It’s been a week dominated by necessary chores, begrudging but equally necessary exercise, dreary weather and disappointing TV series (I watched and set aside ‘Doom Patrol’ and ‘Euphoria’ – both of which made me feel old and jaded.). Fortunately, I had good company, good food and good books, so the week wasn’t a washout.
Anyway, here’s what I read this week, what I bought and what’s up next.
Although I try to plan my reading a week ahead, at heart I’m a mood reader. This week, it turned out that what I was in the mood for was three novellas I stumbled across, so I delayed two of the books that I’d planned to read, and gave myself up to some short, focused storytelling. One of the three novellas was exceptional, the Science Fiction novel brought an excellent series to a satisfying conclusion, and the thriller I read had all the style and tension that I’d hoped for.
Not every danger comes in the form of a mega-threat like a Titan. Some predators are a lot cozier…more personal.
When one such creature threatens an independent tutor, Harry Dresden must shake off the blood and dirt of his most recent battles and rise to the occasion, even when it turns out that the new predator is far more dangerous and connected than first appearances would suggest.
The Harry Dresdan novella, ‘The Law’ (2022) was almost enough to persuade me to go back to the Harry Dresden books after abandoning ‘Battle Ground’ in 2021. It was a simple plot. It made me smile at Harry’s frustration in not being able to get the job done and it benefitted from being narrated by a very enthusiastic Jim Butcher who was clearly havig fun.
My review is HERE
When Admiral Kylara Vatta and a ship full of strangers were marooned on an inhospitable arctic island, they uncovered secrets that someone on Ky’s planet was ready to kill to keep hidden. Now, the existence of the mysterious arctic base has been revealed, but the organisation behind it still lurks in the shadows, doing all it can to silence her.
It is up to the intrepid Ky to force the perpetrators into the light, and uncover decades’ worth of secrets – some of which lie at the very heart of her family’s greatest tragedy.
‘IntoThe Fire’ brought the Ky Vatta stories to a satisfying end. I’m glad that, years after completing the five-book ‘Vatta’s War’ series, Elizabeth Moon revisted the characters in a ‘Vatta’s Peace’ duology. The duology, while being was as immediately immersive and exciting as the previous series, broke new ground and developed the characters further.
The action was all set on Ky’s home world of Slotter’s Key. If all had gone as it should, Ky would have been returning home to be welcomed as a hero, release her assets in the Vatta business and go back to running the Space Defence Force. So, of course, nothing went as it was supposed to and soon Ky, Stella and Grace are all under attack in one way or another.
The first book was a great survival story that also uncovered a secret that drove the second book. Both books were tense, fast-paced and enormous fun.
I’ve given a review of both series HERE
A former Marine and ex-FBI agent, Joe has seen one too many crime scenes and known too much trauma, and not just in his professional life. Solitary and haunted, he prefers to be invisible. He doesn’t allow himself friends or lovers and makes a living rescuing young girls from the deadly clutches of the sex trade.
But when a high-ranking New York politician hires him to extricate his teenage daughter from a Manhattan brothel, Joe uncovers a web of corruption that even he may not be able to unravel.
When the men on his trail take the only person left in the world who matters to him, he forsakes his pledge to do no harm. If anyone can kill his way to the truth, it’s Joe…
‘You Were Never Really Here’ (2013) is sixty-five pages of focused brutal violence. It tells the story of a man who has suffered traumas that have so broken him and left him so afraid of his own potential for violence that he has isolated himself, minimising his contact with people, so that he leaves no trace as he moves through his days. He has turned himself into something as simple and dangerous as the hammer that is his weapon of choice. He lives with himself by turning his violence into a tool he wields against those who traffick the children he is commissioned to rescue.
The violence starts on the first page. There is neither joy nor rage in it, just necessity. The prose, like the protagonist, is lean, muscular and brutal. The pace is relentless rather than fast. The tone is bleak. The action scenes are vivid.
This isn’t a story of redemptive heroics. It’s the story of a man who has made himself into a hammer and who sees every obstacle as a nail.
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?
‘The Last Voice You Hear’ (2004) is a sequel to ‘Down Cemetery Road’ (2003). This time, the story focuses on Zoë Boehm, the Private Detective who only became a main character in the last third of the previous book. This time, it is Sarah Tucker who only appears in the last third.
Like the first book, its strengths are the ability to share the (slightly unconventional and cleverly articulated) thoughts of the main character, who is living through a series of puzzling, sometimes threatening, encounters that lead, through a series of surprising twists and turns, to a very tense, very violent climax.
What I enjoyed most was the character-building, especially the way Zoe formulates her thoughts, and the perfectly choreographed tension of the denouement.
I’ll be reading more of this series.
Nearly ten years after Inez Kato sustained a career-ending injury during a military exercise gone awry, she lies, cheats, and seduces her way to the very top, to destroy the fleet that she was once a part of, even at the cost of her own life.
Ennis Rezál, Third Daughter of the Rule, has six months left to live. She is desperate to end the twenty-year war she was birthed to fight. But when she brings Inez aboard the mothership, a chess game of manipulation and double-crossing begins to unfold, and the Rule doesn’t stand a chance.
‘The Dragonfly Gambit’ (2024) was my best read of the week. I wasn’t at all surprised to find that it won the Nebula Award for Best Novella (2024).
It’s an intense, violent, passionate, rage-fuelled story, with strong characters and a plot filled with surprises.
My review is HERE
I bought four books this week, all set in North America: a Harry Bosch novel, a debut novel about a police officer in the Arctic, a domestic thriller about a dying woman with a mission to replace herself, and a soon-to-be-published standalone novel from Faith Hunter.
Last week, I mentioned that I was a bit intimidated by the size of the Harry Bosch series and that I didn’t know where to start. Christine, who runs the ‘All The Vintage Ladies’ blog, gave me some great pointers, one of which was, “Start with ’The Wrong Side of Goodbye’ (2016), the first book with Bosch as a PI”, so now it’s on my TBR pile and I’m looking forward to it.
I picked up ‘A Gift Before Dying‘ (2026), Malcolm Kempt’s debut novel, because I love crime books set in the Arctic, and because Malcolm Kempt spent seventeen years in the Arctic, working as a criminal lawyer.
‘Don’t Tell Me How To Die’ (2025) is a domestic thriller with a unique twist. It got good reviews from people I trust, and it’s narrated by January LaVoy, so onto the TBR pile it went.
I’ve been a fan of Faith Hunter’s books for many years now, so ‘Unpredictable Magic’ (2026) would have been on my Buy On Sight list anyway, but I was even more eager to buy the book when I learned that it’s about Angelina and Evan Everhart-Trueblood, two witches from the Jane Yellowrock series, who are working as PIs. I’ve pre-ordered the audiobook, which is scheduled for release on 14th July.
Only Harry Bosch can uncover LA’s darkest secrets in this new gripping thriller from global best seller Michael Connelly. Read by Titus Welliver, star of Bosch.
‘What do you want me to do?’ Bosch asked again.
‘I want you to find someone for me,’ Vance said. ‘Someone who might not have ever existed.’
Harry Bosch is working as a part-time detective in the town of San Fernando outside of Los Angeles when he gets the invitation to meet with the ageing aviation billionaire Whitney Vance. When he was 18, Vance had a relationship with a Mexican girl called Vibiana Duarte, but soon after becoming pregnant she disappeared.
Now, as he reaches the end of his life, Vance wants to know what happened to Vibiana and whether there is an heir to his vast fortune. And Bosch is the only person he trusts to undertake the assignment.
Harry’s aware that with such sums of money involved, this could be a dangerous undertaking – not just for himself but for the person he’s looking for – but as he begins to uncover Vibiana’s tragic story and finds uncanny links to his own past, he knows he cannot rest until he finds the truth.
Witches Angelina and Evan Everhart-Trueblood take a case that spirals out of control until the whole city is at risk in this exciting new novel from New York Times bestselling author Faith Hunter.
Angelina Everhart-Trueblood and her brother Evan run Everhart Investigations, a PI firm in Chattanooga that solves paranormal crimes committed by supernatural beings. When their new client wants help finding her friend, who supposedly disappeared during a reception at Angie’s aunt Jane’s winter residence, things get . . . complicated.
The client is not who she appears to be, and demons strike the city for the first time since the Witch War. On top of that, evidence is pointing toward the involvement of an overly ambitious vampire—who just happens to be Angie’s ex-husband.
I had it all: a fantastic husband, two great kids, an exciting career. And then, at the age of forty-three, I found out I would be dead before my next birthday.
My mother also died young. I was seventeen, and she warned me that women would flock to my suddenly single father like stray cats to an overturned milk truck. They did. And one absolutely evil woman practically destroyed his life, mine, and my sister’s.
I am not letting that happen to my family.
I have three months, and I plan to spend every waking minute searching for the perfect woman to take my place as Alex’s wife, and mother to Kevin and Katie.
You’re probably thinking, She’ll never do it. Did I mention that in high school I was voted “Most Likely to Kill Someone to Get What She Wants”?
After a botched high-profile murder investigation, Sergeant Elderick Cole is exiled to the remote, rugged landscape of Nunavut, a vast territory in the Arctic Circle known for its untamed beauty, frigid temperatures, and endless winter nights.
His bleak existence takes a sinister turn when he discovers the hanging body of Pitseolala, a troubled Inuit girl whom he had sworn to protect. Her death dredges up demons he thought he’d buried along with the scars of a fractured marriage and the aching divide between himself and his estranged daughter.
As Cole’s life unravels – and with it, the fragile thread of his investigation – he turns to Pitseolala’s younger brother, Maliktu, a fellow outsider. It’s then that Cole uncovers what binds them: a singular mission to find her killer.
Against fierce backlash, Cole’s overriding desire to redeem just one aspect of his otherwise failed life becomes an obsession – and he’s willing to break every rule in his unyielding pursuit of justice and the smallest shred of redemption.
My next reads are all by authors I’ve read before. I have: the latest thriller from Michelle Dunne, a first-in-a-series about an LA PI by Jonathan Ames and a first-in-a-series Science Fiction novel by Elizabeth Moon.
There was no point in telling them about the others. Not when it was already too late. Or at least, it would be by the time they found them.
The world discounted Sadie Kingston years ago, right around the time her parents died. They think she’s crazy, but actually, she’s one of the chosen few.
Sadie can see peoples’ demons you see. They glow in different colours, all around the person they torment. Some are mild and sad – teal, green, yellow – while others are filled with rage and pain – red. Always red.
But as Sadie tries to survive in a world that won’t listen, she knows there will come a time when she’ll be forced to act. If the people around her won’t wake up and see what’s happening under their noses, then it will fall to her to show them the truth…
I’m looking forward to seeing what Michelle Dunne does with the supernatural elements of this story. Seeing the world through Sadie’s eyes should be interesting.
Meet Happy Doll.
Hap to his friends. He’s a LA private detective living a quiet life along with his beloved half-Chihuahua, half-terrier, George.
He’s getting by just fine.
When he’s not walking George or sipping tequila, Hap works nights at the Thai Miracle Spa, protecting the women who work there from clients who won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.
Until he kills a man.
Usually Doll avoids trouble by following his two basic rules: bark loudly, and act first. But after a deadly fight with a customer, even he finds himself wildly out of his depth….
I picked out ‘A Man Named Doll’ (2021) from Jonathan Amers’ back-catalogue after I read his novella ‘You Were Never Really Here’. It’s the first book in a series and seems to have a lighter tone than his rather bleak novella.
Heris Serrano – formerly a commander in the Regular Space Service – must take whatever job she can get after her resignation under a cloud. What she can get is the captaincy of a rich old lady’s space yacht…a rich old horsewoman, who has little liking for the military, and whose spoiled nephew Ronnie (and his equally spoiled friends) have been foisted on her after his folly embarrassed the family.
Lady Cecelia’s only apparent interest is horses – she intends to go fox hunting on the private pleasure planet of a friend of hers, Lord Thornbuckle. But events conspire to make it far more than a fox hunt.
‘Vatta’s War’ and ‘Vatta’s Peace’ have made me hungry for more Space Opera from Elizabeth Moon, so I’ve picked ‘Hunting Party’ (1993), the first book in her seven-book series, ‘The Serrano Legacy’, from her back-catalogue.
Mike Finn's Fiction 