My sister came round for tea yesterday and pointed out to me that I had not posted for a week and when was I going to write again. The usual excuse at the moment, total sloth and generally feeling fed up with life and the world.
Apropos of nothing I sat and watched Andy Murray come back from two sets and a match point down in the first round of the US Open and win a stunning five setter, the first he has played for two years. An incentive to beat sloth if ever I saw one.
So thanks to Andy here I am.
Still Life - Val McDermid. I discovered this author about eighteen months ago and wondered why I had not done so
before. I hoovered them all up, all the different series and have enjoyed them all in various degrees of pleasure. The Carol/Tony series now seems to have come to a halt and I feel this is probably a good thing as the pair of them were becoming increasingly irritating (to me anyway). My favourite is the Karen Pirie books.
Karen is a feisty Scot in charge of the cold case department who has suffered personal loss and tragedy and has had to come to terms with it. This title starts with a dead man fished from the sea who was a prim suspect in a ten year old investigation into the disappearance of a civil servant. It was a Pirie case so she is asked to revisit it. But she is also involved in another when a skeleton is discovered in an old campervan and it is clear the killer is still out there.
Both stories told beautifullly. I love the relationship between Karen and her sidekick, The Mint, so called because like the Murray Mint he cannot be hurried, who is loyal and faithful and a great guy.
Thoroughly enjoyed this but by the end of it I was aware, if I was not already from reading her tweets, that the author does not like the Tories, thinks Boris is useless, the First Minister is wonderful and she supports Scottish Independence.
I have no problems with anybody holding their political views but I do with they were not shoe horned into fiction. The last two DCI Banks books by Peter Robinson were blatantly anti Brexit and it all gets a tad tedious after a while.
Checkmate to Murder - E C R Lorac. One of my favourite of all the discoveries of the British Library classic crime series. Last one I read was Crossed Skis a few months ago and now this one dropped through my letterbox.
A foggy night in Hampstead, Lonndon during the blackout. A party is taking place in an artist’s studio, a civil servant,
a government scientist playing chess while Bruce Manaton , the artist, paints a portrait. In the kitchen Rosanne, the artist’s sister preparing tea. The studio is rented from a miser who lives alone in the hosue next door.
The sitting is interrupted by an officious Special Constable how has arrested a young soldier running from the house where the dead body of Mr Foliner, the aforementioned miser, has been discovered.
Ins and outs and the setting of fog bound London in the blackout beautifully portrayed. The BritLib and publish all of this writer’s book as far as I am concerned - and there are a lot....
The Outsider - Linda Castillo. The latest in the Kate Burkholder series set in Amish country. I do like these book. The Outsider is a police detective fleeing a corrupt regime and she is running for her life. It turns out that the fugitive, Gina Colorosa, is an old friend of Kate but she fell out with her years ago over her bending of the rules and is not sure she can be trusted.
Well written as always but I did find this particular title not quite up to the standard of the others in this genre. I think that the author thought it might be a good idea to change up the storyline from the usual internal Amish series of murders. After all, if they keep on killing each other at the rate they are written the entire populace would be wiped out (as Anne Cleves has given as the reason for not writing any more Shetland novels) but I felt it did not quite work.
Last year I read a terrific debut novel by Harriet Tyce, Blood Orange. Her second book is now out, The Lies you Told and it is just as good, if not better than the first one. I will be reviewing this more fully for Shiny New Books and will link to it when it is up.
Lots of good reads then and awaiting my attention the latest Strictly Foxed editions of two Rosemary Sutcliff titles of which more later, and a book which is sounding promising after the first chapter Queen Victoria and the Romanovs with the subtitle Sixty years of Mutual Distrust....
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