2014 books, #91-95

Bones never lie, by Kathy Reichs. London: Random House, 2014.

Tempe Brennan can't work out why she's being called unexpectedly down from Québec to her other job in South Carolina, only to meet a detective from Québec.  There's a link; a killer Tempe pursued in Canada has appeared in South Carolina and seems to be killing again.  While Tempe is somewhat freaked out by the idea of the killer pursuing her, all isn't the way it seems, and the story twists and turns before its final ending.  I've not been very sure about the last couple of these books, but this one is definitely better than those...

The wrath of angels, by John Connolly [audiobook]. Read by Jeff Harding. Oxford: Isis, 2012.

A Charlie Parker book; I can never decide how much I enjoy these, because the supernatural is mixed into the plot so thoroughly that you can never tell what's real and what's unreal.  In this one, a plane is found in the deep woods in Maine, containing a list of names.  One group wants to keep the names secret; the other wants to use them as a weapon against the sinister Collector.  Meanwhile, there's a beautiful but damaged woman accompanied by a young boy, who is someone Charlie has already killed...

Do no harm: stories of life, death and brain surgery, by Henry Marsh [audiobook]. Read by Jim Barclay. Rearsby, Leics.: WF Howes, 2014.

This is fascinating; an autobiography divided into chapters according to brain disease, with reminiscences of past cases and what those have told Marsh about himself and his own character. There are a lot of fairly gory details here, but also a lot of interesting human stories about the patients and their families; and Marsh's exasperation with the bureaucracy of the NHS comes over loud and clear...

Gods behaving badly, by Marie Phillips. London: Jonathan Cape, 2007.

After Alice invites her friend Neil to the recording of a spiritualist, Apollo, at the TV studios she cleans, she's given the sack.  When she goes looking for private cleaning jobs, she runs into Apollo again; and his relatives Artemis, Aphrodite, Ares...   The ancient Greek gods are living in a filthy Victorian house in London, and at the end of their powers; even sex has lost its power to divert.  This is an extremely funny book by one of the creators of Warhorses of letters.

Death at La Fenice, by Donna Leon [audiobook]. Read by Richard Morant. [S.l.]: BBC Audiobooks, 2003.

The first of the Brunetti novels.  Maestro Helmut Wellnauer is killed by cyanide in his dressing room during the interval of the opera he is conducting. Wellnauer has an interestingly complicated private life, and also many professional rivalries, so Brunetti has a large and colourful cast of suspects to interview.  I guessed what had happened well before the end, but the setting and writing are good enough that this didn't matter.