book from the previous ones and, to my mind, a welcome change. There is a greater focus on the quest… Continue reading Broken Homes, Ben Aaronovitch

The Woman In Black, Susan Hill

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Miniature review due to absence of Internet and wifi. In fact, only now possible because phone can - sometimes - get some reception... Somewhat uncomfortably, I finished reading this book this morning. At about 7:30. As my 12 week old daughter lay asleep in my arms. It made the final chapter particularly unnerving! This is… Continue reading The Woman In Black, Susan Hill

I am Pilgrim, Terry Hayes

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Miniature review due to absence of Internet and wifi. In fact, only now possible because phone can - sometimes - get some reception... There was quite considerable hype about this book online which led to my getting it: phrases like Bondesque and Bournesque appear to have been coined in order to describe it. It is… Continue reading I am Pilgrim, Terry Hayes

Inferno, Dan Brown

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I have used the metaphor of food to describe reading for many years now. Some books are hearty, healthy and honest like a rare steak; some are delicate and fragile, like over-wrought sugar work in a pretentious restaurant, beautiful to look at but whimsical, self-indulgent and lacking taste; some are fun, entertaining chocolates and candies;… Continue reading Inferno, Dan Brown

Let The Right One In, John Ajvide Lindquist

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Its odd how my book reading lurks in certain genres for a while: after a crime spree, I notice a range of horror books collecting on the pages of this blog - with more on my to-be-read list. I wonder what it is with Scandi-Lit. Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy; Jo Nesbø; Mons Kallentoft ... There… Continue reading Let The Right One In, John Ajvide Lindquist

The Yard, Alex Grecian

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What was this book about? Murder and a new detective in the Murder Squad of Scotland Yard. What was the detective like as a character? (Shrugs) I didn't think he was a very confident person in what he did but he was actually very good at it. How would you compare him to other detectives?… Continue reading The Yard, Alex Grecian

The Shakespeare Curse, J. L. Carrell

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The last book I read, The Passage by Justin Cronin, took me a month to read. This book, The Shakespeare Curse, took me 72 hours. That's not a good sign. Not good at all. I like to lose myself in a book, to live, breathe, love and bleed with the characters I share my reading… Continue reading The Shakespeare Curse, J. L. Carrell

The Hypnotist, Lars Kepler

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I worry about Sweden. It keeps me up at night. I wake in cold sweats. I worry about the weather there: the snow and freezing temperatures. I worry about the trolls. I worry about IKEA. And I worry about the people. And families. It must be a terrible place. Every single novel I've read from… Continue reading The Hypnotist, Lars Kepler