Happy Winter Solstice everyone. Here’s what my bookish week looked like in the darkest days of the year.
This week, I’ve read three novels annd two novellas. One was good fun. One was a disappointment. The rest helped me keep the long dark nights at bay. I met a vampire who sees himself as the good guy of the story, an amateur sleuth odd couple (one of whom was dead), spent Christmas at a conference about wrongful convictions for murder, visited a troubled village in Greenland and hung around an open grave in a city centre graveyard with a group of insomniacs.
I hadn’t intended to read ‘Bloodlist‘ (1990) this week. I pushed it up the TBR when I saw that it’s only included in my Audible membership until the end of December.
‘Bloodlist‘, P. N. Elrod’s debut novel. kicked off her twelve-book Vampire Files series back in 1990, It’s a Chandleresque pastiche, set in 1930’s Chicago, complete with a PI, a beautiful blonde and violent crime bosses but with the addition of a newly turned vampire who is fairly sure he’s one of the good guys but who has some worrying gaps in his recent memory.
The pastiche worked, right down to the slightly flat, macho style of storytelling and there were a couple of interesting twists on vampire lore. It was an OK start to a series but it’s starting to show its age. I don’t think I’ll be back for more.
‘A New Lease On Death‘ (2024) was my favourite read of the week. It was a gentle entertainment that was was too low-key to be a thriller, too cosy to be horror and too simple to be a mystery tAND YET it was a lot of fun to listen to.
What I enjoyed most was watching a friendship grow between the naturally solitary, forty-someting.-and-now-deceased, native Bostonian Cordelia and the perky, outgoing barely-twenty, first-time-ilving alone, new-to-the-city Ruby. They made a convincing and engaging odd couple, not just because one of them was dead but because they saw the world so differently.
I also had fun watching Cordelia. trying to figure out what she could and couldn’t do now that she’s a ghost who most people (including Ruby) can neither see nor hear.
Misogyny in general and male violence towards women in particular powers the plot. It is treated seriously and realistically but it isn’t allowed to overwhelm the resiliance of the women or drain away the quiet humour with which they face the world. The mystery was straightforward and served mostly to bring Cordelia and Ruby together. I’m looking forward to them working together on their next challenge.
My review is HERE
‘Rockin’ Arond The Chickadee‘ (2024) was a disappointment. I was expecting a bit of Ho! Ho! Ho!. All I got was ‘ho hum’. From about the 40% point, when the dead body was discovered, the energy in the book started to flag and never recovered. There was a lot of padding. Way too much of Meg going through every possible scenario before discounting them all. And endless, tedious explanations of technicalities of things that are mostly common knoweldge to anyone who reads crime novels. By the last hour of this nine-hour book, I was checking to see how much more I had to sit through before we were done.
My review is HERE
‘The Fever In The Water‘ (2020) is the fourth novella in the Greenland Missing Persons series featuring Constable Petra Jensen and her shaman mentor.
These novellas are slight, plainly written things which I find very refreshing. I’ve no idea whether they give anything like a realistic view of life in Greenland but I enjoy how differently Petra and her shaman see the world. I also like how Petra, a newly minted very junior police officer, deals with the men around her. And, of course, the shaman’s tiny five-year-old daughter, who knows how to make magic happen with just a smile of a snap of her fingers, is irresistible.
I’ve had M. L. Rio’s ‘If We Were Villains‘ in my TBR since 2017 but haven’t gotten around to it, so I thought I’d use her new novella, ‘Graveyard Shift (2024), as a taster. I don’t think it was good decision. I’m sure this isn’t her best work. It felt rushed and incomplete, like something that needed another couple of drafts to reach its potential.
I liked the central premise, exploring insomnia: what it does to people, how they cope with it and what they will do to try and end it. The five main characters in the story are insomniacs. Some are more or less coping, some are fraying under the strain and one has come to terms with the idea that she will always be the angry aggressive, nocturnal person that sleep deprivation has turned her into. Even so, I couldn’t get engaged with the characters and the plot, although novel, felt under-developed.
My review is HERE
As the end of the year is almost here, I decided to go through my wishlist and pick out some of the books that I’ve retained a hunger for. I’m very pleased with the selection.
Forensic pathologist Lars Pohjanen has only a few weeks to live when he asks Rebecka Martinsson to investigate a murder that has long since passed the statute of limitations. A body found in a freezer at the home of the deceased alcoholic, Henry Pekkari, has been identified as a man who disappeared without a trace in 1962: the father of Swedish Olympic boxing champion Börje Ström. Rebecka wants nothing to do with a fifty-year-old case – she has enough to worry about. But how can she ignore a dying man’s wish?
When the post-mortem confirms that Pekkari, too, was murdered, Rebecka has a red-hot investigation on her hands. But what does it have to do with the body kept in his freezer for decades?
Meanwhile, the city of Kiruna is being torn down and moved a few kilometres east, to make way for the mine that has been devouring the city from below. With the city in flux, the tentacles of organized crime are slowly taking over . . .
I’m reading the Rebecka Martinsson series at the rate of one a month, so the whole series in on my wishlist, I bought ‘The Sins Of Our Fathers’ (2021), the sixth and final book of the series out of sequence because Amazon are offering the Kindle version for £0.99 this month.
In the original Swedish version, it won the Svenska Deckarakademins pris för bästa svenska kriminalroman (2021). The English language version, translated by Frank Perry, was shortlisted for for the CWA Crime Fiction in Translation Dagge.
Matt Danmor’s brush with death uncovers a fantastical truth, plunging him into a world of intrigue and chaos.
With his ex, Silvy, back at his side and Kylah from The Dept. of Fimmigration ever watchful, he stumbles into a plot to undermine civilisation across several worlds. Matt is faced with a simple choice. Believe that everything he sees is a figment of his traumatised imagination, or accept that it is all terrifyingly real.
In which case, he’s got a hell of a lot of catching up to do. Plus a whole hive of demonic zealots to fight.
The multiverse is holding on for a hero.
Trouble is, Matt never got the memo…
‘Fiends In High Places‘ made my wishlist on the title alone. It’s the first book in the ‘The Hipposync Archives‘, a British satirical Urban Fantasy series that was relaunched this year. I’m hoping the humour works for me If it does, there are already another five books available in the series.
Francie is a reluctant Maid of Honor, for several reasons.
The first is that her friend Serena has terrible taste in men. Previous fiancés have included a storm-chaser, a shaman and a kamikaze base-jumper. This is the closest a wedding has come to happening, and it’s to a UFO-chaser.
The second is that, as a result, the wedding is being held in New Mexico. In Roswell. During the UFO festival.
After a series of travel disasters that end with her car sharing with another wedding guest – who also happens to be an FBI agent – a wedding due to take place in the UFO Museum, conducted by a high priest from the Church of Galactic Truth, and a frankly repellent bridesmaid dress, the alien abduction is actually a high point of Francie’s day.
Bundled by an alien into an SUV, which she is forced to drive, what follows is a chaotic road trip, picking up other waifs and strays, hotwiring an RV, and desperately trying to work out what their alien captor actually wants.
I’ve had ‘The Road To Roswell’ on my wish list since it came out last June. The audiobook version was released in September this year and it sounds pretty good. I’m hoping that Connie Willis will help me open 2025 with a smile.
In the UK, someone is reported missing every 90 seconds.
Just gone. Vanished. In the blink of an eye.
DCS Kat Frank knows all about loss. A widowed single mother, Kat is a cop who trusts her instincts. Picked to lead a pilot programme that has her paired with AIDE (Artificially Intelligent Detective Entity) Lock, Kat’s instincts come up against Lock’s logic. But when the two missing person’s cold cases they are reviewing suddenly become active, Lock is the only one who can help Kat when the case gets personal.
AI versus human experience.
Logic versus instinct.
With lives on the line can the pair work together before someone else becomes another statistic?
I have high hopes of ‘In The Blink Of An Eye’. It won the Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Novel Of The Year 2024 and the CWA New Blood Dagger 2024. I’m intrigued by the idea of a human detective and an AI hologram detective partnership investigating a crime. There are now three books in this series about DCS Kat Frank and AIDE Lock, so I’m hoping to have new series to follow.
For Christmas week, I’m reading two books in series that I’m following and making one final attempt at a Christmas themed book.
After decades of adventuring, Viv the orc barbarian is finally hanging up her sword for good. Now she sets her sights on a new dream – for she plans to open the first coffee shop in the city of Thune. Even though no one there knows what coffee actually is.
If Viv wants to put the past behind her, she can’t go it alone. And help might arrive from unexpected quarters. Yet old rivals and new stand in the way of success. And Thune’s shady underbelly could make it all too easy for Viv to take up the blade once more.
But the true reward of the uncharted path is the travellers you meet along the way. Whether bound by ancient magic, delicious pastries or a freshly brewed cup, they may become something deeper than Viv ever could have imagined . . .
I loved the second book ‘Bookshops & Bonedust’ so I’m reading the first book as a kind of Christmas present to myself.
A woman’s body is found on a frozen lake, bearing the marks of grisly torture. Inspector Anna-Maria Mella knows she needs help with the case – the woman was a key player in a mining company whose tentacles reach across the globe. Lawyer Rebecka Martinsson is desperate to get back to work, to feel alive again after a case that almost destroyed her both physically and emotionally.
Soon she is delving into the affairs of the victim’s boss, the founder of Kallis Mining, whose relationship with the dead woman was complex and obsessive. Martinsson and Mella are about to uncover a dark and tangled drama of family secrets, twisted sexuality, and corruption on a massive scale
A Rebecka Martinsson book may seem like a dour choice for a Christmas week read but I love the way they’re written. My imagination nestles into the prose like a cat setttling onto its favourite cushion.
When Sasha receives a call from her old university friend Gabby inviting her to spend Christmas at Gabby’s remote Scottish lake house, Sasha knows she shouldn’t go.
Twelve years ago, on Christmas Eve, when Sasha and her five closest friends were celebrating the festive season, something truly horrific happened that would change the course of their friendship forever. Something that meant Sasha hasn’t spoken to any of them since that night.
But Gabby is insistent that they all get together this Christmas, to finally help her move on from the events of that night, so Sasha agrees to go.
Arriving at the sprawling house overlooking a stunning loch, Sasha quickly realises that Gabby has other reasons for getting the six friends together this Christmas. And now Sasha is forced to relive a past she’s tried hard to forget.
People had always told them their friendship wasn’t healthy. That the six of them spent far too much time together. No good would come of it, they said. How could relationships with others work when the six of them were so tightly interwoven?
When a snowstorm isolates them from the outside world, old flames are rekindled and tensions run high, and it soon becomes obvious: nothing that big can stay secret forever.
This is the last of the five Christams reads that I picked for this year. None of the others lived up to my expectations (although it was fun doing ‘25 Days’ as a buddy read) so I’m hoping ‘The Christmas Party‘ will buck the trend.
Mike Finn's Fiction 