A hot week for the UK at least, with temperatures hitting 31C/87F. Time to find a cool place, read and tell myself that this is all the exercise that’s sensible at the moment. A couple of pre-orders arrived in my library this week and I have some great reads comig up, so all is well.
Anyway, here’s what’s been happening this week and what’s up next.
This was another genre reading week. I read a Climate Fiction novella, an Urban Fantasy excursion to Aberdeen, a ‘cosy’ romance fantasy set against a Lovecraftian horrorscape, a timeslip horror novella from the 90s and serial killer comedy set in suburban England. The first three were really good The other, not so much.
Doctor Jasmine Marks is going back into hell.
The Hygrometric Dehabitation Region, or the “Zone,” is a growing band of rainforest on the equator, where the heat and humidity make it impossible for warm-blooded animals to survive. A human being without protection in the Zone is dead in minutes.
Twenty years ago, Marks went into the rainforest with a group of researchers led by Doctor Elaine Fell, to study the extraordinary climate and see if it could be used in agriculture. The only thing she learned was that the Zone was no place for people. There were deaths, and the program was cut short.
Now, they’re sending her back in. A plane crash, a rescue mission, a race against time and the environment to bring out the survivors. But there are things Marks’s corporate masters aren’t telling her. The Zone keeps its secrets, and so does Doctor Fell . . .
‘Saturation Point‘ (2025) is a tense, intelligent Climate Fiction thriller, made more intense by being delivered as a first-person narrative at novella length. I liked that, in this version of a climate change apocalypse, it’s only the mammals whose survival is threatened. Other species are thriving. This is a compelling mystery, told in a hostile setting by a narrator with an agenda under threat from the unexpected. I recommend the audiobook. Emma Newman’s performance did a lot to increase my engagement with the story.
Detective Sergeant Peter Grant takes a much-needed holiday up in Scotland. And he’ll need one when this is over…
If more’s the merrier, then it’s ecstatic as his partner Beverley, their young twins, his mum, dad, his dad’s band and their dodgy manager all tag along. Even his boss, DCI Thomas Nightingale, takes in the coastal airs as he trains Peter’s cousin Abigail in the arcane arts.
And they’ll need them too, because Scotland’s Granite City has more than its fair share of history and mystery, myth … and murder.
When a body is found in a bus stop, fresh from the sea, the case smells fishy from the off.
Something may be stirring beyond the bay – but there’s something far stranger in the sky…
‘Stone & Sky‘(2025) was an above-average offering in the Rivers Of London series. I liked that Peter and his entire family, plus Nightingale all travel up to Aberdeen to deal with some fresh challenges. Better still, about half the chapters are from Abigail’s point of view. The plot was twisty enough to keep me engaged (although there were a couple of threads still hanging at the end. The humour worked. I particularly enjoyed seeing Beverley and Abigail at the centre of the action and seeing Peter having to think through his attitude to risk now that he’s a husband and father.
Generations ago, the founders of the idyllic town of Lake Argen made a deal with a dark force. In exchange for their service, the town will stay prosperous and successful, and keep outsiders out. And for generations, it’s worked out great. Until a visitor goes missing, and his wealthy family sends a private investigator to find him, and everything abruptly goes sideways.
Now, Cassidy Prewitt, town baker and part-time servant of the dark force (it’s a family business) has to contend with a rising army of darkness, a very frustrated town, and a very cute PI who she might just be falling for…and who might just be falling for her. And if they can survive their own home-grown apocalypse, they might even just find happiness together.
I don’t normally enjoy romance novels, especially when the plot has a heavy dose of insta-love in it. BUT, this is a Tanya Huff romance, so exceptions have to be made. ‘Direct Descendant‘ (2025) kept me smiling even though bits of the book would normally qualify it as a horror novel. We have THE DARK, hellhounds, flocks of lethally carnivorous shadows, revenants, a horde of eldritch horrors, a lake where anyone who swims past the bouyes gets eaten and an evil plot to release Hell on Earth. One of our may-be-fated-to-be-together-or-may-be-torn-apart lovers at the centre of the romance is THE VOICE OF THE DARK. That’s not a normal role for a romantic lead. It doesn’t automatically place her on the side of the angels and it does require her to lie to the woman she’s falling for. This was a lot of fun. It works as a standalone but I’d be happy to go back to Lake Argen if Tanya Huff wants to take this further.
Joey Shannon, an alcoholic whose life has been going nowhere for 20 years, returns to his hometown for the funeral of his father. As he leaves town, he gets a mysterious second chance to relive the night in 1975 when his life began its downward spiral: to both literally and figuratively take the road that he didn’t originally take. On this road he is supremely tested by conflict with his successful and charismatic older brother P.J., by conflict between his cynicism and his lost faith, and by conflict between the ultimate good and evil.
‘Strange Highways‘ (1995) is the audiobook version of the titular story from Dean Koontz’s short story collection. It was engaging enough that I listened to it to the end but it was disappointing. It has a great premise with some very scary moments and an intensely dramatic setting. Sadly, the premise got buried under a landslide of ideas from a Hallmark version of Catholicism that swept it towards a so-sweet-it-makes-my-teeth-hurt Happy Ever After ending and the writing felt clumsy.
My review is HERE
Fran Donoghue has just killed her neighbour. Don’t worry, you’ll agree, he deserved it.
Detective Gareth Donoghue has a terrible feeling about his missing neighbour.
By the time this is over, that will be the least of his worries…
‘My Wife The Serial Killer’ (202) didn’t work for me. It was trying too hard from the start. The humour felt forced. The biggest problem was that I didn’t believe in either of the main characters. Gareth Donoghue seemed too insecure, too eager to please and too clueless to have reached the rank of Detective Sergeant. I couldn’t get inside his wife’s head even though most of her chapters were in the form of an interior monologue. I didn’t like either of them. I didn’t care what happened to either of them. The novel would probably make a good TV series but, as a novel, it lacks that spark that lights up my imagination.
I only added two books this week. Both of them are rolls of the dice for me but both come highly recommended.
Since she was three years old, Anastasia Miller has been telling anyone who would listen that she’s an alien disguised as a human being, and that the armada that left her on Earth is coming for her. Since she was three years old, no one has believed her.
Now, with an alien signal from the stars being broadcast around the world, humanity is finally starting to realize that it’s already been warned, and it may be too late. The invasion is coming, Stasia’s biological family is on the way to bring her home, and very few family reunions are willing to cross the gulf of space for just one misplaced child.
What happens when you know what’s coming, and just refuse to listen?
I enjoyed Mira Grant’s killer mermaids novel, ‘Into The Drowning Deep‘ (2017) and her SciFi Horror novella ‘Final Girls‘ (2017). ‘Overgrowth’ (2025) is the first thing I’ve seen from her in a while that’s caught my interest. The premise is strange but intriguing. The reviews are favourable and I like the narrator so I have high hopes of this one.
Welcome to North Falls. A small town where everyone knows everyone. But nobody knows the truth.
Emmy Clifton has lived here all her life. She thinks she knows her neighbours. She’s wrong.
She thinks it’s just another hot summer night: a night like any other. She’s wrong.
When her best friend’s daughter asks for help, she thinks it’s just some teenage drama. She thinks it can wait. She’s never been more wrong in her life.
As the town ignites in the wake of the girl’s disappearance, Emmy throws herself into the search. But then she realises: You never really know a town until you know its secrets.
Is Emmy ready for the truth?
I’ve been aware of Karin Slaughter’s many books for decades now but I’ve never read one. I’m trying this one because I like the small town setting and because it seems to be the start of a new series for her. .
I have two books that I’m excited about planned for next week: an Agatha Christies stand alone novel that Christie thought was one of her best and the just-released tenth novel in the Rivers of London series.
What does the US government do with spies and special operators when they pass their expiration date? They retire them to a small town deep in the Piney Woods of East Texas, where they’re certain to cause no trouble.
A collection of broken spies, former double agents, and retired operators lives in secrecy, under the watchful eye of the government in the small, deep-woods town of Cottonmouth, Texas.
Devlin Mahoney is the de facto mayor of these special citizens, charged with keeping them in seclusion, hidden from the world, which he does from the office of the town’s only motel.
But the peace of this sleepy village is shattered when a pair of women, on the run from a vicious criminal, drops into Mahoney’s lap and he’s forced to choose between doing what’s right and doing what he’s told
I stumbled across ‘Welcome To Cottonwood‘ (2025) on Twitter (yeah, I know the new owner changed the name but…). I liked the cover and the idea of retired spies being sent to a small town in East Texas to keep them quiet. It reminded me of ‘The Prisoner‘, a TV series that ten-year-old me watched avidly back in 1967. I tried a sample and liked that the storytelling is spiked with humour and that the story seems very American – no cute Cornish village where the men wear numbered black blazers with a white trim and everyone drives a Mini Moke, for these American spies. They get a small town in the woods with a rundown motel. I’m looking forward to this one.
When a worker goes missing from a North Sea gas platform, there seem to be just two possible explanations – it was a tragic accident or a suicide. It does not take Smith and his detectives long, however, to discover that James Bell led a double life back onshore in Kings Lake, a life complicated enough to make him at least one dangerous enemy. Before the case can be unraveled, Smith must get a new team working together; Waters and Murray are still there, but one of Wilson’s men is transferred to him, and the female detective constable from Longmarsh poses some unexpected problems for her new sergeant. Together they begin to investigate the links between the companies and the people that bring ashore the oil and gas, and they also find themselves caught up in the seamier side of life that exists beneath Lake’s everyday comings and goings. Jo Evison begins to delve more deeply into the story of the Andretti murders, and Smith himself has to face the fact that he might no longer be considered fit for duty.
I read the first two books in this series, ‘An Accidental Death‘ and ‘But For The Grace‘ in 2019. I’ve been meaning to get to the third book ever since. I’ve been prompted to pull it off my TBR because I have a copy otherwise audiobook via AudiblePlus and Audible are taking it away again on 22nd July. That’s one of the reasons why I rarely use AudiblePlus anymore. Anyway, I’m keen to see how DC Smith handles himself out on an North Sea oil platform.
Mike Finn's Fiction 