They say when man plans the gods laugh. They’ve been chuckling this week. My plans were abandoned as soon as a book I pre-ordered back in January landed in my Audible library.I HAD to listen to it all the way through.

Anyway, here’s what’s been happening this week and what’s up next.

---

This week, was supposed to be filled with novels about retirement. I’d intended to read Tess Gerritsen’s second book about retired CIA spies in rural Maine and Sue Hincebergs’ ‘The Retirement Plan’ about three women plotting to get rid of their husbands so they can enjoy a decent retirement, I’d read the first one and started the next when Stephen King’s ‘Never Flinch’ arrived in my Audible Library. I’d meant to leave it there and read it next week but I decided to listen to the beginning, just to see what kind of job Jesse Mueller made of the narration. The things is, once I’d started, I didn’t want to stop so I’ll be continuing with ‘The Retirement Plan’ next week.

THE MARTINI CLUB ISN’T OPEN TO EVERYONE . . .
Maggie Bird’s ‘book group’ is an unusual one – a group of retired spies living an anonymous life in the seaside town of Purity. And this summer they plan little more than ‘reading’ (whilst sipping martinis), and some gentle birdwatching.
But trouble is just around the corner as the summer guests arrive.
For acting Police Chief Jo Thibodeau, summer brings its own problems – packed streets, bar brawls, petty theft. And now, a missing teenager down by the lake.
When their good friend becomes a prime suspect in the girl’s disappearance, Maggie and her Martini Club must put down their binoculars and roll up their sleeves. Leaving Jo to deal with not only a powerful family desperate for answers, but a meddlesome group of retirees.
Can Jo and the Martini Club find a way to work together, as they uncover one of the deadliest scandals their small town has ever seen?

‘The Summer Guests” (2025) is the second book in Tess Gerittsen’s new series about retired CIA agents who are trying to live a quiet life in rural Maine. 

The plot of the first book, ‘The Spy Coast‘ was driven by the things that Maggie Bird, a spy turned chicken farmer, had done before she retired catching up with her with fatal results. It was a good spy thriller that also served to establish the credentials of Maggie and the rest of the Martini Club as retired but still a force to be reckoned with. 

‘The Summer Guests‘ took a different tack. It was a thriller about an investigation looking for a missing girl that Maggie et al got involved with because Maggie’s neighbour is suspected of abducting and harming the girl. What followed was a clever mystery with themes about family secrets, rich versus poor, summer people versus locals and the corrosive effects of sibling rivalry. 

I had a good time with the book. I enjoyed the mystery and the growing relationship between the oldsters in the Martini Club and the young sheriff. 

I’ll be looking out for the third book, ‘The Shadow Friends‘ when it comes out in January 2027.

When the Buckeye City Police Department receives a disturbing letter from a person threatening to ‘kill thirteen innocents and one guilty’ in ‘an act of atonement for the needless death of an innocent man’, Detective Izzy Jaynes has no idea what to think. Are fourteen citizens about to be slaughtered in an unhinged act of retribution? As the investigation unfolds, Izzy realises that the letter writer is deadly serious, and she turns to her friend Holly Gibney for help.
Meanwhile, controversial and outspoken women’s rights activist Kate McKay is embarking on a multi-state lecture tour, drawing packed venues of both fans and detractors. Someone who vehemently opposes Kate’s message of female empowerment is targeting her and disrupting her events. At first, no one is hurt, but the stalker is growing bolder, and Holly is hired to be Kate’s bodyguard – a challenging task with a headstrong employer and a determined adversary driven by wrath and unhinged righteousness.

I opened the audiobook version ‘Never Flinch‘ (2025) when it arrived in my Audible library on Tuesday, its publication day. I had meant to sample the narration and move on but instead, I set my reading plans aside and spent the three days completely immersed in the book. 

It started with a serial killer on a bizarre revenge mission, a feminist political activist on a speaking tour who was being stalked, and a revered (but retired) rock and soul singer who was making a comeback. I knew that somehow Stephen King was going to bring them all together in a way that put everyone, especially Holly and those she cares about, at risk. Yet, it was the people, not the plot that made this book compelling.

Before I start them, the length of King’s books (‘Never Flinch‘ is almost fifteen hours long) puts me off, BUT, once I immerse myself in the narrative, it’s like being swept along in a tide and my only problem is how to find more time in the day to listen to the book. Part of the credit for that momentum belongs to Jesse Mueller’s narration. She gave each character a voice I could believe in AND managed the singing parts, all while keeping a perfect pace.

The thing that I admired most about this book was how Stephen King created small moments of pure joy for his characters. True, those moments occurred in the deepening shadow of a growing threat but they still captured the feelings that make life worth fighting for. 

Stephen King also conjured up evil. This time he had not one but two evil people, working independently of each other, but both on a collision course with Holly and her people. 

The book had a very contemporary feel, hooking into the politics of hate that has overtaken America and showing how it has changed public discourse. 

If you’re a King fan, then I recommend the audiobook, If you’re not a King fan yet, then ‘Never Flinch‘ is a good place to start. 

---

This week, I’ve added two new releases and two books that kicked off a long-running crime series. One of the new releases is a sequel to a fantasy book I read in 2023. I added the other because it has an intriguing premise.

The stakes have never been higher.
The world is teetering on the brink of annihilation. The Lords Celestine and the Lords Devilish, celestial and infernal beings locked in an age-old enmity, have at last found the perfect battlefield for their apocalyptic Great Crusade: the mortal realm.
Cade Ombra, former Glorian Justiciar turned mercenary wonderist, leads a band of emotionally unstable mages in a desperate bid to prevent the impending clash of divine and diabolical titans. Failure will leave humanity to be conscripted into an eternal war, serving as foot soldiers doomed to oblivion.
The mission seems impossible, but Cade and the Malevolent Seven aren’t exactly pacifists, so they’re determined to bring peace no matter how many people they have to kill first. With wit as sharp as their blades and a moral compass that points only toward survival, they’re ready to cut down anyone in their path to stop the war before it begins.

The first book in this series, ‘The Malevolent Seven‘ caught my attention because it was so obviously not a typical D&D-derived fantasy. It’s hard to say what it is, other than a well-plotted, original and entertaining fantasy. Here’s how I described it in my review:

“Think Grimdark with a guilty conscience and a taste for ironic, self-deprecating humour. The novel abounds in violence, rape, abuse, cruelty and pointless but gleeful slaughter. What makes this not quite Grimdark is that our moody and soulful ‘do NOT call me a hero’ main character, Cade Ombra tortures himself with how bad he’s become, how broken the world is and how betrayed he feels by all people and institutions he once committed his life to.”

I’m hoping the second book continues in the same style while developing Cade Ombra’s character and deepening the world-building. nues in the same style while developing the Cade Ombra’s character and deepening the world-building.

I enjoyed Joe Jameson’s narration last time, so I’m glad to see that he’s still the narrator. Cick on the YouTube link below to hear a sample of his work.

Oslo, 2018. Former long-distance runner Sonja Nordstrøm never shows at the launch of her controversial autobiography, Always Number One. When celebrity blogger Emma Ramm visits Nordstrøm’s home later that day, she finds the door unlocked and signs of a struggle inside. A bib with the number ‘one’ has been pinned to the TV.
Police officer Alexander Blix is appointed to head up the missing-persons investigation, but he still bears the emotional scars of a hostage situation nineteen years earlier, when he killed the father of a five-year-old girl. Traces of Nordstrøm soon show up at different locations, but the appearance of the clues appear to be carefully calculated … evidence of a bigger picture that he’s just not seeing…
Blix and Ramm soon join forces, determined to find and stop a merciless killer with a flare for the dramatic, and thirst for attention.

Trouble is, he’s just got his first taste of it…

Jørn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger are both stalwarts of Norwegian Noir. Horst is a former Senior Investigating Officer at Vestfold police district. Enger is a journalist as well as a novelist. Already well-known novelists with successful series behind them, they collaborated to create a new crime series about policeman Alexander Blix and news blogger Emma Ramm.

‘Death Deserved’ (2018) is the first of five Blix and Ramm books. I’m hoping that ‘Death Deserved‘ will give me a new series to follow, now that I’ve finished the Rebecka Martinsson books.

Thea has a secret.
She can tell how long someone has left to live just by touching them.
Not only that, but she can transfer life from one person to another – something she finds out the hard way when her best friend Ruth suffers a fatal head injury on a night out.
Desperate to save her, Thea touches the arm of the man responsible when he comes to check if Ruth is all right. As Ruth comes to, the man quietly slumps to the ground, dead.
Thea realises that she has a godlike power: but despite deciding to use her ability for good, she can’t help but sometimes use it for her own benefit.
Boss annoying her at work? She can take some life from them and give it as a tip to her masseuse for a great job.
Creating an ‘Ethical Guide to Murder’ helps Thea to focus her new-found skills.
But as she embarks on her mission to punish the wicked and give the deserving more time, she finds that it isn’t as simple as she first thought.
How can she really know who deserves to die, and can she figure out her own rules before Ruth’s borrowed time runs out?

‘An Ethical Guide To Murder‘ (2025) is a debut novel by an author who has PhD in cognitive psychology and works as a behavioural scientist. The book is being marketed as “a high-concept crime novel with a fantasy twist that explores the moral and ethical dilemmas of life and death.” Despite that, I’m still hoping that this will be a fun read. 

Click on the YouTube link to hear a sample.

The killer was mad but brilliant.
He left notes with every woman he killed. Rules of murder: Never have a motive. Never follow a discernible pattern. Never carry a weapon after it has been used…So many rules to his sick, violent games of death.
But Lucas Davenport, the cop who’s out to get him, isn’t playing by the rules.

I’m blaming Stephen King for this addition to my TBR pile. I’ve heard him recommend John Sandford before and meant to follow up on it. In King’s latest novel, ‘Never Flinch‘, one of the characters (not at all a nice man) is reading ‘Toxic Prey‘. When I looked it up (Yes, I do know how nerdy that it but how could I NOT look it up?) I found that it came out last year and is the thirty-fourth book in John Sandford’s Lucas Davenport series. I decided that I’d start with the first book, ‘Rules Of Prey’ which was published all the way back in 1989. I’m hoping it still stands up and that it will encourage me to read at least some of the rest of the series.

---

Both of next week’s books are new releases, so new that they won’t be published until 3rd June. I’ve pre-ordered both of them and I’m looking forward to diving straight in.

There is only one school worth graduating from, and it creates as many magicians as it does graves…
First in his class and last in his noble line, Fabian Galloway’s only hope of a good future is passing his elite school’s honors class. It’s only offered to the best thirteen students, and those students have a single assignment: kill their professor.
If they succeed, their student debt is forgiven. However, if an assassination attempt fails or the professor is alive at the end of the year, the students’ lives are forfeit.
And dealing with the professor, a devil summoned solely to kill or be killed, is no easy task.
Fabian isn’t worried, though. He trusts his best friends—softhearted math genius Credence and absent-minded but insightful Euphemia—to help. After all, that’s why he befriended them.

A magic school. (VERY) Dark Academia. A large cast of not very nice people. A complex magic system and a twisty high-stakes plot. What’s not to like?

Steel and iron. Tree and root. And a city crushed between.
In the ancient city of York, a master charm has been stolen. With it comes the power to raise an army of unstoppable metal guardians spread across not just Yorkshire, but the world.
Which is bad enough. But if the charm isn’t recovered soon, the steel beasts won’t be the only ones on the rampage.
Because Heather – near-goddess of the wood and wild, partner of the charm’s creator – has her own ways of dealing with these things. She’ll turn the city to mulch to reclaim the charm, and never mind the casualties.
DI Adams never asked to be the magical community’s problem-solver, but with York teetering towards destruction, she’s suddenly the only one standing between humanity and a full-blown nature-vs-machine catastrophe.
Armed with her invisible, caffeine-addicted dog, her duck, and some allies with questionable loyalties, Adams plunges into the hidden underbelly of York in search of the thief. Never mind the implacable automations, ravenous beasts, and lurking toilet monsters – she’s also got the horrors of people skills and some bendy physics to deal with, and she can’t even arrest them.
But she’s got to make this work. Time’s running out. The charm is waking.
And when root rises to meet steel, it won’t just be York that falls…

I’m a DI Adams fan. I met her as a supporting character in ‘Baking Bad‘ a cozy mystery (with dragons) and followed her progress in her own series, starting with ‘What Happened In London‘ and then ‘All Out Of Leeds‘ and ‘Trouble Brewing In Harrowgate‘. I’m eager to read the next book, ‘A Right Shambles In York‘. I’m sure it will be a smile.