It finally feels like the new year has started and my reading is back to its normal pace. I’ve no other goal for my reading this year than having fun. this week, it feels like I’ve met that goal by finding two new series to read and buying the next books so that I can follow up on the series as soon as possible. I’ve also lined up some good books for next week.
Any,way, here’s what this week’s been like and what’s planned for next week
This was a very varied reading week, with everything from finding a five-star read to setting aside a book from a favourite author.
My wife and I listened to a chapter of ‘The Red Garden‘ (2011) each night. It’s that kind of book. Each chapter was powerful enough to make me mourn or cheer for the people in the story BUT each chapter was like a whirlwind visit to a year in the history of the town. I felt like a time traveller who got to stay just long enough to care about the people before being whisked away further along the timeline, never to see them again.
For the first few chapters, we kept waiting to see the link to the overall story arc or for the appearance of the one character who would tie it all together. Then we realised that ‘The Red Garden’ is an illustrated history not a story. It’s Just life, happening, one generation at a time, until death turns up.”
I had high expectations of ‘In The Blink Of An Eye’ (2024) and I wasn’t disappIonted. It was a five-star read and a great start to a new series. I can see why this novel about a human detective and an AI hologram detective working together to solve a missing persons case won the Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Novel Of The Year 2024 and the CWA New Blood Dagger 2024.
It would have been an engaging police procedural story without the AI content. Adding the AI kept it fresh and gave it an edge. Oddly, it also made the investigation feel more human rather than more routine or mechanical.
It was a great read with edge-of-the-seat moments of tension, well-founded speculations on the us of AI in the near future and a deeply emphathetic understanding of grief and loss.
‘Lousisana Longshot‘ (2012) was great find – a humorous, cosy(ish) read that was also exciting and filled with unexpected moments. it’s the first book in a twenty-three-book series that I’m sure is going to become a regular source of comfort reads for me
Even though the main character, Fortune Redding, is a CIA assassin with a long list of kills to her name, she’s easy to like. I enjoyed her, often bemused, reaction to living in the small town of Sinful, Louisiana, which seems more alien to her than being in-country in a Middle Eastern desert. I enjoyed watching her try and fail to behave like the librarian and ex-beauty queen her cover story claims she is. Most of all, I enjoyed watching her getting to know the formidable and amusing older women who lead The Sinful Ladies who covertly run the town.
My review is HERE
‘The Pale Horse‘ (1961) didn’t work for me. I made it a quarter of the way through this standalone Christie thriller before I set it aside. I found it an irritating book, perhaps because it pressed so many of my ‘I hate these complacent, mediocre, inappropriately self-confident, entitled, unconsciously but persistently misogynistic middle-aged, upper middle class men‘ buttons. I had no time for the main character, Easterbrook. The plot seemed to plod slowly towards unfeasible melodrama. The only brighter light was Mrs Oliver but she seemed to have been added simply to keep the Pitlings happy with some scatty humour.
Three of the books that I’ve bought this week continue series that I’m following. The fourth is a debut mystery novel that came to my attention because it was a BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick.
At the end of a deadly bear hunt across the wilderness of Northern Sweden, the successful hunters are shaken by a grisly discovery. Across in Kurravaara, a woman is murdered with frenzied brutality: crude abuse scrawled above her bloodied bed, her young grandson nowhere to be found. Only Rebecka Martinsson sees a connection.
Dropped from the case thanks to a jealous rival, she now stands alone against a killer who brings death to young and old, spawned by a horrifying crime that festers after 100 years on ice.
I’m reading the Rebecka Martinsson series at the rate of one a month. I’ll be reading the fifth book, ‘The Second Deadly Sin‘ (2012) in March.
Haunted by the past, Henrietta throws herself into a new job transcribing other people’s life stories, vowing to stick to the facts and keep emotions at arm’s length. But when she meets the eccentric and terminally ill Annie, she finds herself inextricably drawn in. And when Annie reveals that her sister drowned in unexplained circumstances in 1974, Henrietta’s methodical mind can’t help following the story’s loose ends…
Unlike Henrietta, Annie is brimming with confidence—but even she has limits when it comes to opening up. Ever since that terrible night when her sister left a pile of clothes beside the canal and vanished, Annie has been afraid to look too closely into the murky depths of her memories. When her attempts to glide over the past come up against Henrietta’s determination to fill in the gaps, both women find themselves confronting truths they’d thought were buried forever—especially when Henrietta’s digging unearths a surprising emotional connection between them.
Could unlocking Annie’s story help Henrietta rewrite the most devastating passages in her own life? And, in return, can she offer Annie a final twist in the tale, before it’s too late?
‘Tell Me How This Ends‘ (2023) is a debut novel that was selected as a Radio 2 Book Club Pick. I read the first few pages and decided that I’d enjoy spending time inside Henrietta’s orderly mind as she solves a mystery and maybe grows a little along the way. I picked the audiobook version because I usually enjoy Eli Potter’s narration.
When the body of a man is found crucified at the top of Mount Judd, DCS Kat Frank and AIDE Lock – the world’s first AI detective – are thrust into the spotlight with their first live case.
But when they discover another man dead – also crucified – it appears that the killer is only just getting started. When the Future Policing Unit issues an extraordinary warning to local men to avoid drinking in pubs, being out alone late at night and going home with strangers, they face a hostile media frenzy. Whilst they desperately search for connections between the victims, time is running out for them to join the dots and prevent another death.
‘Leave No Trace’ (2024) is the second book about featuring the partnership between DCS Kat Frank and AIDE Lock. The first book, ‘In The Blink Of An Eye‘ was wonderful. I’m hoping this one will be too.
No one in Sinful liked Pansy Arceneaux, but who hated her enough to kill her?
When aspiring actress Pansy Arceneaux returns to Sinful, Louisiana, to head up the beauty pageant portion of the Summer Festival, CIA assassin Fortune Redding knows she’s in for trouble. Her undercover identity as a former beauty queen makes Fortune the perfect choice to chair the event with Pansy, but Pansy’s abrasive personality makes it impossible to get through a single rehearsal without a fight. When Pansy turns up dead, Fortune is the prime suspect.
Armed with only her wits and two conniving seniors referred to locally as The Geritol Mafia, Fortune launches an investigation to find the real killer before her cover is blown.
I added this to my shelves as soon as I’d finished the first book, ‘Louisiana Longshot’. I’m hoping that I can show enough self-control to read only one of these books a month, which means this one stays in my TBR pile until February.
I’m trying to mix things up a bit this week. I’ve selected one US murder mystery, one UK speculative fiction and one Irish mainstream novella.
Crescent Bluff, West Texas. Everybody knows everybody. And everybody has a secret.
When a boy is found dead with the skin of a hare’s head in his hand, everyone knows who killed him—Willis Newland, just released from prison after serving twenty years for an identical murder.
But what if everyone’s wrong?
Detective Colly Newland reluctantly agrees to investigate a case that seems to involve the whole town, including her dead husband’s extended family. But the deeper she digs, the more secrets she unearths. And as threats against her escalate, Colly realizes someone is willing to kill to keep theirs…
‘The Killing Plains‘ (2025) is here because it was promoted as one of this month’s Amazon First Reads (meaning that when it’s published in February, Amazon can point to some sales and some reviews). The set up sounds a little familiar but the sample that I read was well-written so I’m giving it a chance.
Survival is murder . . .
An overturned coach full of students. All of them are trapped.
An isolated chalet full of friends. Soon they’ll be enemies.
A stranded cable car full of strangers. One of them is dead.
Outside, a snowstorm rages.
Inside each group, a killer lurks.
But that’s not their only problem.
Why is no rescue coming?
What are they trying to escape from?
And who are the terrifying Whistlers?
I’m a C. J. Tudor fan. One of the things that I like about her books is how different they all are. ‘The Drift’ (2022) seems to be a speculative fiction thriller. I’ve had it on my shelves since it was published. I’ve picked it up now because it seems like a good book to read in the middle of winter.
The first thing Vanessa Carvin does when she arrives on the island is change her name. To the locals, she is Willow Hale, a solitary outsider escaping Dublin to live a hermetic existence in a small cottage, not a notorious woman on the run from her past.
But scandals follow like hunting dogs. And she has some questions of her own to answer. If her ex-husband is really the monster everyone says he is, then how complicit was she in his crimes?
Escaping her old life might seem like a good idea but the choices she has made throughout her marriage have consequences. Here, on the island, Vanessa must reflect on what she did – and did not do. Only then can she discover whether she is worthy of finding peace at all.
‘Water‘ 2023 is the first book in John Boyne’s four-book series, ‘The Elements’ (Water, Earth, Fire, Air). He’s a new-to-me writer. I was sold on the book as soon as I read the first paragraph. Here it is:
“THE FIRST THING I do when I arrive on the island is change my name. I’ve been Vanessa Carvin for a long time, twenty-eight years, but I was Vanessa Hale for twenty-four years before that and there’s an unexpected comfort in reclaiming my birthright, which sometimes feels as if it was stolen from me, even though I was complicit in the crime. A few minutes later, I change it again, this time to Willow Hale. Willow is my middle name, and it seems prudent to take a further step in separating the woman I am now from the woman I once was, lest anyone here makes the connection. My parents were unremarkable, middle-class people – a teacher and a shop assistant – and there were some who thought them presumptuous in calling their daughter Vanessa Willow, which summons images of a Bloomsbury writer or a painter’s wan muse, but I was always rather pleased with it. I had notions about myself back then, I suppose. I don’t have them any longer.
Mike Finn's Fiction 