The weather this week has been miserable – overcast and damp – no drama – muted landscapes – and WAY too many people coming into town for the Christmas Market. I’ve been taking refuge in reading and buying books. Here’s what I’ve been up to.
I’ve experienced the whole range of reading experiences this week. I had one book where I completely lost myself in the adventure it described, another that I set aside because it bored me and two that kept me entertained in a low key “I’ll get back to this when the day quietens” way.
Oh, and then there was the strange experience of reading one short chapter a day of my Advent Calendar horror novel, ’25 Days’. I’ve posted my reactions to this week’s chapters HERE
‘A Superior Death‘ (1995) is the second book about Park Ranger Anna Pigeon. She’s moved from the Texas desert where I met her in ‘Track Of The Cat‘and is now spending most of her time on or in Lake Michigan.
A lot of things in this book worked well for but the plot wasn’t one of them. I felt the book lost energy in the middle because too many things were going on with too many suspects.
It started well, establishing Anna in her new environment and giving me a strong sense of what it would be like to be on the water all day and how scary it would be to have to dive so deep to reach a wreck that your thinking would be impaired at the same time when a single mistake might kill you.
The ending of the book was very strong – action-packed and surprising.
I’m keen to read ‘Ill Wind‘, the next book in the series, because it’s set in Mesa Verde, a National Park that I have fond memories of.
I’m halfway through the audiobook version of ‘A New Lease On Death‘ (2024), It’s a gentle, entertaining read that focuses on the two women who occupy a Boston apartment, Ruby is the new tenant and Cordelia is the ghost of the previous occupant who is alleged to have committed suicide in the bathroom.
The POV alternates between the two women from chapter to chapter and the audiobook has a narrator for eacch of them.
There is a murder mystery (I suspect there is more than one) but my pleasure comes from learning more about the two women and from watching Cordelia explore her capabilities as she tries to find ways to communicate with Ruby.
‘The Hanged Man’ (2015) was my most exciting read of the week. Its been on my shelves, untouched, since 2018. I’m so glad I finally got around to readling it. It’s an engrossing adventure that starts on Christmas Eve 1879 in an alternative Victorian London where Victoria married an English Lord, granted women the vote and set up Her Majesty’s Psychic Service to who, amongst other things, help the police investigate suspicious deaths.
This was a romp with a strong plot, lots of action and derring do, strange creatures, evil plots and long-hidden secrets. It’s also a very personal story about how Alexandrina Victoria Pendlebury, a psychic investigator, takes back control of her life after a personal tragedy.
I had a lot of fun with this. I was always eager to return to it and it never let me down. My only disappointment is that the author didn’t develop the book into a series.
‘The Killer’s Christmas List‘ (2023) is yet another Christmas read that I set aside. It’s a contemporary police procedural set in Tyne and Wear in the North East of England.
It’s been pushed hard by Amazon but it didn’t work for me. I made it to the 25% mark before setting it aside because I was bored.
My review is HERE
Two of my purchases this week are from the backlists of writers that I’ve enjoyed recently. One was a recommendation from a reviewer I follow and one was a book I’ve havered over and which I finally bought because Amazon offered my the Kindle version for £0.99.
I’ve always had a weak spot for strange ladies. One very beautiful girl had even warned me that she was, get this, a vampire. But did I listen? No.
Before you know it, I’m being chased by an ugly thug with a gun, and a bullet blasts its way through my back, and, believe it or not, nothing happened. I survived! How? You guessed it. I, Jack Fleming, ace reporter, have been transformed into a vampire, which has its advantages. You never die, you never grow old, you sleep all day, and, best of all, you can hunt down your own murderer.
I bought ‘Bloodlist‘ (1990) because I enjoyed ‘The Hanged Man‘ so much. P, N. Elrod wrote this one twenty-five years earlier as the first book in a twelve-book mystery series, set in 1930’s Chicago, about a reporter who becomes a gumshoe after he is turned into a vampire. It was published in the same year that Anne Rice published ‘The Witching Hour‘, when vampire novels were taking off. I’m intrigued by the mix of genres here. I’m hoping it will be fun and not take itself too seriously.
Times may change, but crimes never do, and neither do the people who investigate them. A collection of three loosely connected crime novellas, each set in a distinct era, Catalina Eddy is a gritty, hard-boiled exploration into the immutable police underworld of Southern California. In The Big Empty, an obstinate Los Angeles detective investigates the murder of his estranged wife while fears of nuclear war and Communism grip the nation; in Losertown, a mid-career attorney in San Diego chases down a legendary drug kingpin but chafes against the Reagan Revolution policies of his new boss; and in Portuguese Bend, set in the present day, an undercover cop is paralyzed in a gunfight but determined to solve what may be her last case as a police officer in Long Beach. They are all, in one way or another, stuck in dreary endless loops of love, murder, and the quest for clarity, release, and redemption.
I’ve recently read and enjoyed both of Daniel Pyne’s thrillers about black ops specialist Aubrey Sentro, ‘Water Memory ‘ and ‘Vital Lies’. I went looking for his back catalogue and found ‘Catalina Eddie‘ (2017), a California Noir novel told as three linked novellas spread over three decades. If it’s anything like the Sentro books, I’m going to have a good time with this.
It is the end of the nineteenth century and the world is awash with marvels. But there is nothing so marvellous as the Wastelands: a terrain of terrible miracles that lies between Beijing and Moscow.
Nothing touches the Wastelands except the Great Trans-Siberian Express: an impenetrable train built to carry cargo across continents, but which now transports anyone who dares.
Onto the platform steps a curious cast of characters: Marya, a grieving woman with a borrowed name; Weiwei, a famous child born on the train; and Henry Grey, a disgraced naturalist.
But there are whispers that the train isn’t safe. As secrets and stories begin to unravel, the passengers and crew must survive their journey together, even as something uncontrollable seems to be breaking in . . .
I nearly bought the hardback version of ‘The Cautious Traveller’s Guide To The Wastelands‘ (2024) when it came out in June, just because I loved the cover. I resisted because the book was at the peak of its hype and reviews were mixed. I’ve been watching the reviews (my favourite says “It’s ‘Anihalation’ with a plot”) and thinking about the book. Today, Amazon offered it to me for £0.99 and I decided to roll the dice.
Washington, D.C., 1950
Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, an all-female boarding house in the heart of the US capital, where secrets hide behind respectable facades.
But when the mysterious Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbours – a poised English beauty, a policeman’s daughter, a frustrated female baseball star, and a rabidly pro-McCarthy typist – into an unlikely friendship.
Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their troubled lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. And when a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst?
I bought ‘The Briar Club’ (2024) because one of the reviewers I follow listed it as one of their 2024 best reads. It’s an ambitious book. It starts with a murder (we don’t know who, only where) and a house full of suspects, all of them women, and then lets each woman tell her story and disclose her secrets as the investigation unfolds. My wife is reading it at the moment and is enjoying it. I just need to gird my loins in prepartion for spending fifteen and a half hours listening to the novel.
Next week’s reading has an historical fiction mystery set in the Arctic , a mystery about an FBI forensic linguist, a Christmas cosy murder mystery and a crime novella set in Greenland. All but the first one are continuations of series that I’m following.
In deepest winter, beware the coldest hearts . . .
London, 1850. Constance Horton has disappeared.
Maude, her older sister, knows only that Constance abandoned the apothecary they call home, and, disguised as a boy, boarded a ship bound for the Arctic. She never returned. ‘A tragic accident’, the Admiralty called it. But Maude Horton knows something isn’t right.
When she finds Constance’s journal, it becomes clear that the truth is being buried by sinister forces. To find answers – and deliver justice for her sister – Maude must step into London’s dark underbelly, and into the path of dangerous, powerful men. The kind of men who seek their fortune in the city’s horrors, from the hangings at Newgate to the ghoulish waxworks of Madame Tussaud’s.
It is a perilous task. But Maude has dangerous skills of her own . . .
I’m reading ‘Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge‘ (2024) because I love the title and I’m in the mood for something set in the Arctic, especially when it’s written by someone who has spent time there.
Forensic psychologist Callum Kilkenny lost his wife, Shay, to the very serial killer he’d hunted for five years. When Nathaniel Conrad—known as the Alphabet Man, for his love of tattooing codes onto his victims’ bodies—was condemned to death row, Callum thought the game of cat and mouse was over. But just before execution, Nathaniel drops a bombshell: he’s not the one who murdered Shay.
After analyzing the killer’s taunting, coded letters to authorities—one for each victim—FBI forensic linguist Raisa Susanto believes him. The discrepancies bear it out. So was it a copycat? A partner in crime? Or something more sinister? If Nathaniel knows the answer, Raisa fears he’ll be taking that closely guarded secret to his grave.
As Raisa and Callum are pulled into an investigation to solve Shay’s murder, it reopens old traumas that cut deeper than they could imagine. Before someone else dies, Raisa must decipher the unbelievable truth in an ever-twisting case built on a foundation of lies.
I’ve had ‘The Truth You Told’ (2024) on pre-order since I read the, ‘The Lies You Wrote‘, the first book about Raisa Susanto, back in January. I found Raisa Susanto engaging and I was fascinated by the forensic linguistics tools that she used. It left me hungry for the sequel.
Meg’s sister-in-law, Delaney, is pregnant. Since her due date is on or around Christmas Day, this is putting a bit of a damper on the usual holiday festivities. Meg and Michael are NOT hosting the usual house full of relatives and parties. Instead, Meg, along with her mother, her grandmother, her cousin Rose Noire, and her good friend Caroline, are militantly doing everything they can think of to keep Delaney quiet and healthy. All the relatives are farmed out to friends and neighbors; all the parties are being held somewhere else; and while Delaney is bored and mutinous, she’s doing well, and they’re managing to maintain a serene, peaceful environment for her . . . until a body is found in Meg and Michael’s yard.
The body turns out to be an attendee at Presumed Innocent, a nearby conference that Meg’s grandmother has organized. Some of the attendees want to learn how to exonerate a friend or family members who has been unjustly convicted, while the rest are avid true crime aficionados. And since the dead guy has been very vocal about his belief that most actual and would-be exonerees are guilty, guilty GUILTY!, nearly everyone at the conference dislikes him. But would any of them hate him enough to kill him? And can Meg still keep Delaney calm in the middle of a murder investigation, all while trying to catch the killer?
Listening to a Meg Langslow Christmas mystery is becoming a tradition in our house. Last year, we listened to ‘Dashing Through The Snowbirds’. The year before, it was ‘Six Geese-A-Slaying‘. They’re a little silly and sometimes verge on the smug but they are fun and they help me to relax.
When the water supply in a remote settlement is poisoned, all available evidence suggests the culprit is a man who went missing several years earlier, and it is Constable Petra Jensen’s job to find him.
The Fever in the Water is the fourth in a new series of Greenland Missing Persons novellas set in the harsh, unpredictable Arctic, rich in tradition, myth and culture.
I find Chrisoffer Petersen’s Constable Petra Jensen – Greenland Missing Persons novellas quietly comforting. I read and reviewed the first three novellas ‘The Boy With The Narwhal Tooth’, ‘The Girl With The Raven Tongue’ and ‘The Shiver In The Arctic’ a couple of years ago. I have a few more in my TBR pile. Winter seems like the ideal time to come back to them.
Mike Finn's Fiction 