It’s been a good week for books. I’ve read four books and enjoyed all of them and I’m excited by the books that I’ve bought, especially the ones that will be released next week . Anyway, here’s what’s been happening this week and what’s up next.
Thk week’a reading was very satisfying and very varied. I finished an Irish crime book that was startlingly orginal, and kicked off a new cosy mystery series set on a spacehip. Then I went off plan a rapidly made my way through a fantasy novel and a speculative fiction novella that I suddently felt in the mood for.
‘I read ‘Clean Sweep’, the first book of the Innkeeper Chronicles, back in 2017 and was surprised by how much fun it was. I’ve been meaning to get back to Dina Demille and her sentient and magically powerful Inn that opens portals into other worlds and secretly hosts alien races ever since but I kept ending up reading a Kate Daniels novel instead. I don’t have any more Kate available to me so this week, I went back to the Dina and her Inn.
In ‘Sweep In Peace‘ (2015) Dina has agreed to let the galactic arbitrators use the inn to host a peace confererence between Space Vampires, the Hope-Crushing Horde, and the devious Merchants of Baha-char.
The opening of the book was a little clumsy and I wondered if this ten-year-old book had beome dated and was going to deliver what now seems like clichèd video game characters in a static situation. Things picked up once the large cast was assembled. Initially, I was propelled along by the humour and my own curiosity. Bit by bit, the emotional tone changed and I began to empathise with the terrible situation the warring parties were in. Their war was unwinnable, casualties were mounting and none of them could find a way to stop. In the end, this was a book about what wars do to the people who fight them and the price that often has to be paid for peace.
‘Murder By Memory ‘ (2025) was a clever, entertaining, well-written novella that created a whole new world aboard the Fairweather an interstellar generation ship and solved a crime unique to that environment while introducing a ship’s detective I hope to see more of soon.
My review is HERE.
When I learnt that Arkady Martine, who wrote ‘A Memory Called Empire‘, had published a standalone novella, I put everthing else aside to read it. I love her writing and her complex imagination.
‘Rose/House’ (2023) is a darkly compelling novellal about a world-famous house that is the shell for a genius loci AI. Set in the Mojave desert, miles from the nearest small town, Rose/House has been closed up since the death of the eccentric architect who built it, lived in it and stored his archive in it. It has been a quiescent but menacing presence outside the small town of China Lake until the night it calls local law enforcement to alert them to the presence of a dead body on its grounds.
The story was as complex and as beautifully written as I’d hoped. Rose/House and the people who entered it will haunt my imagination for a while.
‘Lying In Wait‘ (2016) was a very powerful and surprising book. Told from three points of view, it chronicles the damage that one broken person can inflict. It starts with a murder cooly and unapologetically described by the murderer who it’s clear, even in the early chapters, has the ability to curate her memory so that she is always blameless. The story moves on to the muderer’s son’s point of view and then onto the point of view of the murder victim’s sister. The portraits of all three people are vivid and credible. The way the plot brings them together over not just weeks but years kept twisting my emotions. It took me a long time to realise that this wasn’t a Christie-style mystery where the plot was looping slowly towards the dispensing of justice but was something much closer to real-life: an extended exploration of pain, disappointment and betrayal sprinkled with moments of unreliable happiness.
I’m excited by the books I’ve added this week. Two of them were on my list of ‘The 2025 Books I’m Waiting For‘. One is a the first book in a series about retired spies that I’ve only just stumbled across. One is the first book in a British police procedural series. The other two are from an Urban Fantasy series that I’m enjoying.
Maggie Bird is many things. A chicken farmer. A good neighbour. A seemingly average retiree living in the seaside town of Purity. She’s also a darned good rifle shot. And she never talks about her past.
But when an unidentified body is left on Maggie’s driveway, she knows it’s a calling card from old times. It’s been fifteen years since the failed mission that ended her career as a spy, and cost her far more than her job.
Step forward the ‘Martini Club’ – Maggie’s silver-haired book group (to anyone who asks), and a cohort of former spies behind closed doors. With the help of her old friends – and always one step ahead of the persistent local cop – Maggie might still be able to save the life she’s built.
I’ve had a couple of Tess Gerritsen’s Rizzoli and Isles books in my TBR pile for years now but I’ve never gotten to them. I enjoyed the TV series but I feel like I’ve missed the window for reading the series. Then I saw that, at the age of sixty-nine, Tess Gerrittsen had started a new series, ‘The Martini Club’‘ with ‘The Spy Coast‘ (2023) about retired spies. I’m curious to see what she does with her characters when they are approaching the end of their lives rather than struggling through the middle. The second book, ‘The Summer Guests’ was published last month so I’m hoping to have a new series to follow.
Cal Sounder is a detective first and a Titan second, but it’s not easy to make that work. It’s hard to be an ordinary guy when you’re fundamentally not ordinary anymore. Cal has recently taken a dose of T7, a rare drug that is usually the preserve of the rich, making its users – called the Titans – younger and bigger each time they take it, so that as they age the bodies of the ultra-wealthy become as immense as their bank accounts.
As Cal digs into the crime, he finds this forgotten town is simmering with wage disputes, strikes, and political conflict, and no one is quite who they say they are – not even the victim. As Cal second-guesses everyone he meets, he is forced to confront his own identity and ask himself who he wants to be from the far side of the mirror of power, age and greed.
‘Sleeper Beach‘ is the sequel to ‘Titaniam Noir’ which was one of my best reads of 2023. I loved the way Nick Harkaway took great speculative fiction questions, wrapped them in a solid mystery and told the story in a self-consciously Noir style: think Raymond Chandler but replace the misogyny with dry, sometimes self-effacing humour.delivered it all through speculative fiction. I’m hoping for more of the same in this book
Maybe having a few enemies on the school run means you’re doing something right…
Florence knows all about failure. After a dismal end to her 2000s girlband career, she’s moping around West London, single, broke and unfulfilled. The only things she’s proud of are her increasingly elaborate nail art choices – and her ten-year-old son, Dylan.
But when Alfie Risby, Dylan’s bitter class rival and the child heir to a frozen foods empire, mysteriously vanishes on a school trip, Dylan becomes a prime suspect. Florence has to get her act together, find the missing boy and clear her son’s name or risk losing him forever. The only problem? She doesn’t have any detective skills, she’s not exactly popular at the school gates and she’s just found Alfie’s backpack hidden under Dylan’s bed…
This is a debut novel AND it’s a dark comedy, so this is definitely a risk BUT the premise and the title have me hooked so I have to give it a try.
A favor owed, a hunt like no other.
A courier for the shadow world no more, Aileen’s former protection is gone. Alone but still defiant, she survives one night at a time. Sure, working a dead-end job isn’t part of every young vampire’s dreams, but it pays the bills.
When the darkly seductive Liam calls in a favor, she’ll find her carefully constructed world tilting on its axis as he draws her into a dangerous game against a wily enemy. The High Fey – creatures as powerful and beautiful as they are deadly – have come to town, their motivations unclear as lines are drawn and shadowy alliances made.
And with them, they bring their Wild Hunt where everyone is either predator or prey. Betrayed and marked as its quarry, Aileen will find surviving until dawn has never been this hard.
The only thing that might save her – are the vampires she doesn’t trust.
Aileen Travers thought she had it all figured out. Part private investigator, part fixer to the supernatural community, she was slowly building a reputation as the go-to vampire in Columbus. If you had a supernatural problem and nowhere to turn, she was the girl for you. The best part – no one had tried to kill her in weeks.
Aileen’s peaceful existence comes crashing down around her when an unwilling visit to the police station results in her picking up a stalker – or two. Now, Aileen is dodging suspicious looking portals while evading kidnapping attempts.
Looks like Aileen has a new client. Herself.
I’ ve read the first two books in the Aileen Travers Urban Fantasy series ‘Shadow’s Messenger’ and ‘Midnight’s Emissary’ and I know that I want to read the rest. My wife is reading them faster than I can get to them so I’ve bought books four and five in the series so she can keep up her reading momentum.
On New Year’s Eve, Rhys Lloyd has a house full of guests.
His lakeside holiday homes are a success, and he’s generously invited the village to drink champagne with their wealthy new neighbours. This will be the party to end all parties.
But not everyone is there to celebrate. By midnight, Rhys will be floating dead in the freezing waters of the lake.
On New Year’s Day, DC Ffion Morgan has a village full of suspects
The tiny community is her home, so the suspects are her neighbours, friends and family – and Ffion has her own secrets to protect.
With a lie uncovered at every turn, soon the question isn’t who wanted Rhys dead . . . but who finally killed him.
In a village with this many secrets, a murder is just the beginning.
‘The Last Party‘ (2023) is a bit of a risk. I set aside ‘Let Me Lie’ (2018), the only other Clare Mackintosh book that I’ve read, because I couldn’t engage with the premise of a dead mother ‘coming down’ to help her daughter solve a crime. Althogh that book didn’t work for me, I liked the writing and the storytelling. I’m hoping that the more down-to-earth premise of this book will be a better fit for me.
This week, I’m reading an American mystery, an Irish mystery and a British Golden Age mystery.
Raised by a family of survivalists, FBI agent Mercy Kilpatrick can take on any challenge – even the hostile reception to her homecoming. But she’s not the only one causing chaos in the rural community of Eagle’s Nest, Oregon. At first believed to be teenage pranks, a series of fires takes a deadly turn with the murder of two sheriff’s deputies. Now, along with Police Chief Truman Daly, Mercy is on the hunt for an arsonist turned killer.
Still shunned by her family and members of the community, Mercy must keep her ear close to the ground to pick up any leads. And it’s not long before she hears rumors of the area’s growing antigovernment militia movement. If the arsonist is among their ranks, Mercy is determined to smoke the culprit out. But when her investigation uncovers a shocking secret, will this hunt for a madman turn into her own trial by fire?
I enjoyed the first book in this series, ‘A Merciful Death‘ so I’m back to find out what FBI agent Mercy Kilpatrick does next.
When six human bodies are discovered in the process, building work on a derelict site in Cork grinds to a halt. And then a seventh is discovered. Although the first six are men who died centuries ago, the seventh body is different – female, for a start, and much more recent.
What began as a historic find is now a crime scene.
Detective Garda Alice McCann is determined to track down the killer, even though she knows her superiors don’t want her anywhere near such a high-profile case. Not after what happened before.
But at every turn, her investigation reveals more questions than answers, more lies than facts. And someone powerful is watching her every move. Can Alice uncover the truth before she’s taken off the case – and before the killer strikes again?
Catherine Kirwan is an Irish writer, based out of Cork, who I’ve been hearing good things about. I was looking at starting her Finn Fitzpatrick series when I saw that she had a new standalone crime novel coming out, so i’m going to start there.
As Miss Marple sat basking in the Caribbean sunshine, she felt mildly discontented with life. True, the warmth eased her rheumatism, but here in paradise nothing ever happened.
Eventually, her interest was aroused by an old soldier’s yarn about a murderer he had known. Infuriatingly, just as he was about to show her a snapshot of this acquaintance, the Major was suddenly interrupted. A diversion that was to prove fatal.
Togther with a group of Agatha Christie fans on GoodReads, I’ve been reading Christie’s books in order of publication at the rate of one a month since 2018. We’re now up to 1964 and the tenth Jane Marple book. Jane is definitely my favourite Christie sleuth. I’m looking forward to taking a vacation in the sun with her.
Mike Finn's Fiction 