This week, my reading has, with a couple of exceptions, been a little disappointing.
In contrast I’m constantly coming across books that I want to read but which haven’t been release yet. Stephen King’s ‘Never Flinch‘, Joe Abercrombie’s ‘The Devils’, Lindsey Miller’s ‘That Devil, Ambition‘ and Ben Aaronvich’s ‘Stone and Sky‘ have me wishing my reading life away rather than browsing my TBR for all the books I was in love with before I bought them.
Anyway, here’s what’s been happening this week and what’s up next.
This was a slightly disappointing reading week. I set two of my four books aside. Still, the other two, an Urban Fantasy and a Crime novel, were entertaing.
‘Midnight’s Emissarys‘ (2017) is the second book in the Urban Fantasy series featuring Aileen Travers, an Army vet turned vampire against her will and now trying to find her place in the complex world of the supernaturals who inhabit Columbus, Ohio.
i enjoyd the first book, ‘Shadow’s Messenger‘ enough to want to follow the series to find out what Aileen has to do to survive.
In this book, she finds herself working for the vampires wh she has been trying to avoid and she comes face to face with the vampire who sired and then left her for dead. The plot is interesting, although the pace is a little slow. I didn’t mind that as it’s really Aileen who keeps me reading. I am struggling to find a word that nails Aileen’s attitude. Not so much snark as smirk, except it’s a lazy, drawly smirk. A sort of contempt for how badly the world is set up and how many unreasonable but unavoidable things she is asked to do. Perhaps an oxymoron?: long-suffering impatience?”. Whatever it is, her attitude amuses me and gives a fresh feel to an otherwise familiar Urban Fantasy set up.
As soon as I learned that Elly Griffiths’ latest novel was kicking off a series about a branch of the Met that uses time travel to solve cold cases, I bought a copy. Unfortunately, it turned out to be deeply disappointing and I set it aside after listening only to the first 10% of the book.
I normally give an audiobook two hours or 20% before deciding whether to set it aside. I made an exception here because, after an hour (two chapters / 10%) I was bored and disappointed. The prose was leaden. The approach to both time travel and history was… unsophisticated. It didn’t help that I found the main character hard to like.
I’ll give this series a pass and read more of Jodi Tayloe’s St Mary’s books instead.
If ‘No Land For Heroes‘ was a TV series or a graphic novel, I’m sure I’d have become a fan. It’s packed with interesting things. It opens with a train robbery carried out by an albino elf and the local sheriff and complicated by an attack on the train by a fire-breathing dragon. It ought to have been a lot of fun, I set it aside after a couple of hours because the prose just wasn’t holding me.
‘Cross Her Heart‘ (2020), the first Bree Tagget book, rescued my reading week. It wasn’t anything terribly original but it was entertaing and well-writen. The storytelling was focused. The narrative had a strong forward motion but didn’t feel too brisk. The emotions were strong and the situations were dark. Bree didn’t feel real to me at the start but I became as interested in finding out more about her as I was in seeing the murder mystery unfold. This is a series I’m looking forward to reading.
I’ve done more buying than reading this week (those BUY buttons make it so easy). I tell myself I’m just stocking up for when I have more time but even I don’t believe me anymore. I’ve bought one mystery from 2023 that I’ve continued to hear good things about, a new domestic thriller with old people in it. a new SF cosy mystery and two books that contine series I’m already reading. i also bought a non-fiction book which I came across by accident and then fell in love with the title.
One detective. One murderer. But which is which?
Remie Yorke has one shift left at the Mackinnon Hotel in the remote Scottish Highlands before she leaves for good. Then Storm Ezra hits.
As temperatures plummet and phone lines go down, an injured man stumbles inside. PC Don Gaines was in a terrible accident on the mountain road. The only other survivor: the prisoner his team was transporting.
When a second stranger arrives, Remie reluctantly lets him in from the blizzard. He, too, is hurt. He claims to be a police officer. His name is also Don Gaines.
Someone is lying and, with no means of escape, Remie must work out who. If the cold doesn’t kill her, one of these men will get there first…
‘The Second Stranger‘ (2023) was well received by book reviewers who I follow when it came out. It seems the hype hasn’t worn off. I listened to a sample and thought it sounded like fun – a sort of Golden Age premise in a modern setting. How can I resist a murder in a country house hotel in a storm?
Do you trust the couple next door?
When Lena overhears a conversation between her next-door neighbours, she thinks she must have misheard.
After all, the Morgans are a kind, retired couple who have moved to a suburban street in Bristol where nothing ever happens.
But it sounded like they were planning a crime.
Her family and friends tell her she’s made a mistake.
Yet the more Lena looks into the Morgans, the darker things seem.
And the more she fears it might be linked to a secret from her own past.
Because, if her suspicions are true, then someone is in real danger.
And it might just be her…
With the addition of ‘The New Neighbours’ (2025), I now have three Claire Douglas books on my TBR shelves. My wife enjoyed ‘The Wrong Sister’ (2024) which I’ve been meaning to get to for a while now and she liked the sound of this one so, onto the TBR pile it goes.
A mind is a terrible thing to erase…
Welcome to the HMS Fairweather, Her Majesty’s most luxurious interstellar passenger liner! Room and board are included, new bodies are graciously provided upon request, and should you desire a rest between lifetimes, your mind shall be most carefully preserved in glass in the Library, shielded from every danger.
Near the topmost deck of an interstellar generation ship, Dorothy Gentleman wakes up in a body that isn’t hers—just as someone else is found murdered. As one of the ship’s detectives, Dorothy usually delights in unraveling the schemes on board the Fairweather, but when she finds that someone is not only killing bodies but purposefully deleting minds from the Library, she realizes something even more sinister is afoot.
Dorothy suspects her misfortune is partly the fault of her feckless nephew Ruthie who, despite his brilliance as a programmer, leaves chaos in his cheerful wake. Or perhaps the sultry yarn store proprietor—and ex-girlfriend of the body Dorothy is currently inhabiting—knows more than she’s letting on. Whatever it is, Dorothy intends to solve this case. Because someone has done the impossible and found a way to make murder on the Fairweather a very permanent state indeed. A mastermind may be at work—and if so, they’ve had three hundred years to perfect their schemes…
‘Murder By Memoery’ (2025) is the first book in a new series of cosy mysteries set in space featuring amateur sleuth, Dorothy Gentleman. I’m hoping for something reminiscent of Mary Robinette Kowal’s ‘The Spare Man‘ with a whole series to follow up on.
What if ‘positive thinking’ and relentless optimism aren’t the solution to the happiness dilemma, but part of the problem?
Oliver Burkeman turns decades of self-help advice on its head and paradoxically forces us to rethink our attitudes towards failure, uncertainty and death. It’s our constant efforts to avoid negative thinking that cause us to feel anxious, insecure and unhappy. What if happiness can be found embracing the things we spend our lives trying to escape? Wise, practical and funny, The Antidote is a thought-provoking, counter-intuitive and ultimately uplifting read, celebrating the power of negative thinking.
I was looking for Karen Russel’s novel, ‘The Antidote’ when I saw this book listed on the same page. I don’t often buy non-fiction books and I never buy self-help books… except when the subtitle reads: ‘Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking’. It sounded like a book written with me in mind so I tried the sample, found myself nodding, grinning and saying ‘EXACTLY’ as I listened. So I bought a self-help book (although I suspect it’s a self-justification book as I don’t feel in any great need of help). I didn’t buy the Karen Russel book. It felt too highbrow for me.
New sheriff Bree Taggert is called to a shooting in a campground shuttered for the winter. But she arrives to find a perplexing crime. There is no shooter, no victim, and no blood. No one but Bree believes the sole witness, Alyssa, a homeless teenager who insists she saw her friend shot.
Bree calls in former deputy Matt Flynn and his K-9 to track the killer and search for Alyssa’s friend. They discover the battered corpse of a missing university student under the ice in Grey Lake – but it’s not the victim they were looking for.
When two more students go missing and additional bodies turn up, Bree must find the link between the victims. She knows only one thing for certain: the murders are fueled by rage. When Alyssa disappears, Bree must race against time to find her before her witness becomes another victim.
‘See Her Die‘ (2020) is the second Bree Taggert book. The first one worked well as a standalone and as a set up for a series so I’m hoping I’ll be reading one of these a month until I run out.
I see dead people. And I’m not the only one. They’re even on Facebook. The dead are rising, and if we don’t stop them before the infection spreads any further, we’re going to be knee-deep in the zombie apocalypse before you can say mmm, brains. The only problem is, we don’t know why they’re rising, who started it, or how to stop them.
But G & C London, Private Investigators, are on the case. Just as soon as we get through dealing with disapproving reapers, irate magicians, zombie-fied chickens, and a small internal case of undeadness.
Trust us.
Gobbelino London keeps coming up as people’s favourite Kim Watt series. So far, my favourite is the DI Adams series but I enjoyed ‘Gobbelino London and a Scourge of Pleasantries‘ and promised myself I’d be back for more. And besides, this one has zombies.
This week, I’m pulling books from my TBR to give myself an Irish Crime Fest. All three books are by women writers (as all the best Irish Crime books seem to be). Two start off new series and one is a standalone. The oldest was publishined in 2015, the newest in 2020.
Cal Hooper thought a fixer-upper in a remote Irish village would be the perfect escape. After twenty-five years in the Chicago police force, and a bruising divorce, he just wants to build a new life in a pretty spot with a good pub where nothing much happens.
But then a local kid comes looking for his help. His brother has gone missing, and no one, least of all the police, seems to care. Cal wants nothing to do with any kind of investigation, but somehow he can’t make himself walk away.
Soon Cal will discover that even in the most idyllic small town, secrets lie hidden, people aren’t always what they seem, and trouble can come calling at his door.
Even though she’s one of the best known Irish Crime writers, I’ve never read and Tana French. I’ve decided to start with her most recent series which begins with ‘The Searcher’ (2020). I’m intrigued that she has an American as the central character. I’m looking forward to seeing the rural West of Ireland through his eyes. ‘The Hunter‘, the sequel to ‘The Searcher‘, came out this month. If I like ‘The Searcher‘, I’ll be moving on to ‘The Hunter’ later in the year.
When a skeleton is discovered, wrapped in a blanket, in the hidden crypt of a deconsecrated church, everyone is convinced the bones must be those of Conor Devitt, a local man who went missing on his wedding day six years previously. But the post mortem reveals otherwise.
Solicitor Benedicta ‘Ben’ O’Keeffe is acting for the owners of the church, and although an unwelcome face from her past makes her reluctant to get involved initially, when Conor’s brother dies in strange circumstances shortly after coming to see her, she finds herself drawn in to the mystery. Whose is the skeleton in the crypt and how did it get there? Is Conor Devitt still alive, and if so is there a link? What happened on the morning of his wedding to make him disappear?
Negotiating between the official investigation, headed up by the handsome but surly Sergeant Tom Molloy, and obstructive locals with secrets of their own, Ben unravels layers of personal and political history to get to the truth of what happened six years before.
‘Death At Whitewater Church’ (2015) is the first of the six Inishown mysteries featuring mateur sleuth, solicitor Benedicta ‘Ben’ O’Keeffe. I’ve had this on my shelves since 2022 so it’s time to decide if this sereis is for me.
My husband did not mean to kill Annie Doyle, but the lying tramp deserved it.
On the surface, Lydia Fitzsimons has the perfect life—wife of a respected, successful judge, mother to a beloved son, mistress of a beautiful house in Dublin. That beautiful house, however, holds a secret.
And when Lydia’s son, Laurence, discovers its secret, wheels are set in motion that lead to an increasingly claustrophobic and devastatingly dark climax.
‘Liz Nugent wrote one of my favourite books of 2023, ‘Strange Sally Diamond‘. I was suprised to find that I’d had one of her earlier books in my TBR since 2018. I meant to read it last year as part of my TBR challenge but you know, life and all that. So now I’m finally getting to it. I’m looking for to it. I love that “My husband did not mean to kill Annie Doyle, but the lying tramp deserved it.” hook.
Mike Finn's Fiction 