This week’s graphic shows the harbour at Supetar on the Island of Brač, where we were staying until yesterday. It’s a quietly beautiful place. Sadly, as we were preparing to leave for Split yesterday morning, planes were flying in to try to suppress wildfires on the south of the island. So far, no one seems to have been evacuated, but we could see the glow of the fires last night from our hotel balcony in Split.
I’m hoping that the fires are now under control.
Anyway, here’s what I read and bought this week and what’s coming up next.
I read four books this week, a clever comic murder mystery, a corporate spy thriller, a remarkable mad scientist story that was about so much more than I’d expected and an all-cast version of the Christie mystery that introduced Poirot to the world.
Eleanor’s best friend, Emma, is starring in a movie alongside her co-star and fiancé, Fred. As filming wraps, they invite the whole cast and crew to their wedding at nearby Catalina Island.
There may be a storm headed their way – because of course there is – but nothing will stop their nuptials. That is until Emma receives a note that says: Someone is going to die at the wedding.
Eleanor is a professional at this point and she’ll do everything she can to uncover the murderer so true love can prevail. But will this be a destination wedding to die for in more ways than one?
’No One Was Supposed To Die At This Wedding’ (2025), was the sequel to ‘Every Time I Go On Vacaton, Someone Dies’. Like its predecessor, it was a smile. Slick, knowing, clever, with shiny humour delivered through the fourth wall, making the reader a confidante. The first book had a book within a book mirroring real life as its central conceit, blurring the lines between fiction and reality, and the past and present to amplify the mystery and the comedy. The sequel built on that, using the same cast and adding a film-of-the-book layer that turned the cast and crew into suspects and added a bunch of Hollywood movie-making tropes.
Catherine Black made all the layers deliver value while keeping the story accessible, engaging and amusing and keeping me guessing about who is going to get murdered by whom and why. My only criticism is that I thought the story ran a little long, taking me one plot twist past caring who the murderer was.
An assignment with a Milan fashion house leads Finn to an undercover investigation of a train wreck in Croatia—scene of her most tragic professional mistake and home to terrorists still out for revenge. The hunter becomes the hunted and the stakes skyrocket as Finn must win a race against the clock to stop the spread of a deadly African pandemic and escape with her life.
‘Fake’ (2016) was an entertaining corporate spy mystery set, despite the picture of Dubrovnick on the cover, in Zadar and Zagreb. It was the start of a series, establishing the character of Finn Teller. I enjoyed the intercutting of her life-changing backstory in Croatia a decade earlier with her present-day investigation. It was fast, action-packed, made good use of the locations and only asked me to suspend my disbelief a little to add to the excitement. I’ve already bought the next book in the series.
It was meant to be an evening to honour and celebrate Evelyn Caldwell’s award-winning, career-making scientific research – but Evelyn has things on her mind.
Things like Nathan, her husband, who has left her for a younger, better, newer woman. A woman who is now pregnant – but shouldn’t be – and is strikingly familiar. Too familiar to be a coincidence.
A woman who shouldn’t exist. .
’The Echo Wife’ (2021) was astonishingly good. The plot was clever. The atmosphere was tense. The prose was scalpel-sharp. At first, I thought this was going to be an excellent techno-thriller, with ethically dubious science as its driver. It was more than that.
This is a book about abuse, identity, freedom, resilience, and having the strength to know yourself and own the consequences. It was emotionally powerful, intellectually stimulating, beautifully written and still managed to be an exciting, original technothriller. Someone needs to make this into a TV series.
An Audible Original multi-cast adaptation of Agatha Christie’s debut novel, THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES, starring: Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones) leads an all-star cast as Agatha Christie’s famous detective in his first ever outing, with Himesh Patel (Yesterday) as Captain Hastings. Also starring Harriet Walter (Succession), Jessica Gunning (Baby Reindeer), Phil Dunster (Ted Lasso), Rob Delaney (Catastrophe), John Bradley (Game of Thrones), Vivian Oparah (Rye Lane) and Patsy Ferran (A Streetcar Named Desire).
I enjoyed Peter Dinklage’s interpretation of Poirot, Himesh Patel’s version of Hastings and Anna Lea’s skilful adaptation of Christie’s novel. I even enjoyed the full-cast production. I’ve downloaded ‘The ABC Murders’ adaptation with the same writer and cast.
My review is HERE
This week, I bought five books: two new releases, two Poirot mysteries and the second book is a corporate spy series.
‘Exit’ (2016),continues the adventures of Finn Teller, corporate spy. This time she’s working for the Greek Prime Minister.
’Our Noble Selves ’ (2026) is Kate Atkinson’s latest historical novel, this time set in England in 1951.
’Kiss, Slay, Replay (2026) is Rachel Harrison’s horror time-loop novel, set at an ever-repeating disastrous wedding.
’The ABC Murders’ (2026) is a full-cast adaptation of Christie’s novel with Peter Dinklage as Poirot.
‘Evil Under the Sun’ (1941) is the twenty-third Poirot novel and one of the few I haven’t read. This version is narrated by David Suchet, which will enable me to make a side-by-side comparison between him and Peter Dinklage
It’s the summer of 1951 and everyone is looking to put the dark days of the war behind them. The government’s solution: The Festival of Britain, a celebration of the country’s creativity, grit and ingenuity.
For foreign correspondent-turned-war reporter, Harry Flynn, it might offer the chance of redemption after a bad war in the Far East. But when he returns to London, the peace proves no less easy to negotiate. Having failed to resume his journalistic career, he reluctantly joins an oddball team of misfits, ne’er do wells and downright chancers helping to ready the Festival of Britain for launch.
Flynn’s attempts to resume some semblance of a romantic life also flounder when one of his dates goes missing and he is deemed the last person to see her alive. Could he have been in some way responsible for her disappearance?
Little does he realise that the answer to some of his mounting problems may lie in the hands of a precocious straight-talking thirteen-year-old called Veronica and a rather scruffy terrier who goes by the name of Mrs Betty…
It’s the picture-perfect wedding weekend—the venue is dreamy, the weather is beautiful, love is in the air, and Willa Sullivan is having a bad time. She’s excited to celebrate her best friends finally having the big wedding they always wanted, but this is the first time she’s seeing her ex-fiancé in months, and he brought a date. Everything feels off, like she stumbled into an alternate universe. But things start to look up when Willa meets Danny, the groom’s charming and single childhood best friend. When they sneak off together, their rendezvous is interrupted by a masked killer terrorizing the reception. Willa and Danny fight to save the ones they love and survive the night, but the killer is unrelenting. A final girl Willa is not.
Or is she? She wakes up and it’s the morning of the wedding. She just had the most intense nightmare of her life. Only as the day unfolds, there are some uncanny coincidences that make her question if it was really a dream, déjà vu, or something more sinister. After a horrifying turn of events, Willa comes to understand that she’s stuck in a loop of carnage and terror that she must learn how to escape or suffer a fate worse than death—being an eternal wedding guest..
An Audible Original multi-cast adaptation of Agatha Christie’s acclaimed classic, The ABC Murders, starring Peter Dinklage as the legendary Hercule Poirot..
It was not unusual to find the beautiful bronzed body of the sun-loving Arlena Stuart stretched out on a beach, face down. Only, on this occasion, there was no sun… she had been strangled.
Ever since Arlena’s arrival at the resort, Hercule Poirot had detected sexual tension in the seaside air. But could this apparent ‘crime of passion’ have been something more evil and premeditated altogether?
Greece’s Prime Minister desperately needs Finn’s help. A loved one has been kidnapped and Finn is tapped to make the ransom delivery.
Someone Finn thought lost to her interferes and the victim-for-cash exchange is botched, raising the stakes beyond saving a life to ensuring the security of the entire Mediterranean. Only by forging an unlikely alliance can Finn neutralize the global threat and bring the victim home.
My books this week have been chosen to fit Halloween Bingo squares and to provide light entertainment while I’m on vacation. I have a British Golden Age Mystery, an Australian time travel adventure with talking cats and unstable academic timetravellers and an American vampire novel set in 1975.
General Fentiman is found dead in his armchair at London’s Bellona Club. His passing appears entirely natural for a ninety-year-old veteran. However, the exact time of his death sits at the centre of a fierce inheritance dispute. If the General died even a minute before his wealthy sister, Lady Dormer, his grandsons receive only a small fraction of a £500,000 estate. If he survived her, they inherit a fortune.
A solemn two-minute silence on Armistice Day, an unsupervised corpse, and an autopsy turn a simple family dispute to a classic British murder mystery when Lord Peter Wimsey notices medical anomalies. Wimsey must track down the mysterious Mr X who fled when wanted for questioning, uncover how the General actually died, and determine which Bellona Club member is lying. With the General’s grandsons suffering from the shell shock and poverty common among WWI veterans, they both have ample motive to secure the cash.
I enjoyed Roger Bathurst’s narration of ‘Whose Body?’ so I’m following up with his version of ‘The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club’. I like the way he brings Wimsey to life.
The cats and humans of Chronos College know that time travel is the best job in the world, and nothing bad can ever happen to them in the past except that one time they lost a traveler. And that other time they lost a cat.
Now they have a chance to make up for past mistakes by rescuing a long lost legend. If only they could convince Professor Boswell, the grumpiest marmalade tabby of all time, to join their mission to the Swinging Sixties, and save one of their own.
I picked this up because it got a good review from someone I trust. I’m glad I did. I’ve just started it, and it’s already making me smile. Think Terry Pretchet without the serious political undertones and with the addition of talking cats who make much more sense than the humans they let travel with them.
It’s the winter of 1975, and Duane Minor, back home in Portland, Oregon, after a tour in Vietnam, is struggling to quell his anger, keep his drinking in check and keep his young marriage intact. Things get even more complicated when his 13-year-old niece, Julia, is sent across the country to live with her aunt Heidi and uncle Duane after a tragedy.
Then Minor crosses the wrong man – John Varley, a vampire and criminal with a bloody history who sleeps during the day beneath loose drifts of earth and grows teeth in the light of the moon. In an act of brutal retaliation, Varley kills Heidi, leaving Minor broken with guilt and Julia shot through with rage. United only by vengeance, the two follow his path of destruction from the gritty alleyways of Portland to the snow-lashed plains of North Dakota – only to have him turn his vicious power back on them.
Who will prevail, who will survive, and what remains of our humanity when our thirst for revenge trumps everything else?
I like vampire stories that treat vampires as evil predators rather than misunderstood eternals with unusual dietary requirements. This vampire is a gangster as well as a monster. I’m looking forward to an intense struggle for survival here, and I won’t be cheering for the vampire.
Mike Finn's Fiction 