The temperatures reached highs of over 30C this week, with humidity at over 80%, not the typical English Spring weather. I used it as an excuse to settle into the coolest room in the house and read.
Anyway, here’s what I read this week, what I bought and what’s up next.
It’s been audiobooks all the way this week, with an emphasis on light entertainment. I listened to four books: two were a lot of fun, one was slightly marred by the narrator, and one was set aside.
When retired former spy Felicity Jardine’s mission to drown herself is interrupted by a baby drifting down river, her training kicks in at once. She saves the baby, and conceals herself from the shady-looking man who is searching for it.
Then an elderly neighbour to whom she bears a resemblance is found dead, and Felicity knows she’s been rumbled. She has to dust off the highly trained and resourceful secret service officer she used to be, ensure the safety of the baby, and re-enter the fray.
She can count on the help of two former MI6 colleagues to identify the murderer and find out exactly what’s going on. But Felicity soon realises that her work in 1970s Germany and her present are entangled – and she must face some hard truths before she can confront the demons of her past.
‘A Sting In Her Tale‘ (2026) was an entertaining read and the start of a series that I’d like to read more of.
It’s a well-crafted story that immediately got me inside Felicity’s rather prickly head and into a situation packed with threat. I liked seeing Felicity as she is now, in her seventies, and as she was fifty years earlier, working as a British spy in Bonn.
The cuts between the two timelines work well, both for moving the plot forward and building Felicity’s character (even her adopted name is ironic, as happiness doesn’t seem to be something she aspires to). I particularly liked that the action required Felicity not just to reconsider her future (having decided that she didn’t have one) but also to reconsider her past (which had more betrayals in it than she’d been aware of).
The espionage plot was twisty, amoral, and credible (accepting that Felicity is remarkably spry for her age).
The only thing that didn’t work for me was the sex scene. It was central to the plot, and it wasn’t badly done, but it went on for so long that it became tedious.
When thirty-four-year-old Cath loses her mostly absentee mother, she is ambivalent. With days of quiet, unassuming routine in Buffalo, New York, Cath consciously avoids the impulsive, thrill-seeking lifestyle that her mother once led. But when she’s forced to go through her mother’s things one afternoon, Cath is perplexed to find tickets for an upcoming “murder week” in England’s Peak District: a whole town has come together to stage a fake murder mystery to attract tourism to their quaint hamlet. Baffled but helplessly intrigued by her mother’s secret purchase, Cath decides to go on the trip herself—and begins a journey she never could have anticipated.
Teaming up with her two cottage-mates, both ardent mystery lovers—Wyatt Green, forty, who works unhappily in his husband’s birding store, and Amity Clark, fifty, a divorced romance writer struggling with her novels—Cath sets about solving the “crime” and begins to unravel shocking truths about her mother along the way. Amidst a fling—or something more—with the handsome local maker of artisanal gin, Cath and her irresistibly charming fellow sleuths will find this week of fake murder may help them face up to a very real crossroads in their own lives.
‘Welcome To Murder Week’ (2026 was well-written, well-informed, well-narrated, lightly humorous, steeped in Golden Age Mystery references and had an engaging main character. Nevertheless, I set it aside at 33% because I found it too slow and because it was veering away from mystery and into romance.
My review is HERE
A wild baby appears! Dorothy Gentleman, ship’s detective, is put to the test once again when an infant is mysteriously left on her nephew’s doorstep. Fertility is supposed to be on pause during the Fairweather’s journey across the stars—but humans have a way of breaking any rule you set them.
Who produced this child, and why did they then abandon him?
And as her nephew and his partner get more and more attached, how can Dorothy prevent her colleague and rival detective, Leloup, a stickler for law and order, from classifying the baby as a stowaway or a piece of luggage?.
Nobody’s Baby’ (2026) is the second Dorothy Gentleman novella, following on from last year’s ‘Murder By Memory’.
It can be seen as a cozy mystery in space. It’s a gentle story, told with a quiet grace that makes it a comforting read. The tone camouflages the confrontation the book explores between the risk-free, poverty-free, technology-enabled extended lifespan enjoyed by the ship’s population while in transit and the fundamental urge to reproduce and create a new generation.
I loved the concept of a ‘wild baby’. The poor thing wasn’t feral. It was just born into a society that is supposed to be baby-free. Watching the lawyers struggling to accommodate what is within their frameworks of what should be was both amusing and slightly frightening.
I liked Dorothy Gentleman’s kindness and empathy. While those are not typical attributes of a fictional detective, in this story, they were what made her successful.
Fergus Ferguson, repo-man, has one job: find the spacecraft Venetia’s Sword and steal it back from Arum Gilger, ex-nobleman turned power-hungry trade boss. Finding Gilger in the farthest corner of human-inhabited space, a gas-giant harvesting colony called Cernee, was easy. The hard part will be getting past a field of space mines, hacking into the Sword‘s compromised AI, and fighting a crew of hostile enemies to take control of the ship.
But when a cable car explosion launches Cernee into a civil war, Fergus finds himself caught in the crosshairs. Repossessing the Sword requires him to side with Gilger’s enemies, risk death, and get abducted by aliens. Fergus must learn to set aside his pride – and confront a past he’s been running from his whole life – in order to take back the Sword and simultaneously save Cernee from destruction.
‘Finder’ (2019) is the first of four books in ‘The Finder Chronicles’. It was an action-packed start to what promises to be an entertaining Space Opera series with some original twists. I liked how fully realised the practicalities of living in space were. The action scenes (and there were lots of them) worked well, and the aliens were intriguing.
Unfortunately, the novel was marred for me by the narrator, with whom I did not get along. Fortunately, the second book has a different narrator.
My review is HERE
I bought six books this week: a British Golden Age Mystery, the first in a new series by Michael Connelly, three Speculative Fiction novels and a collection of supernatural short stories set in the wilds of Michigan.
’Information Received’ (1933), is the first of E.R. Punshon’s thirty-five book long series of Golden Age Mysteries about Bobby Owen, an young Oxford graduate who joins the London Police. Punshon is a new author for me. I hoping this will give me another series to dip into.
I picked up ‘Nightshade’ (2025) because it’s the first book in a new series in the Harry Bosch universe. I read ’The Black Echo‘ (1992), Michael Connelly’s first Harry Bosch novel, a decade ago. I’ve been meaning to follow it up, but I’ve been put off by how many Harry Bosch novels I’d have to get through to catch up with current plot lines. So, I’m going with Connelly’s Catalina series as a sort of fast catch-up.
I have a strong attraction to Science Fiction at the moment. I love revisiting favourite authors, but I’m also hungry for new voices, which is how I ended up with three new Science Fiction novels this week.
‘The Iron Garden Sutra’ (2026) calls to me because it seems like a melange of Sci Fi mystery and horror story, set on a very large, very old spaceship. I liked the tagline: IN SPACE, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU PRAY. A D Sui is a new author for me. Their first book, ‘The Dragonfly Gambit’ (2024),won the Nebula Award for Novella (2024). Here’s their GoodReads bio:
A.D. Sui is a Ukrainian-born, internationally raised speculative writer, Nebula winner, and Aurora, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist. They are the author of The Dragonfly Gambit (2024), The Iron Garden Sutra (2026), and more than two dozen short stories. A failed academic and retired fencer, they spend their days wrangling their two dogs and tending to a myriad of tropical plants.
Jess Lourey introduces herself by saying, “My name is Jess Lourey. I write about secrets.” I have three of her dark mysteries on my shelves. Why am I adding a fourth book when I haven’t read the others yet? Well, ’The Verdant Cage’ (2026) is a YA Sci Fi book about a dark secret, which I find hard to resist; it has a snappy title, a great cover AND it was on offer for £0.99.
‘Driving The Deep’ (2020) is the second book in the Finder series. I’ve just finished book one, and I’m curious about what will happen next.
I’ve only visited Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in fiction (‘The Marsh King’s Daughter’, ‘A Superior Death’, The Firekeeper’s Daughter’, ‘Resting Witch Face’), but, in my imagination, it’s a wild and beautiful place, populated by people who choose not quite to be in the mainstream of shopping mall America. For me, it’s a great setting for mysteries and horror stories, so ‘Voices Carry Here’ (2026), a collection of ten supernatural short stories set in the Upper Peninsula, had to find its way onto my shelves.
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In his London townhouse, city magnate Sir Christopher Clarke is found lying murdered. At the other end of the house his safe hangs open and rifled, and earlier in the day he had visited his solicitors in order to make a drastic change in his will.
Later it is discovered that there has been fraud connected with the dead man, and this is but one of the many complications with which Superintendent Mitchell is faced. Fortunately he has the assistance of young Constable Owen, a talented young Oxford graduate who, finding all other careers closed to him by the ‘economic blizzard’ of the early thirties, has joined the London Police force.
Information Received is the first of E.R. Punshon’s acclaimed Bobby Owen mysteries, first published in 1933 and the start of a series which eventually spanned thirty-five novels.
Vessel Iris has devoted himself to the Starlit Order, performing funeral rites for the dead across the galaxy, guiding souls back into the Infinite Light. Despite the comfort he wants to believe he brings to the dead, his relationships with his fellow Vessels are distant at best, leaving him reliant on his AI implant for companionship.
The spaceship Counsel of Nicaea has been lost for more than a thousand years. A relic of Earth’s dying past, humanity took the ship to the stars on a multi-generation journey to find another habitable planet yet never reached its destination. Its sudden appearance has attracted a team of academics eager to investigate its archeological history. And Iris has been assigned to bring peace to the crew’s long departed souls.
Carpeted in moss and intertwined with vines, Nicaea is more forest than ship. Skeletons are all that remain of the crew, and Iris’ religious rituals are met with bemusement by the scientists—and outright hostility by the engineer Yan Fukui. Determined to be more than just the curator of the dead, Iris tries to make himself useful to the team, desperate to form friendships.
But Nicaea’s plant life isn’t the only sentience to have survived in the past millennia. Something onboard is stalking the explorers one by one. And Iris with his AI enhancement may be their only hope for survival….
If you dare, delve into this collection of supernatural suspense stories blending ghost stories, paranormal mystery, psychlogical suspense, and small-town drama from award-winning Michigan author Gail Galotta.
These tales unfold amid tranquil lakes, shadowed campgrounds, and isolated back roads where the past never truly dies. Restless spirits seek justice, buried crimes surface, and unseen forces test the boundaries between love, guilt, and revenge.
For as long as seventeen-year-old apothecary Rose Allgood can remember, the towering stone Wall surrounding Noah’s Valley has protected her people. No one leaves. No one fights. And no one questions why.
But their paradise has been hiding its thorns. When Rose’s mother becomes the Valley’s first murder victim and her twin brother is swiftly condemned, she alone is searching for the real killer. Determined to find the truth, she follows a trail of hidden messages, forbidden knowledge, and whispers of a past no one dares to remember.
The deeper she digs, the more certain Rose becomes that her mother’s death was no accident. That the Wall isn’t just keeping something out. It’s keeping something in.
LAPD Detective Stilwell was forced out of the Homicide department and sent to a dead-end post on Santa Catalina Island.
But when the idyllic holiday destination is rocked by report of a body found in the harbour, weighed down by an anchor, Stilwell has a point to prove to his superiors – and will cross every line to solve the murder himself.
It’s sink or swim, as failure will cost him everything while finding the killer will make him a target and reveal the dark heart of his new home.
But on a small island with big secrets – someone is always watching…
As a professional finder, Fergus Ferguson is hired to locate missing objects and steal them back. But it is rarely so simple, especially after his latest job in Cernee. He’s been recovering from that experience in the company of friends, the Shipmakers of Pluto, experts at crafting top-of-the-line AI spaceships.
The Shipmakers have convinced Fergus to finally deal with unfinished business he’s been avoiding for half his life: Earth. Fergus hasn’t been back to his homeworld since he was 15, when he stole his cousin’s motorcycle and ran away. It was his first theft, and nothing he’s stolen since has been anywhere near so easy, or weighed so heavily on his conscience. Many years and many jobs later, Fergus reluctantly agrees that now is the time to return the motorcycle and face his family.
This is the last week in May, so I’ve picked books with titles that start with “The Last…”. My TBR shelves have twenty-four books with titles that start with ‘The Last’. I’ve picked three of them for this month, and I’m thinking about ending the next few months the same way. Apart from their titles, the books are very different. I’ve picked: a feel-good novel about old people dealing with death, grief and forgiveness on a road trip to the Shetlands, a noirish thriller set in the Mojave Desert, and a thriller/mystery set in Oxford.
Bridget isn’t the adventurous type. But somehow she finds herself attending a memorial for her oldest friend, dressed in the bright woolly jumper he once knitted her – at his request. To her dismay, she’s not the only one. There’s glamorous Gloria and quiet Derek too, each wearing their own knitwear gifts.
The three former colleagues haven’t been in the same room for years, something Bridget has been perfectly happy with. But when they’re asked to grant their friend’s final wish – to scatter his ashes in the Shetland Islands – Bridget finds herself swept into an adventure she never planned.
Crammed into a battered minivan, armed with far too much yarn and not nearly enough patience, the unlikely trio head north. As the ferry pulls away and storm clouds gather, Bridget begins to wonder if this whole idea was a mistake. But sometimes, the most unexpected journeys can lead to the best discoveries – about friendship, forgiveness, and how it’s never too late to start a new chapter…
This is another entry for my list of novels about old people (in other words, people my age or a little older). I’m intrigued by the idea of long-retired people forced to spend time with former colleagues. I stopped work eight years ago, and that world feels so distant from me now that it would be a shock to have to step back into it.
After failing in his new life, Luke decides to go home, back to the one place where he’d once felt he belonged. But that was a long time ago and now he has to face the life that he chose to run away from: The Combine. The gang that his uncle now leads, but which his father still runs from prison. Brutal, unforgiving . . . family.
Reunited with his childhood friend Callie and tagging along on jobs with her and her boyfriend Pretty Baby, Luke soon discovers that he might have a place back home after all. When another gang try to encroach on their turf, The Combine and Luke must go to war to save all that they know.
But in trying to be someone you’re not, can you ever find out who you really are?
Family is everything and blood is love.
I pulled ’The Last King of California’ (2022) from my TBR shelves because I enjoyed Jordan Harper’s earlier novel ‘She Rides Shotgun’ (2017) when I read it in April. If this book has the intensity and originality of ‘She Rides Shotgun’, I’ll be very happy.
Zoë Boehm has harbored a distinct aversion to death ever since she shot the man intent on killing her. So when Caroline Daniels takes a deadly fall in front of a train and her lover fails to turn up at the funeral, Zoë wants nothing to do with the case.
But Caroline’s boss is persistent, and as Zoë attempts to unlock the secrets of a woman she’s never met while in search of a man who could be anywhere, she starts to wonder if he’s found her first. And if he has, will that make her the next victim, or prove to be her salvation from a paralysing fear?
I recently rescued ‘Down Cemetery Road’ (2003), the first book in the ‘Oxford Investigations’ series, from my TBR pile after letting virtual dust gather on it since 2017. It was so good that I bought the next book, ‘The Last Voice You Hear’ (2004), so I could see where Mick Herron took the series.
Mike Finn's Fiction 