2014 books, #76-80

61 hours, by Lee Child [audiobook]. Read by Jeff Harding. Whitley Bay: Soundings, 2010.

Jack Reacher is involved in a bus crash in a snowstorm in South Dakota.  When the police finally arrive, Reacher's lack of luggage, and presence on a bus otherwise entirely occupied by pensioners on an out-of-season sightseeing holiday, attract their suspicion.  They have two problems - they're guarding a witness in a drugs case round-the-clock but are also committed to leaving the town entirely unstaffed if there's an emergency at the local prison complex; and they have a strange abandoned military facility on the outskirts of town occupied by the biker gang which seems to be behind the drug supply.  Once they find Reacher is ex-military, he's given the job of tracking down the original purpose of the facility.  Of course, puting Reacher behind a desk and telling him to stay there never bodes well...  Another excellent book, and the usual bang-up reading from Jeff Harding.

The table of less valued knights, by Marie Phillips. London: Jonathan Cape, 2014.

Marie Phillips is half of the writing team behind the wonderful Warhorses of letters, so this was bound to be a funny book.  The Table of Less Valued Knights is definitely below the salt in Camelot - the table itself needs a dinner napkin wedged under one leg to keep it steady - but when a damsel in distress turns up late at the Pentecost Quest Dinner, Sir Humphrey du Val springs to the rescue; as does his half-giant squire Conrad, and Conrad's elephant Jemima.  The lady Elaine turns out to be considerably less wet than "damsel in distress" would suggest; and is harbouring a secret.  Meanwhile, the "official" quest is also not what it seems - and the two quests get horribly mixed up when Martha, Queen of Puddock, the goal of the original quest, ends up with Sir Humphrey's party. Someone who enjoys Terry Pratchett would love this book, but it's harder-edged at times, and with more sexual politics... Highly recommended.

The ocean at the end of the lane, by Neil Gaiman. London; Headline, 2013.

No idea why this has taken me This has taken me a year to read because it's an Actual Hardback I Paid For Myself, and those are rare things.  I went to Mr G's wonderful reading/signing of this book at Ely Cathedral almost a year ago, and I've been saving it as a pleasure; and on the afternoon of 22 September I finally got round to reading it; in its entirety.  It is wonderful. There's a frame, which is semi-autobiographical, I think (Gaiman's father died quite unexpectedly 18 months or so before this book appeared) and then a central story about a seven year old boy who is caught up in events of extraordinary evil and beauty.  There's no point in telling you about the plot, because while that's the point, it's also not the point.  Going to Neil Gaiman for his take on it. "[A] novel of childhood and memory. It's a story of magic, about the power of stories and how we face the darkness inside of each of us. It's about feat, and love, and death, and families. But, fundamentally, I hope, at its heart, it's a novel about survival".  I'm incapable of being objective about Neil Gaiman's novels; but I suspect that's because they're just so bloody good.

Poppet, by Mo Hayder [audiobook]. Read by Jot Davies. Bath: AudioGO, 2013.

This is (thankfully) less grisly than some of Hayder's books, but no less suspenseful for that. Something, called The Maude, is causing mass terror in the Beechway Secure Unit; although psychiatric nurse AJ isn't superstitious, he still needs to know what's going on. After two unexplained deaths, he makes contact with Jack Caffery. Meanwhile Caffery is still looking for a body; and has an increasing suspicion as to where that body might be found.  I guessed the twist in the tail of this book a little bit early, but the conclusion's no less chilling for that.

The resistance man, by Peter Walker [audiobook]. Read by Peter Noble. [S.l.]: Jammer, 2012.

Bruno is dealing with a spate of burglaries from cottages owned by summer visitors, which turn out to include a recently retired head of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee; the high-profile robbery brings down the Brigadier and Bruno's old flame Isabelle. The next burglary results in murder, and brings back unpleasant memories of an unresolved gay-bashing case from Bruno's very early years in St Denis... As ever, a fabulous mix of whimsy, a real grip on the tensions in the contemporary France profonde, and some excellent cooking. Highly recommended. Peter Noble's reading is pretty workmanlike, with the very occasional wince at the French pronunciation.

Happy Birthday, Mr S.

... and many happy returns.  65 today, and just getting better and better.

2014 books, #71-75

The secret race: inside the hidden world of the Tour de France; doping, cover-ups and winning at all costs, by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle. London: Corgi, 2013.

This is an engaging account from one of the insiders in the US Postal/Lance Armstrong doping affair; and an interesting counterpoint to David Millar's autobiography, in the previous set of reviews.  Hamilton is contrite and ashamed about taking EPO; but there's still an element of self-justification about it, in that as a new professional he became aware that everyone around him was doping, and that less strong riders on EPO were overtaking him rapidly.  I'm certain proximity to Lance Armstrong over many years made it much more difficult not to dope, but it gives me more of an equivocal feeling about Hamilton, despite his obvious charm and wish to contribute to a clean sport, and sympathy for the absolute hell he went through as the team scapegoat.  Daniel Coyle is silent in the main text, as a good ghostwriter should be; but is able to advance his own opinions (and occasionally, alternative accounts) in the footnotes, which adds an extra dimension.

Under the paw: confessions of a cat man, by Tom Cox [audiobook]. Read by Mark Meadows. Bath, BBC Audiobooks, 2010.

Another funny, light read from Tom Cox which has a huge number of points of instant recognition for anyone who's been owned by a cat. This is the first in the series and explains how The Bear and other cats came into Cox and his wife Dee's life, and their perambulations around various parts of rural Norfolk after leaving London.  The reading by Mark Meadows has a lovely light touch; ended up spending an entire day listening to this while doing housework and weaving.

Want you dead, by Peter James. London: Macmillan, 2014.

Red Westwood's life seems to be looking up - she's ditched the boyfriend who'd been intimidating her, and has found a new man, a new job as an estate agent and a new flat.  That is, until the new man is found burned to death, and a series of strange events lead her to the inescapable confusion that Bryce Laurent is even more dangerous than he seems.  Meanwhile, events from the past also threaten Roy Grace's wedding to Cleo.  Other than the intimate/romantic scenes, which always make me cringe in these books, this is tightly plotted and well-written, and a real page-turner.  It will take me a long time to forgive Peter James for one particular incident in this book though; any fans of the series will know which one once they've read it.

Red tide, by GM Ford [audiobook]. Read by Jeff Harding. Whitley Bay: Chivers, 2007.

This is somewhat more topical than it was when it was written. Something has killed a tunnel-full of people waiting for buses in Seattle just as experts from 50 countries are gathering for a symposium on chemical and biological weapons; and a short investigation shows that the Zaire strain of Ebola has been genetically mutated to kill instantly as an airborne virus.  Frank Corso, a true-crime author, is caught up in the aftermath after being evacuated from a party, and becomes involved in the investigation.  This is the first of Ford's books I've had on audiobook - mainly because of the reader - but will keep an eye out for these in future as it's tightly-plotted and canters along very nicely.

Blood work: a tale of medicine and murder in the scientific revolution, by Holly Tucker. New York: WW Norton, 2011.

A book about the early history of blood transfusion, set in England and France in the 1660s but spreading out to examine the wider issues of science, ethics, morality and scientific politics in general. Jean Denis, the maverick transfusionist at the heart of this story, is charged with murder having transfused calf's blood into a notorious madman who later died; and the book is based around this event. While some of the detail of the experimentation is pretty horrifying - trans-species transfusion with no understanding of blood groups, the use of unwilling prisoners for transfusion etc. - it's also fascinating seeing modern science being shaped and then being influenced by the scientific establishment in both countries.

2014 books, #66-70

The persuader, by Lee Child [audiobook]. Read by Dick Hill.  [S.l.]: Soundings, [n.d.]

Walking through Boston in search of a bar one night, Jack Reacher spots Francis Xavier Quinn, a man he thought he'd killed a decade before. This is an odd novel, because it's one of the rare Reacher novels narrated in the first person. Reacher becomes close to his female colleague in this case, as he had in the case ten years before, and the narrative slides between decades.  The perspective is unsettling, but definitely works in terms of amalgamating the narratives, and the final sequences wouldn't work without it... I'm not as keen on Dick Hill as a narrator as I am Jeff Harding; but I gather Mr Hill is the reader of choice for Audible, and he's not at all bad...

The silkworm, by Robert Galbraith. London: Sphere, 2014.

Cormoran Strike's detective business is doing a lot better these days, after the Lula Landry case; and he's still able to keep Robin working for him. But Robin's about to be married to a chap who hates her job, and she's still trying to get Matthew and Strike to meet (which, let's face it, goes as well as everyone was thinking it would, when it happens.)  Meanwhile, Strike's engaged by Leonora Quine, wife of novelist Owen Quine, to track him down on the grounds that Leonora's running out of money to support their daughter, who has a learning disability.  There's a hole in the plot of this you could drive a Tube train through; but to be honest I didn't care; it was fascinating, entertaining, horrifying and most of all I really cared about several of the characters, even the unlikeable ones.  I suspect if you hated Strike first time round (as most people in my book group did), you mightn't like this one either; but I think he's a fundamentally decent guy, and I hope we're in for many more of these.  Galbraith has definitely laid down a few enticing threads for both main characters which might be followable...

Talk to the tail: adventures in cat ownership and beyond, by Tom Cox. London: Simon and Schuster, 2011. [Kindle edition.]

Tom Cox is the man behind the "Why my Cat is Sad" Twitter account, and the Little Cat Diaries blog; while a book on a man and his cats should be unbearably twee, it really isn't; largely because these are real cats, and Cox is fully aware about falling into that trap.  I suspect that if you've never lived with cats, this book will have no interest whatever; but if you have experience of the wide range of cat personalities and relationships, it's both a fascinating read and extremely funny, with the odd very moving passage.

Racing through the dark: the fall and rise of David Millar, by David Millar with Jeremy Whittle. London: Orion, 2011.

I wasn't sure what to expect with this - can't remember when I last read a sports autobiography, and I've never really known whether people at the top level of their sport have anything interesting to talk about apart from the sport.  But Millar has been striking in his contrition for, and determination to eliminate, doping; and he's probably racing his last Grand Tour with the current Vuelta a España.  I read this in about a day and a half and was resentful about putting it down; it's a fascinating account of Millar's life before, during and after his EPO period in the early 2000s, with a lot of information and asides about the state of the sport at the time. It's also pretty much warts-and-all; Millar doesn't disguise the fact he knows he's been a complete idiot at times, but can also describe the total highs of winning, and there's huge praise for people like Sir Dave Brailsford who was shocked and disappointing at the news of the doping, but stood by Millar's rehabilitation as a rider.  Really enjoyable if you have any interest at all in the subject.

One of ours, by Willa Cather. Kindle edition.

An absolutely wonderful book, and I need to read more Cather. Claude Wheeler leaves university to take on management of one of the family farms in 1914, but is overcome both by the power his father has over his life and an inexplicable discomfort with just about everything in life.  When the US enters the war, Claude enlists, and travels across to France in a troop ship.  The story is based on the life of Grosvenor, Willa Cather's cousin, who was also very uncomfortable in his own skin and made a similar journey to the First World War. She didn't want to write a war story, but said that "it stood between me and anything else"; the book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923.  What's striking is the compassion (the Wheelers have German neighbours and friends at home, and Claude's encounters with starving French people and orphans change him), and the descriptions of the countryside both in Nebraska and France. I don't give spoilers in these reviews so can't discuss some of the overall themes, but if you're going to read one WWI novel from the US perspective, this might as well be it.

2014 books, #61-65

Spider light, by Sarah Rayne [audiobook]. Read by Diana Bishop. [S.l].: Oakhill, 2005.

Like the previous book by this author, there are layers to this thriller.... It starts with Antonia Weston, who has come to the quiet town of Amberwood after a very public tragedy; Antonia's interest in local history turns out to precipitate a tragedy; and the unveiling of secrets inside a place.  This is another stunning, multidimensional thriller, and is definitely worth a read.

Shut your eyes tight, by John Verdon [audiobook]. Read by Jeff Harding. Bath: AudioGO,  [n.d.]

Dave Gurney gets a call from a former colleague; and can't ignore it. A bride's been killed in the middle of her wedding reception - the murderer's identity seems to be straightforward, but nobody can find him. The plot is fascinating. I have to admit that I find Gurney's wife entirely irritating throughout these books...

Blood games, by Faye Kellerman. London: HarperCollins, 2011.

This book was called Gun games in the US; which I found interesting. Peter and Rina Decker's foster son Gabe Whitman finds a girlfriend; sadly, the girlfriend's family would find non-Jewish, non-Persian Gabe unacceptable, so their meetings are clandestine. Meanwhile, Decker is investigating the murder of other teenagers.  Plots intertwine very well, and this is probably the best in this series for a while.

Breaking point, by CJ Box. London: Head of Zeus, 2013.

The title makes explicit the theme of so many of CJ Box's thrillers - how far can you push an ordinary person before violence ensues?  Of course, if you're in Wyoming with infinite access to weapons, it all becomes more deadly.  A couple is threatened with extraordinary sanctions by the Environmental Protection Agency, and it all goes horribly wrong.  This is, as ever, tightly plotted and character-heavy; and I was somewhat horrified to learn in the afternote that the most unbelievable elements of the plot actually happened.

Two evils, by PJ Tracy. London: Penguin, 2013.

Four Native American girls are kidnapped, and one is found in a car park with her throat cut. Two young immigrants from Sierra Leone are gunned down. Gino and Magozzi investigate, but as the victims escalate and everything becomes more incomprehensible, Monkeewrench are called in to protect their own. This is well up to the standard of the previous books; plot-wise, it runs alongside so many post-9/11 terrorist thrillers, but then we also have the characters we know... One exception though - there's a repeated reference to putting a jihad on someone; I'm pretty sure that's not correct on either side of the Atlantic and it should be a fatwa.  Irritated me, anyway, and I couldn't find any evidence of usage!

2014 books, #56-60

Written in blood: the remarkable caseboook of one of Britain's top forensic scientists, by Mike Silverman with Tony Thompson. London: Bantam, 2014.

Mike Silverman worked for the Home Office's forensic science service from the 1970s until the late 1990s, and then in various high-level advisory posts.  This is a fascinating account both of the development of forensic science, particularly blood-pattern and DNA analysis, and of the politics surrounding government departments during the privatisations of the 1980s and 1990s.  Silverman goes into individual illustrative cases, and there's a lot of gentle humour at his own expense, but also looks as the factors which led to the closing of the last government forensic laboratories in 2010. An extremely interesting and readable book.

The skin collector, by Jeffery Deaver. London: Hodder, 2014.

A young woman is killed in a New York basement by having been tattooed with an obscure poison - the tattoo "the second" only tells Lincoln Rhyme that there will be more deaths to come.  There are, as ever, a huge range of twists and turns in this story. Possibly too many; this is the first time I've ever felt that Deaver might be becoming almost a parody of himself.  It's still highly enjoyable though, with some new bits and bobs for people like me who've become very fond of these characters...

A room swept white, by Sophie Hannah [audiobook]. Read by Julia Barrie. Oxford: Isis, 2010.

Fliss Benson gets into work one morning to find her boss has resigned and bequeathed her his documentary film about women who have been exonerated of killing their babies.  It's already been a bad day because Fliss has received an anonymous card containing sixteen numbers in a grid pattern, none of which mean anything to her.  Then one of the subjects of the documentary, Helen Yardley, is found dead at her home, with a card with sixteen numbers in a grid pattern in her pocket...  Very well-plotted and with a surprising ending, at least to me; and obviously based on real events.

The devil's cave, by Martin Walker. London: Quercus, 2012.

An Inspector Bruno novel.  A woman is found floating in a boat on the local river, surrounded by black candles and other black magic symbols; later the local cave system is found to have been vandalised in the same way. Bruno is also juggling a domestic abuse case and a local development proposal which seems just too good to be true; and has a ridiculously cute Basset hound puppy to train.  Well up to the standards of this series; Walker loves the quaintness of Périgord but is also aware of the tensions and flaws inherent in modern French life.

Gironimo! riding the very terrible 1914 Tour of Italy, by Tim Moore. London: Yellow Jersey Press, 2014.

In French revolutions, Tim Moore covered (most of) the route of the 2000 Tour de France a few weeks ahead of the riders.  This time, and 12 years later, he decides to cover the route of the Giro d'Italia, 1914 edition, as a reaction to the Lance Armstrong doping scandal. Not content with riding the 3,200km of the route, he decides to do it on a 1914 bicycle and in the traditional merino cycling garb of the pre-WWI cyclist.  This is hilarious and moving by turns, and tells you a lot about both the world of a hundred years ago and life in Italy today. Highly recommended whether you like cycling or not.

2014 books, #51-55

The death chamber, by Sarah Rayne [audiobook]. Read by Diana Bishop. Bath: Oakhill, 2008.

Georgina Grey has inherited her great-grandfather's cottage, and with it, his papers. He was the doctor to Calvary Gaol, and when Georgina bumps into a pair of documentary-makers in the local pub she is astonished to find that they are doing research into psychic phenomena in the now-abandoned prison buildings.  As it turns out, though, the threat to Georgina and researcher Jude (a former foreign correspondent blinded in a war zone) is not so much psychic as very real; someone is extremely unhappy about the past being dug up and is prepared to act on it.

Wolf, by Mo Hayder. London: Bantam, 2014.

This is a very scary book; there's real violence (and Hayder goes for gory), but there's also implied and threatened violence which is even more frightening.  Oliver, Matilda and Lucia Anchor-Ferrers arrive at their holiday cottage to find a scene which is horribly reminiscent of a crime which happened to the family a decade before. The perpetrator of that crime is still behind bars, though... isn't he?  Then the police arrive to warn the family; and it all gets worse from there...  Meanwhile, Jack Caffery is trying to find the secret of his long-lost brother's death, and the owner of a lost dog.  This twists and turns all over the place towards the end; Hayder has created a hall of distorting mirrors.  Excellent, but gruesome.

Her brilliant career: ten extraordinary women of the Fifties, by Rachel Cooke. London: Virago, 2013.

This was a book-group book, not one I'd normally have picked up, but I'm glad I did.  Some of the figures in this book are very well-known even today - Patience Gray the cook, for instance, and Rose Heilbron QC who was active well into the 90s; but some like Sheila van Damm, rally-driver and manager of the Windmill Theatre, have vanished from collective memory.  Some of the women were remarkable for their lifestyles (van Damm was in a relationship with both Nancy Spain and magazine editor Joan Werner Laurie), some for their choice of profession; all are remarkable for their unconventionality in the times.  Definitely worth a read.

Without fail, by Lee Child. London: Bantam, 2002.

A Jack Reacher novel.  Reacher is contacted by his brother Joe's former girlfriend Emily Froelich; she's now head of Vice-President-Elect Armstrong's security detail, and wants Reacher to try fnding the holes in her plan to protect Armstrong.  Reacher and former colleague Frances Neagley take the part of would-be assassins and advise Froelich; at which point it becomes clear that the threat to Armstrong is more than theoretical. Even by Lee Child's high standards, this is a good one; and after a couple of the books above (notably The death chamber) I realised again that one of the reasons I like Reacher is that he works totally straightforwardly with women as well as with men; I hadn't even realised that was what had irked me about some of the books I'd read recently!

Do not pass go: from the Old Kent Road to Mayfair, by Tim Moore. London: Yellow Jersey Press, 2002.

Tim Moore has always been obsessed with Monopoly, and has always lived in London. One of the things he's always been puzzled by is the arbitrariness of the choice of stopping-points on the board - why Vine Street? Why the Angel Islington? What do the groups of places have in common?  Moore goes to investigate, in the random order of throwing dice to start, and having others throw dice when he gets to his destination.  This is a lovely, funny ramble around parts of London you wouldn't necessarily visit as a tourist, and the chapter on "the greens" (Bond, Regent and Oxford Streets) is made more hilarious by the confession that "the prospect of an extended retail quest for goods you can't plug in or uncork fills my limbs with gravel".  There are a lot of interesting, well-researched facts in here as well, which slip into your head while you're laughing....

2014 books, #46-50

And now the shipping forecast: a tide of history around our shores, by Peter Jefferson. Cambridge: UIT Cambridge, 2011.

This is a whimsical little book.  Occasionally a little too much so; but those moments are fewish and far between.  Peter Jefferson read the shipping forecast from 1969 until recently, and now reads the quotes on Quote, Unquote (I tried not to hold that particular thing against him when reading this book).  There's a lot of factual stuff on the construction and interpretation of the forecast, such as what the word then means with reference to types of weather, and some reminiscences of the different technologies used over four decades to get the forecast across. There's some general stuff about the BBC, and then a brisk tour around the shipping forecast areas.  If you're a Radio 4 nut, and don't mind the occasional awful pun, it's an entertaining read.

The crowded grave, by Martin Walker. London: Quercus, 2011.

Life's pretty complicated for Bruno Courrèges at the moment. A body's been found by an archaeological dig, which would be fine if it weren't wearing a Swatch; animal rights activists are letting out ducks being raised for fois gras; a new magistrate is proving problematic; and there's a Franco-Spanish ministerial summit happening on Bruno's patch which may be threatened by Basque terrorists. On top of that, he still doesn't know where he is in his relationship with Pamela, and ex-lover Isabelle has arrived to help with the summit.  This is a wonderful series of books - Walker lives in la France profonde for six months of the year and it shows.  International and local politics are skilfully dealt with, and you could definitely cook from some of the descriptions of wonderful meals.

Farewell performance, by Tessa Barclay [audiobook]. Read by James Bryce. Whitley Bay: Isis, 2001.

The first of the Gregory Crowne books. Crowne is promoting an orchestra in the Edinburgh Festival when the instruments of several cellists, including a Stradivarius, are apparently stolen. Shortly afterwards, an outbreak of food poisoning at the hotel seems to be more than a coincidence.  Crowne ends up investigating along with the local police.  This rattles along nicely, but I find Crowne a bit irritating, particularly with regard to what might be thought of as old-fashioned gallantry or might, in my case, be thought of as patronising behaviour to women...  The reading is good enough, apart from the pronunciation of Guarnieri as Garnery - as this particular instrument-maker turns up a few dozen times in the book, it becomes a bit grating.

The funeral owl, by Jim Kelly [audiobook]. Read by Ray Sawyer. Oxford: Isis, 2014.

Philip Dryden's dilemma in this week's Crow isn't how to fill the pages of his Ely newspaper; it's what to leave out.  The body of a Chinese man is found crucified in a churchyard; a "Fen Blow" removes topsoil from a huge area; and Humph's daughter disappears (while this isn't news, it does put a crimp in Dryden's travel plans while his usual chauffeur is engaged on family business). Is a Chinese gang operating in King's Lynn? What's the significance of drowned tramps being found in a ditch? And will Dryden's little boy ever be bothered to start walking?  As ever, this is as much about the characters as it is about the plots, and shows the Fens in all their strange beauty.

Hangman, by Faye Kellerman. London: Harper, 2011.

I was delighted to find that Kellerman had produced not one but two Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus books while I wasn't watching - this is always difficult to track because she's one of those increasingly rare authors producing books with different titles on different sides of the Atlantic, so you can never really work out whether you're likely to have read the book before under another name...   This one features a couple of recurring characters, doctor Terry McLaughlin and her hit-man husband Chris Donatti; but mostly also their 14-year-old son Gabe, a messed-up musical prodigy who is foisted on the Deckers when both his parents disappear.  Gabe's an interesting character; and it's good to see the other kids, including little Hannah, in adulthood or their late teens. Decker's approaching 60 at this point, but not really slowing down on the homicide front; while looking for Terry, he's also trying to solve a series of stranglings.  I enjoyed this one a lot; but you sort of need to go back to the beginning of the series to get the most out of it.

2014 books, #41-45

The teleportation accident, by Ned Beauman. London: Sceptre, 2012.

Egon Loeser, an experimental set designer in early 1930s Berlin, is trying to construct a replica of a 17th-century "teleportation device" when he meets Adele Hitler (no relation), falls in love and follows her first to Paris, then to Los Angeles. This is a novel which starts off (as signalled) as Literary Realism, but passes through genres including farce, hardboiled detection, time travel, playscript and science fiction before crashing to a conclusion.  It's a very enjoyable read after the first few pages; but I'm not really sure what I got out of it in the end!  While you'd think that given the time and place there'd a more political awareness, Loeser is completely politically disengaged throughout the period.  I may well go back and read Beauman's first novel, Boxer, beetle, though.

Cross and burn, by Val McDermid [audiobook]. Read by Saul Reichlin. Rearsby, Leics.: WF Howes, 2013.

The eighth of the Carol Jordan/Tony Hill series from McDermid, and follows on almost a year after the traumatic events of The Retribution. Carol and Tony are still estranged and trying to rebuild their lives in their different, dysfunctional ways, when two women are abducted, tortured and murdered - the characteristic they have in common is that they both look like Carol Jordan. Paula McIntyre asks for advice from Tony, but then DNA evidence is found which draws McIntyre's new boss DI Fielding to an almost impossible conclusion, and leads Paula to hunt down Carol and enlist her help.  This is well up to the usual standard, and Reichlin's reading is excellent as ever.

Think of a number, by John Verdon. London: Penguin, 2010.

Dave Gurney, a retired NYPD homicide detective, is contacted by an old college acquaintance about some very odd letters in verse form he's been receiving. It's a puzzle, and Dave tries to encourage his friend to go to the police; then the friend is killed in circumstances where there's a mass of evidence, none of it pointing anywhere.  Meanwhile, Dave's wife Madeleine is more than a little annoyed at his being sucked back into homicide investigation.  This is extremely tightly plotted and a real page-turner of a first novel; the author is a retired advertising executive who lives in the Catskills near Gurney's fictional home.  If you like early P J Tracy, this is one for you.

French revolutions, by Tim Moore [audiobook]. Read by Andrew Wincott. Rearsby, Leics.: WF Howes, 2009.

Tim Moore's gradually growing fascination with the Tour de France, fuelled by early daily TV coverage of the event, reached its apotheosis in 2000, when at the age of 35 he decided to cycle the entire course ahead of that year's riders. Just finding out details of the route in advance was a challenge at that stage (how things like satnav and smartphones have changed things), quite apart from the physical challenges of riding over 3,000 kilometres on roads stacked with old men on butchers' bikes and Norbert Dentressangle pantechnicons.  This is an extremely funny account, and Moore is honest about the combination of hubris, chicanery, sheer agonising slog and unpleasant physical side-effects involved in getting round an approximation of the course, while giving some snippets of the history of the Tour.  Wincott reads very well (his French pronunciation of Ventoux and Troyes, and his insistence on pronouncing "derailleur" with a French accent aside) and this is a funny, engaging read.

The autobiography of Jack the Ripper, by James Carnac [audiobook]. Read by Mark Meadows and Christian Rodska. Bath: Random House/AudioGO: 2012.

The weirdest thing about this account of Jack the Ripper's exploits is that it came from the estate of the man who invented Larry the Lamb and Toytown.  Having looked it up, this is a genuine mystery - is this a work of fiction, or could it be the truth?  The jury's still out among Ripper theorists.  Whatever it is, it's immensely interesting and entertaining, and gives all sorts of details of life in the East End as well as new ideas about motivation.  Christian Rodska is the main reader as the voice of Jack/James Carnac, with Mark Meadows as the "framing" narrator talking about the provenance of the narrative.  Rodska is, as usual, utterly compelling as a reader.  This is not one for someone who's blood-phobic; but equally, there are no gratuitous blow-by-blow accounts of the killings.

2014 books, #36-40

Howard's End is on the landing: a year of reading from home, by Susan Hill. London: Profile, 2009.

Susan Hill went searching for a book on her shelves, and discovered a treasure trove of unread books, or books she wanted to re-read. She decided to spend a year reading only things she found on her own shelves, and this book is the result.  There are short essays on different authors, and also on themes (school stories, detective fiction etc.); all very readable and an introduction to some new-to-me authors which have now been added to my reading list. There's also a particularly moving chapter on Charles Causley.  Hill has worked in the literary world since her first novel was published at the age of 18, and so has met and liked many of these authors, so personal anecdotes also feature. There are also some surprising dislikes, including an antipathy to Jane Austen, which gives this book an extra interest.

Jar city, by Arnaldur Indridason [audiobook]. Read by Saul Reichlin. Oxford: Isis, 2014. (Originally published in 2004.)

A man is found murdered in his Reykjavik flat. There are no clues apart from a cryptic note left on the body, and a photo of a young girl's grave. Erlendur discovers the man was accused of a terrible crime 40 years before, but never convicted. Meanwhile Erlendur's daughter has come home after some time away living a wild life. Parents and children feature heavily in this book, and the "jar city" of the title reflects a quite recent UK scandal.  Reichlin does his usual workmanlike job on the reading here, but somehow the story never really caught fire for me.

To die for, by Tessa Barclay [audiobook]. Read by Michael Tudor Barnes. Whitley Bay: Soundings, 2007.

The unlikely team of a (deposed) Crown Prince of fictional Hirtenstein and a London fashion designer (Greg and Liz) investigates a murder in the rolling stacks of the Museum of Music Heritage; the victim is a friend of Greg's and companion to an elderly Chopin fanatic, who in turn believes she is in possession of a photocopy of an original manuscript.  The search takes Greg and Liz to Paris, Scotland and Dover in search of the murderer.  This is what you'd call a "cozy" if you were American, I think; it's quite gentle, in places over-explained (yes, we've got it, she's a fashion designer so she likes clothes) and you can see things coming a long way off, but I'll look out for other books in the series because it buzzes along nicely. And Michael Tudor Barnes is an excellent reader and does all the accents.

The outcast dead, by Elly Griffiths. London: Quercus, 2014.

Digging at the foot of Norwich Castle, Ruth Galloway unearths Victorian bones; a woman with a hook for a hand who may be the notorious murderer Jemima Green, hanged in 1867 for the murder of five children in her care. Meanwhile DI Harry Nelson is investigating the deaths of three other infants in the same family; he's convinced the mother is responsible although others on his team think otherwise. The cases intertwine - King's Lynn and its network of mothers and babysitters is only so big - and while Ruth learns about the intricacies of TV archaeology, she's also drawn in to Nelson's case.  This is well up to the usual standard of these books; I'm only sad that I read these way too fast.  And finally, the mystery of the King's Lynn Campbells factory tower is solved - I've kept thinking I've just looked out of the window at the wrong time, when it turns out the tower was demolished in 2012...

Let the devil sleep, by John Verdon [audiobook]. Read by Jeff Harding. Bath: Chivers/AudioGO, [n.d.]

This is the third one in this series, and contains major plot spoilers for the second one; but a new-to-me author so I didn't realise this.  I'll be going back and reading the others, anyway.  This has some of the elements of the Peter Decker or Dave Robicheau books, but with an element of the supernatural more reminiscent of Greg Iles or some of Harlen Coben's standalones. An old journalist acquaintance of retired cop Dave Gurney gets in touch: her daughter is producing a documentary on a 10-year-old series of murders by the "Good Shepherd", a murderer who was never caught, and she asks Gurney to keep an eye on her daughter. Gurney becomes fascinated by the original series of murders, and as the documentary series starts appearing, on the unintended consequences it unleashes.  This is very, very well-written, and I was very happy to spot the first in the series lurking in my "unread" pile, so will be picking that up soon!

2014 books, #31-35, plus an extra

This boy: a memoir of a childhood, by Alan Johnson. London: Bantam, 2013.

This could so very easily be a misery memoir. Alan Johnson describes growing up in a slum with his violent, feckless father, his hardworking but chronically ill mother and his quite remarkable sister, and some of the incidents seem to come from a previous century, not the era of JFK and the Beatles. Because Johnson manages to step back slightly (describing his parents by their first names and supplementing his memory with those of family and friends), he can look slightly more dispassionately at events, but every now and then emotion does break through and it's more powerful for that.  It's also a portrait of two strong, tenacious women, particularly his sister Linda who seems to have taken charge of the family from the age of 9 or 10. Compassion also comes over as a strong element in the book - Johnson is clear that he was protected from many of the worst things his family was experiencing by being the younger one, but he was obviously aware of, and outraged by, some of the racism experienced by a schoolfriend, and aware that at the time, however terrible things were at home, his friend had it worse.

This is a read-at-a-sitting sort of book; and you're left wondering how this junior postman (who at the end of the book has just married at 18 and become a father to his wife's small daughter) ended up in some of the top Cabinet posts in the 1990s and 2000s.  I went to see Johnson discussing the book (very engagingly) at the Cambridge Literary Festival this morning, and happily there's a second volume in the works covering that period (due out in September, we're told...)

The scent of death, by Andrew Taylor. London: Harper, 2013.

Set during the American War of Independence. I'm currently listening to a podcast series on this, so it was a nice coincidence.  Edward Savill, a civil servant, has been sent to New York from London to assess the claims of loyalists whose land has been seized and property destroyed during the war; he lodges with a former judge, his wife and their daughter whose husband has disappeared in the war. Taylor handles a complex plot with his usual skill, and really gives us a flavour of the period; and there are some truly terrifying moments in this.

The President's hat, by Antoine Laurain. London: Gallic Books, 2013.

This is a lovely whimsical little book. Daniel Mercier, treating himself to a meal at a posh Parisian restaurant, finds himself sitting on the next table to François Mitterand; when Mitterand leaves, Daniel finds the President's hat on the banquette next to him.  When he puts on the hat, things start to change in his life... This is set in the mid-to-late 1980s, when I knew Paris best, and some of the details of life (Minitel, Jack Lang as Culture minister, les Grands Projets) brought many others flooding back.

Echo burning, by Lee Child. London: Bantam, 2001.

Jack Reacher wakes up to discover that the guy from last night's bar fight is a police officer; escaping from town, he's picked up by a beautiful woman.  What seemed to be a lucky break turns out to be the beginning of entrapment in another dangerous web; the woman tells him her husband's in jail, and when he comes out he's going to kill her.  I usually enjoy books from this series, but this one was genuinely difficult to put down - to the extent that I missed my Tube stop twice while reading it...

Never tell, by Alafair Burke [audiobook]. Read by Jennifer Woodward. Bath: Oakhill/Harper, [n.d.].

A 17-year-old girl is found in the bathtub of her family's Upper East Side apartment, apparently having slashed her wrists; there's a note, and the police initially write it off as suicide despite the insistence of the girl's parents. Meanwhile, the mother of one of the girl's friends is being harassed about comments she has made on her well-known blog.  The plot twists and turns, but somehow never really lights up, and despite the reading being quite decent, it failed to hold my attention; I found myself skipping back a couple of tracks several times because I'd missed some detail of the plot.

And then the extra:

The October list, by Jeffrey Deaver [audiobook]. Read by Todd Boyce. Rearsby, Leics.: Clipper, 2013.

I don't normally review books/audiobooks I haven't finished; it seems unfair to the author.  In this case though, I think readers who've been with this blog for any length of time know that I bloody love Jeffrey Deaver, but I couldn't deal with this one at all and want to warn people like me not to wait for months for (or pay to download) an audiobook they might not like! The premise is that each chapter is the prequel of the one before.  I listened to one of the 6 disks and abandoned, I'm afraid; just not a way of reading I can get my head round.  I'm not one of those people who likes to turn to the last page to find out whodunnit, and I like to read series in order; it just messed with my head way too much.  I'm sure that if you do get on with that way of reading, this will be as excellent as many of Deaver's books... just warning those who read like I do.

2014 books, #26-30

One for the books, by Joe Queenan. New York: Penguin, 2012.

Joe Queenan is an inveterate reader, and has quite definite opinions on reading, and on the finite length of the rest of his life, and on what he's decided he no longer has time to read.  Books give his life structure, memory and colour.  This is a lovely book about the meaning of reading, particularly of reading print books (there's a refrain of You couldn't do that with a Kindle).  While I can disagree with him quite passionately on his love for Proust and his disdain for To kill a mockingbird, I love his endeavour here.  And as anyone who remembers his broadcasts on popular culture will know, the guy is seriously funny so even while you're disagreeing with him, you're smiling at his invective.

Entry Island, by Peter May. London: Quercus, 2014.

This is the best book I've read this year so far.  Sime (pronounced Sheem) is brought in as the only English-as-a-first-language detective investigating the murder of a man on a remote island in Québec province. All evidence points to the wife as the murderer, but Sime is thrown off-balance by the strong belief that he has met the woman before.  Sime's job is complicated further by his soon-to-be-ex-wife also being present on the investigating team, and by his insomnia punctuated by dreams derived from his great-great-grandfather's diary, also from a remote island but this time in the Hebrides.  The stories intertwine and disorient the reader to the extent that sometimes we, like Sime, forget which time and place we're in. May does an amazing job here and it's a spellbinding read.

Danubia, by Simon Winder. London: Picador, 2013.

I'm not sure how much more knowledge of the Habsburgs I've managed to absorb in this really engaging canter through their history, but I definitely enjoyed the ride.  Winder is an enthusiast for all things Central and Eastern European, and uses visits to present-day places to show the history, and often the multiple renamings, of towns and regions.  He also picks up on quirks - the Habsburg jaw, the presence of improbable museums and so on - as repeating motifs.  I think what I most like about this book is that he's just wandering the areas (mostly on public transport) sort of bumping into his subjects everywhere, while illustrating quite powerfully the history of conflict, nationalism, rootlessness, fecklessness, monomania and inbreeding which characteristed the dynasty.  And oh, those poor, poor women, sacrificed on the altar of male primogeniture and slaughtered like cattle through childbirth.  And despite this last sentence, this is a profoundly humorous, humane book.

The child who, by Simon Lelic. London: Picador, 2012.

Twelve-year-old Daniel Blake has killed his schoolmate Felicity Forbes in Exeter.  This is stated very near the beginning of the book, and this isn't really a detective story; it's more an exploration of the effect of a brutal crime on the families involved, including the families of the legal and law enforcement professionals brought into a case. Leo Curtice, a local solicitor, is brought in to represent Daniel, and is unprepared for the public fury the case has unleashed and its effect on his family. It's very difficult to put this book down; the sense of one crime rotting its way through families and relationships is very powerful, and the ending is definitely worth waiting for.

We are here, by Michael Marshall [audiobook]. Read by Jeff Harding.  Oxford: Isis, 2013.

Really not sure what to make of this. (I've had this problem with Michael Marshall's books before).  The premise is instantly grabbing and somewhat creepy - we're introduced to a number of people who are having strange and inexplicable moments in their lives; a woman whose book group companion feels as if she's being followed but can see nothing; a man who encounters strangers in Union Park in New York who seems to be fading in and out...  It's all really engaging, and you keep listening; but I don't really feel at the end as if I worked out what was going on.  This is one listened to in bits over several weeks, though, so it may be my attention span, rather than the writer's ability, which is at fault.

Grand day out: Saltaire

So, I went on PodRetreat in February, and I have photos; but striking while the iron is still reasonably luke-warm, this was last Friday's slightly mad day trip.

Just after Christmas, East Coast had a sale; a ridiculously good sale. Wasn't able to pin family down to dates within the timescale, and there weren't many trains on a Sunday in the offer, so I thought "Wonder how far I can go for £5 each way?" and the answer was York or Leeds. I love York; but I love Leeds more, and all I've done there for the last many years is change train, occasionally popping out of the station for a quick meal between journeys.

I set off at 5:35am from the village (first train out; only the second time I've done that), so by 9:30 I'd got to Leeds, bought my onward ticket, and wandered out to City Square.

As you can see, it's a bit wet; but the forecast for the rest of the day was good.  And there was a happy sight on the way out of the station; Leeds is seriously cheerful about the Grand Départ  in July.

(This year, I'm abandoning the French pronunciation of Grand and doing it in a Yorkshire voice in my head...)

Normally, I'm really organised on a visit; this time, other than the tiny map in the Kindle version of the Rough Guide and a quick look-up of bus routes, I was entirely unprepared for the trip after what had felt like an extraordinarily long week.  I also have absolutely no sense of direction, which is always interesting in a strange city, even one I visited briefly last year.  But I had a destination in prospect, and Leeds has lots of maps around at road junctions, so I found the bus stop, and the no. 1 bus; and I reached my destination about 2 minutes before it was due to open. Looked promising!

The extremely nice Baa Ram Ewe (Headingley branch); just opposite a big shopping centre, but based in a converted cottage; about 15 minutes from the city centre by bus.  The person in the shop was American, and lovely, and I realised afterwards we hadn't exchanged names (sorry, lovely yarn-shop lady!); conversation ranged from London commuting to Yarndale to the beautiful yarns they had from West Yorkshire Spinners.

 One of my aims was to fondle some of their own Titus yarn, as I hadn't managed to get anywhere near their booth at Yarndale, particularly given my final destination. A skein of duck-eggy-green, very springlike (Bramley Baths), has accompanied me home, along with a coordinating Crazy Zauberball; once the current knitting project is done that'll be the next thing on the needles! (Also picked up some gift yarn and a couple of skeins of discounted Colinette.)

All yarned-up, I got the bus back into Leeds and a train out to Saltaire.  I've been through Saltaire so many times on the way to Keighley for the SkipNorth holiday, and every time I've promised myself that next time... I'd stop.  But I've always had luggage with me, and luggage and cobbled hills don't really match. This time, I could have a ramble round.  It had turned into a perfect spring day by the time I got there...

First destination: Salt's Mill.  Built in 1853 by Titus Salt for textile production, and the heart of the planned community which surrounds it.

Textile production ended in the 1980s, and the mill was bought by Jonathan Silver. Since then, it's been converted into a series of galleries, shops and restaurants, and contains a huge collection of works by local boy David Hockney.  This is the ground floor gallery

There were some beautiful pots.  Some William de Morgan, some Islamic, some local.

These ones are Burmantofts - I hadn't heard of them before, but they're local, and from a company much better known for tiles and architectural features.  Fabulous things.

View from the ladies' loo window...

After a lovely smoked chicken salad at Salt's Diner, and a poke around the shops (think I've managed to stock up on cards and small gifts for the next six months or so!), I thought I'd do the walk round the village suggested in the official guidebook.

Other than Albert Street and Victoria Street, all  the others are named after members of Titus Salt's family.

Some of these names work better in a modern context than others.

Here are some of the more humble houses

(following the modern rule that Where There Shall Be Houses, There Shall Be Wheeliebins. I'm hoping it's bin day, rather than that being the permanent situation - we used to play in the lane like that behind our house when we were kids).

Here are some of the rather posher ones, belonging to overseers.

Signs of spring

There are also almshouses

and a concert hall (the Victoria Hall, of course)

and, right next to the station, a pub.  As you can see from the name, not in the original town plan.  Salt doesn't appear to have been anti-alcohol - the mill-owned shops in the village would do off-sales - but preferred to build educational public spaces.

After a restorative pint, I went back to Leeds in mid-afternoon, and had a wander round the city centre. Missed the covered market (due to lack of sense of direction), but found the Victoria Quarter and its rather spectacular stained-glass roofs

and one of my favourite shops - stand aside, Harvey Nicks, this town has a Clas Ohlson!  Realise that not everyone's idea of holiday shopping is buying locks, hacksaws and cleaning materials; I love Clas Ohlson but don't get to Norwich very often...

Looking for somewhere to eat on the way back to the station, I again got lost, but heading downhill always seems to be a good move.  I ended up in a Pizza Express (lack of research again!), but it was right next to St Paul's House, a spectacular Hispano-Moorish construction; former cloth-cutting mill which now seems to be full of lawyers.

I was shattered on the train home and the next day, but it was completely worth it - hills, sunshine, Yorkshire and its sense of solid Victoriana, yarn...  Lovely day.

2014 books, #21-25

Lost river, by Stephen Booth. London: Harper, 2011.

On May Bank Holiday afternoon, Ben Cooper pulls a dead child from a river; the incident is immediately traumatic, but there seems to be something more than accidental death involved and Cooper is led to investigate the girl's family. Meanwhile, Diana Fry is reliving trauma of her own - new DNA evidence has been found by West Midlands police, and the case is Diane's own rape, the event which sent her to Derbyshire in the first place.  This is a slightly disjointed book because of the two settings, and to me there are some slightly strained (and possibly stereotypical) elements - Fry's taking the law into her own hands to the extent she does doesn't seem in character; but the coming-together of the two very disparate plots into similar themes (won't say more, spoilers!) is so skilfully done that Booth's allowed the benefit of the doubt here!

Vengeance [Mystery Writers of America presents...]. Edited by Lee Child. London: Corvus, 2012. [Kindle edition.]

A volume of short stories around the theme of vengeance.  As ever with these anthologies, it's a mixed bag; but some of these stories are extraordinarily good.  Unfortunately, as I never seem to get around to blogging books from the Kindle, I can't really remember which were which!  There are some big names here, as you'd expect from a book with Child's pulling power - Child himself, Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane and Karin Slaughter, but also some newer authors like Dreda Say Mitchell and Alafair Burke.  (And as far as I remember, it was a very good cheap offer on Kindle at the time!)

A fatal thaw, by Dana Stabenow. [Kate Shugak 2]. Kindle edition.

I got these for Kindle last autumn, but was waiting until it was a bit warmer to read them - they're set in Alaska and Stabenow is extremely good at showing us how cold it is!  Kate Shugak is caught up despite her will in another murder; nine of her neighbours have been killed by a man running amok with a hunting rifle. As investigations continue though, it seems that one of the dead was actually murdered with a different weapon, and just about everyone in the area had a potential motive. Kate and her motley crew of sidekicks including a part-wolf, part-Husky called Mutt and a disabled Vietnam veteran called Bobby take on the case, at some personal cost.

Dead in the water, by Dana Stabenow. [Kate Shugak 3]. Kindle edition.

This time, Kate is investigating the deaths of two crew members on a crab-boat in the Aleutian islands (yes, possibly even colder than the last book) by joining the crew. The work is extraordinarily hard but also pretty lucrative, but she suspects the captain and permanent crew members of having alternative sources of income. She also needs to protect her very young, very naïve roommate Andy from their colleagues, and while she has her usual backup from Jack Morgan on land, she's at sea on her own in every sense. As someone who's part-Aleut, she is also drawn to the people of the islands and their culture, which adds another element of interest.

Meet me in Malmö, by Torquil MacLeod. Kindle edition.

Ewan Strachan, a washed-up arts journalist from Newcastle, goes to Malmö to interview an old college friend, Mick Roslyn, now a successful film director with a film-star wife.  When he gets to Mick and Malin's flat, he finds Malin dead and no sign of Mick. Strachan is held in Malmö, filing despatches about the murder investigation and travel pieces, while inspector Anita Sunderstrom investigates. Meanwhile, we're finding out things about Strachan and Roslyn's relationship, which involves the suspicious death of a woman 25 years before. I wasn't massively convinced by this book; there are too many unconvincing twists and turns, and unlike with masters of these (like Deaver), you can see the mechanism too closely. The end also has a very unconvincing last bite in it.  Not necessarily recommended, although it starts off very well.

2014 books, #16-20

A land more kind than home, by Wiley Cash [audiobook]. Read by Lorna Raver, Mark Bramhall and Nick Sullivan. Rearsby, Leics.: Clipper, 2012.

Based on a true event. An autistic child is smothered during a "healing" service in a snake-wrangling church in North Carolina; the violence which follows in investigated by a sheriff with his own tragedies in the past, and his own axe to grind. The writing here is sometimes astonishingly moving, and the situation - faith, infidelity and the failure of a community to protect its children - very tragic. The multiple narratives wind around each other (this is possibly one where the audiobook format works at its best), and the conclusion is as shocking as it is inevitable. A very, very good book.

Racing hard: 20 tumultuous years in cycling, by William Fotheringham. London: Guardian/Faber, 2013.

I was interested in cycling in the late 80s when living in France, and subsequently watching the Tour highlights in sports bars after a day at the archaeological-finds-classifying tables, but from about 1993 until four years ago, I'd completely lost touch with the world of professional cycling.  This book fills in those gaps wonderfully with accounts of the development of the Tour and its characters, and of the development of the current crop of British cyclists (culminating in Wiggins's win in the 2012 Tour, and the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics). Fotheringham has written on many more subjects than this but he's decided to confine his scope to those two events here. He combines the viewpoint of the fan with that of the relative insider - his obvious disappointment and distress at the various drugs scandals is clear - and while he could have edited some of his articles extensively, he's reprinted them unedited, with rueful notes on the benefit of hindsight.  Great book.

Gone in seconds, by A J Cross [audiobook]. Read by Anna Bentinck. Oxford: Isis, 2013.

When the skeleton of a young woman is found near a West Midlands motorway, evidence suggests that it is that of teenager Molly James, who went missing five years ago. Forensic psychologist Dr Kate Hanson and the Unsolved Crime Unit are called in to re-investigate Molly's case. The deeper they dig the dirtier the clues get, and when a second set of remains is unearthed Kate suspects they're looking for a Repeater: a killer who will adapt, grow and not stop until they are caught. She also suspects that not all of her colleagues are as keen on investigating the case as she is. Good; tightly plotted.

The shock of the fall, by Nathan Filer. London: HarperCollins, 2013.

This year's Costa winner, and an astonishing book.  The narrator is a mentally ill 19-year-old boy, writing consciously for publication, whose illness seems to have been precipitated by events around the death of his older brother, who had Down's Syndrome, ten years before.  'I'll tell you what happened because it will be a good way to introduce my brother. His name's Simon. I think you're going to like him. I really do. But in a couple of pages he'll be dead. And he was never the same after that.'  The account's both a diary and a memoir, and the text changes font and breaks up at different times to reflect Matt's state of mind. Not a cheerful book, although it's not without hope, but a fascinating read.

The daylight gate, by Jeanette Winterson. London: HarperCollins, 2012.

Written to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Pendle witch trials, this contains as much sex, violence and persecution as you might expect. Winterson weaves her tale around Alice Nutter, the only witch from the middle classes who was executed at Pendle. In Winterson's version (which she freely admits to be at least part fantasy), Alice makes her fortune by the invention of a colourfast magenta dye beloved of Elizabeth I, and has been in London with John Dee and Shakespeare; she has learned the secret of the elixir of youth from Dr Dee; and she is sheltering Christopher Southworth, one of the Guy Fawkes plotters and a Catholic priest. This is a wild, swirling fantasy which dips in and out of historical events while getting its feet completely soaked in the filth and squalour of the era.

2014 books, #11-15

Sycamore Row, by John Grisham. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2013.

This is a (very belated) sequel to A time to kill, which was made into an extremely good film.  Like the previous chapter of Jake Brigance's story, it's set in the 1980s. Unlike the previous chapter, this is a civil case about a will. Seth Hubbard hangs himself, after posting a handwritten will and covering letter to Jake; the will leaves 90% of his fortune to his (black) housekeeper and revokes a previous testament leaving substantial amounts to Seth's children.  Jake is again in the middle of a viper's nest (and increasingly disenchanted once race comes into the story), and when the principal beneficiary is swooped on by lawyers with an axe to grind, he's on the verge of throwing in the towel.  As ever with Grisham, if you're alert you can see the ending coming way ahead; but it's still worth reading for all that.

No rest for the dead, by various authors. London: Simon and Schuster, 2012.

When the dead body of Christopher Thomas, a ruthless curator at San Francisco’s McFall Art Museum, is found bloodied and decaying in an iron maiden in a museum in Berlin, his wife is the primary suspect. Rosemary Thomas is tried, convicted, and executed, but ten years later, Detective Jon Nunn remains convinced that the wrong person was put to death.  This is a collaboration between over 20 authors, most of them extremely well-known, each taking a chapter.  The chapters are cleverly allocated - Kathy Reichs writes up the forensic reports, Jeffery Deaver presides over a chapter with a couple of the switchback turns he's notorious for, and so on - and the writing remarkably even.  Good plot, and an interesting project; all profits to leukaemia and lymphoma research.

The late scholar: Peter Wimsey investigates. Based on the characters of Dorothy L Sayers, by Jill Paton Walsh. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2013.

Another excellent Wimsey novel; Paton Walsh treads a fine line between pastiche, fanfiction and new fiction, and comes out on the right side of the line on all counts.  Along with his unwanted Dukedom, Peter has inherited a position as the Visitor at St Severin's College, Oxford, and is called in as the final arbiter in a bitter college dispute which has already proved fatal for at least one of St Severin's dons, and may have accounted for the Warden, too.  And someone is using methods from Peter's cases (as recounted in Harriet's novels) to try and despatch academics.  Really excellent.

Breakdown, by Sara Paretsky [audiobook]. Read by Liza Ross. Oxford: Isis, 2012.

A group of schoolgirls who've gathered in a cemetery to re-enact Carmilla stories (a sort of Twilight-type series of novels for tweens) find a dead body on a slab.  They're not a typical group of girls, though - one is the granddaughter of a billionaire, another is the daughter of a Democratic Senate candidate and two of the others are the children of an illegal immigrant, at the exclusive school on scholarships.  All are now in danger, and VI Warshawski's cousin, a classroom assistant at the school, calls in VI to help. As she does so, she is dragged into a web of deceit and personal danger.  There are, as ever, a couple of slightly unlikely elements in the plot, but it's a very good one and stretches from 1940s Poland to the present day.

The bones of Paris, by Laurie R. King. London: Allison and Busby, 2013.

A follow-up to Touchstone, although you probably don't have to have read that one to enjoy this.  Harris Stuyvesant is in Paris in 1929, hired by an American family to find their missing daughter. While searching, he discovers she may not have been the only missing person to have disappeared in similar circumstances, and is drawn into the circle of a fashionable elite including Man Ray and Picasso, and the macabre world of the Grand-Guignol and a fetishism of death. King slips into the world of the period without obvious anachronisms.  Genuinely scary in parts, and as ever tightly-plotted.

2014 books, #6-10

Dancing with the Virgins, by Stephen Booth. London: HarperCollins, 2001.

The stone circle known as the Nine Virgins has stood on the Derbyshire moors for centuries; a National Parks warden comes across a tenth figure in the circle, a young woman who has been stabbed. There are echos of an attach a couple of months earlier where another woman, a lawyer, had her face slashed open in an incident she prefers not to remember. Diane Fry (newly promoted to Acting Sergeant but waiting for a post elsewhere) and DC Ben Cooper have to put aside their personal differences to work on the investigation; as ever, the dynamic between them adds an extra element to the story.

Liars all, by Jo Bannister [audiobook]. Read by Patience Tomlinson. Whitley Bay: Soundings, 2010.

I got this and wasn't able to remember whether I'd read this one in the series before; turns out I had, but way too quickly to be able to retain it.  I agree with what I said at first reading, except that I think I like Brodie even less at second reading.  It's interesting that Jo Bannister hasn't come back to these characters since - I wonder if she's managed to put herself off Brodie, too, or whether she just doesn't know what to do with the plot at this point!  She's still writing though, just not in this series...

Shane, by Jack Schaefer. [S.l.]: Random House; [n.d.]

We picked this for book group as a classic Western.  The publication details above might give you an idea of how difficult this title is to obtain - the county library system had no copies, and Random House's technical information page (copyright, CIP etc.) concludes with "Random House Children's Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read" while giving neither a place or date of publication beyond the original in 1946.   Has to be said, this is not your standard children's book of today; there's meaningful violence, language, a very interesting undertone about the relationship between the three adults... And it's immensely enjoyable, and honourable, and brave, and somewhat tear-jerking...  If you'd like my copy, leave me a comment with some information on how I can get in touch with you; I think more people should be able to read this book.

Tigers in red weather, by Liza Klaussmann. London: Picador, 2012.

Another book group book (difficulty in getting hold of Shane meant we had two discussions on that one). Nick and her cousin Helena grew up together sharing long summers at Tiger House, (which I believe is on Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard);  they keep going there with and without husbands and children, but the cracks keep forming.  This novel is written from several different perspectives; and I think the character I most dislike is the focus of the first section, so I did question my sanity in reading it for the first few chapters. Thankfully, nobody else in the book much likes that character either... There's some genuinely sinister stuff here.  The shifting perspectives mean that each narrating character can defend her/himself, and this may be contradictory to the previous narratives; and at book group discussion, we had sharply differing views as to the characters we did and didn't find sympathetic.

The facility, by Simon Lelic [audiobook]. Read by Paul Panting. Isis: Oxford, 2011.

Dystopia. We start with a man being threatened, interrogated and held for an undisclosed offence. He's put on a bus and admitted to a Facility at an undisclosed location, but has no idea why or what's going on.  It's Kafka in the security age.  I sort of don't want to say more because it takes a while to work out what on earth is happening (the Home Office statement on that happens at least a third of the way through).  I would say that if you're OK with conspiracy theories, read or listen to this book. And if you're not, read it anyway because it rattles along very nicely. There is some gruesome stuff, but you'd probably expect that from the title.

Poetry for St Brigid

St Brigid's Day, and while I'm not sure posting a poem is still an internet Thing, I had a Collected Robert Frost for Christmas, and this one remains a favourite.

Desert Places

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it--it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less--
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

And if that one's a bit sad, Frost can be lighter...

[Forgive, O Lord...]

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.

2014 books, #1-5

Refusal, by Felix Francis. London: Michael Joseph, 2013.

Another extremely good book by Felix Francis; as Francis finds his stride, he's even dared reprise one of his father's classic heroes, one-handed former jockey (and, when we find him, former private detective) Sid Halley, and managed it very well.  Sid is married, with a daughter, making his living by playing a different sort of form book on the stock exchange, when the chair of the British Horseracing Authority asks him to help in what looks like a serious case of race-fixing.  While Sid is deliberating, the BHA chair dies, apparently having committed suicide, and Sid and his family are threatened.  Classic Francis but with the benefits of technology like GPS tracking the original Halley books would have loved to have employed.

Final jeopardy, by Linda Fairstein. London: Sphere, 1998.

The first of the Alexandra Cooper series - thought I'd go back and read them in order. Alex finds that she has been reported in the media as dead, because someone has been killed in the driveway of her holiday home in Martha's Vineyard; the victim turns out (somewhat improbably) to be a film star Alex has met through a literary agent friend.  The mystery deepens when it becomes apparent the victim was complaining about being stalked, and was also staying with a male friend nobody knew about.  This is well-paced; these books are always somewhat histrionic, but worth sticking with.

Die trying, by Lee Child [audiobook]. Read by Garrick Hagon. Whitley Bay: Soundings, 1998.

A typically excellent Lee Child, one of the early ones. Jack Reacher stops on a Chicago street to help a woman struggling with a door, a crutch and her dry-cleaning, and is abducted along with the woman. When the woman turns out to be an FBI agent, and the daughter of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he realises this is a high-stakes abduction.  Tightly-plotted as ever. Two slightly comic elements for Brits of a certain age - the FBI agent's name is Holly Johnson, which means I had Two Tribes running round my head throughout the book; and it features the Montana Militia, who are sinister enough, but combine with the original Chicago setting to give the Illinois Nazis...

Raising steam, by Terry Pratchett. London: Doubleday, 2013.

The railways come to Ankh-Morpork.  And in fact, many places on the Disc.  As with any innovation, Moist von Lipwig is right there in the vanguard, or in this case in the guard's van, with Harry King and the Patrician. This is classic Pratchett, not afraid to be a little bit emotional at the power of technology in the hands of Yorkshire lad Dick Simnel, but also slyly combining all of those classic railway moments, such as Brief Encounter and The Railway Children, as well as introducing us to the first trainspotters; and just a hint of sapient machinery. Excellent.

Nightrise, by Jim Kelly [audiobook]. Read by Ray Sawyer. Oxford: Isis, 2012.

Philip Dryden is somewhat surprised to be informed by police that his father has just died in a car accident, as his father drowned during the fenland floods in 1977; Dryden Senior's body was never found though, so Dryden can't help wondering...  Two other stories are demanding Dryden's journalistic attention, though; that of a body found hanging in the middle of a lettuce field, and a couple whose baby daughter's remains were buried in a mass council grave and want to reclaim the body for burial.  Another of Kelly's Ely-based books; the setting, as ever, is very accurate although it would be lovely if there really were a fabulous Italian restaurant in the alley next to Oxfam!

2013 books, #101-105

Round up of the last few books of last year.  Not quite as many as last year, but I seem to have had a lot of audiobooks I rejected halfway through this year!

Dead water, by Ann Cleeves. London: Pan, 2013.

The fifth of the Jimmy Perez/Shetland series. Perez is still on leave and shattered by recent events, but when the body of a Shetland-born London journalist is found in a racing boat by the Procurator Fiscal herself, he summons up the interest to join DI Willow Reeves and her team.  The Fiscal is definitely hiding something, but so are others in the islands. Sandy Wilson makes another appearance, and I hope we see more of Willow.  This is the sort of tightly-plotted page-turner we're used to from this series.

One cold night, by Katia Lief. Kindle edition.

Susan and her husband Dave are providing a home for Susan's teenage sister Becky; but Susan has a secret - Becky is not her sister, but her daughter. When Becky decides to go looking for her birth-parents, Susan knows it's time to tell the secret. Becky, upset, leaves the house, and is then abducted.  At first all clues seem to lead back to Susan's high-school boyfriend, Becky's father, but it's not as straightforward as that...  This is well-written but somehow I didn't really warm to the characters.

The Moat Farm mystery: the life and criminal career of Samuel Herbert Dougal, by M W Oldridge. Kindle edition.

In 1903, Samuel Herbert Dougal stood trial for the murder of Camille Cecile Holland, a spinster he had seduced and murdered, afterwards clearing out her bank account  This account of Dougal's life shows this to have been the culmination of a thoroughly unpleasant life. After a reasonably successful army career, Dougal soon found he was both entirely unsuited to civilian life, and somewhat irresistible to women.  He tried his hand at pub landlording at Royston but was tried for arson after his pub burned down in suspicious circumstances; he applied for the position of public hangman but was turned down; and he had a history of forging cheques even before he met the wealthy and reclusive Miss Holland.  This narrative is fascinating, if unpleasant, and very readable.

Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking, by Susan Cain. Kindle edition.

This is one of the most interesting books I've read this year - and I can't work out why I didn't review it when I read it in September/October!  Cain talks about the differences between introverts and extroverts, and explains some reasons why contemporary (particularly US) society is more comfortable for extroverts. She talks about the Asian-American experience and how cultural values play into introversion, and discusses situations in which introverts perform more strongly.  This book told me some things I didn't know about myself, and explains some things I did; I found it fascinating.

A shilling for candles, by Josephine Tey [audiobook]. Read by Stephen Thorne. [S. l.]: Chivers, 1993.

I'd forgotten this one despite having read it years ago.  The body of Christine Clay, a prominent film actress, is found on a beach near a cottage she's renting; the initial suspect is a young man who has been lodging with Clay.  Although he's exonerated early on, his continued disappearance is a worry for Grant and his colleagues.  Rivalries on stage and in the theatre are exposed, and recurring Tey characters Grant and Marta Hallard feature.  Having read the excellent Nicola Upson books set among these characters, I found it slightly difficult to straighten out the time period and relationships, and particularly to keep my Lydias straight! Definitely worth re-reading though, and Thorne's dry narrative style fits Tey's sly humour very well.

2013 books, #96-100

Black diamond, by Martin Walker.  London: Quercus, 2010.

An Inspector Bruno novel.  In this one, Périgord's most prized product, the truffle, is threatened by reports of adulteration at the local market. At the same time, the horrific murder of a local truffle-hunter drags Bruno into French-Algerian history, and past and present crimes intertwine.  As ever, there are some great characters here, and Walker keeps a light touch while talking about serious subjects.  I'm very glad there are a few more of these to read before I catch up...

Shattered, by Dick Francis [audiobook]. Read by Tony Britton. Bath: Chivers/BBC Audiobooks, 2000.

For those who've read all these, this is The One With The Glassblower.  I was spending the weekend at the sewing machine, and wanted something I'd already read - and Tony Britton is such a consummate reader of Francis...  As it was - I really can't remember reading this one at all, so it was a pleasant surprise!  Gerard Logan, the glassblower, goes to Cheltenham Races with his friend jockey Martin Stukely on Millennium Eve; Martin is crushed by his horse and killed, and his valet hands his saddle and a videotape to Gerard. That's when everything goes a bit mad - Gerard's workshop is burgled, as is his house and Martin's, and the tape is stolen without his having an idea of what the thieves wanted.  This is vintage Francis - you learn interesting things about glassblowing, it rattles along at racing pace, and as ever Britton's reading is excellent.

The search for Richard III: the king's grave, by Phillipa Langley and Michael Jones. London: John Murray, 2013.

This is a very readable account both of the short kingship of Richard III and of the recent dig which uncovered his bones under a social services car park in Leicester.  It's arranged in alternate chapters of straight history and fundraising/archaeology/fannishness.  Michael Jones seems to play it quite straight with the history - he's sympathetic to Richard but also concedes his ruthlessness in some circumstances. Phillipa Langley is the first to admit her partiality, but her account of how the dig was arranged is fascinating for anyone (like me) who's worked as a volunteer around an established dig; I could sort of have done without her repeated stressing of her intuition as to where the body was buried, but as she turned out to be right, and as her obsession was a large part of getting the job done in the first place, fair play to her!

The people's songs, by Stuart Maconie. London: Ebury Press, 2013.

I'd forgotten to review this, until I had a short exchange with the chap himself on Twitter earlier and realised that this had had to go back to the library sharpish at the time because there were other people in the queue behind me, so it hadn't hung around on the review pile... This is the book of the recent Radio 4 series - because this is arranged chronologically, and the series wasn't, and I managed only to dip into the series and catch up with more episodes on iPlayer, I'm not quite sure whether these are the scripts for the series slightly elaborated and without the additional voices of people who remember the era, or not.  But actually, that won't matter now the series has ended; it stands up as a book. What you get here is 50 short essays on life in Britain during and after the Second World War, each introduced by one representative track.  So the Asian experience in the UK is represented by Brimful of Asha; pop's social conscience by Do They Know It's Christmas?; Britain's changing climate for LGBT people by Smalltown Boy, etc... This could be an unsophisticated way of looking at the subject - but it's Maconie, so obviously it's way better than that.  These are thoughtful, thought-provoking, entertaining pieces; and it goes without saying that there's a lot of humour, too.

The detective's daughter, by Lesley Thomson. Kindle edition.

Terry Darnell, a detective who's carried on investigating a twenty-year-old crime into his retirement, is found dead outside a Co-Op in the town where the victim was buried.  The death's due to natural causes, but his daughter Stella has to deal with his effects and with clearing out his house, and becomes curious despite herself in the father she's been detached from for most of her life.  As she becomes more and more interested in the mystery, her entirely organised life (running a cleaning business, living in a brand-new spotless flat, dumping the boyfriend when it's all too complicated) also begins to disintegrate, and she makes the acquaintance of Jack, a superb cleaner but a deeply private man... I enjoyed this, despite finding the main character almost entirely unsympathetic throughout, and despite finding a couple of holes in the plot difficult to deal with.  Definitely worth reading.

2013 books, #91-95

Death's door, by Jim Kelly [audiobook].  Read by Roger May. Oxford: Isis, 2012.

On a hot August day in 1994, 76 holidaymakers travel to an island off the North Norfolk coast; only 75 come back. 20 years later, the cold case is revived with the aid of DNA evidence off a beach towel, and the survivors are invited for a mass screening. One of them, Marianne Osborne, is found dead in her bed. Is there a link? As ever, the North Norfolk coast is like another character in this book featuring DI Shaw and DS Valentine, and the finale comes as a genuine surprise.

I am half sick of shadows, by Alan Bradley. [S.l.]: Anchor Canada, 2012.

Flavia de Luce, eleven-year-old chemist and amateur sleuth, is engaged in a plot to trap Santa Claus in the chimneys of her family's crumbling pile at Buckford. Meanwhile, her father has found a way of shoring up the family's fortunes by renting out the stately home to a visiting film company, including the star Phyllis Wyvern. The whole village turns up to see a charity show at Buckford, and is then snowed in; and in the morning, Ms Wyvern is found dead. Flavia investigates.  This is a lovely book - Flavia shouldn't be an engaging character, but her combination of innocence and bookish knowledge are quite delightful, and the rest of the cast of characters are quite fascinating.

Faithless, by Karin Slaughter [audiobook]. Read by LJ Ganser. Rearsby, Leics.: Clipper, 2006.

Sara Linton and Jeffrey Tolliver are walking in the woods when they stumble (literally) upon a buried box which contains the body of a teenage girl; it's obvious that the girl was buried alive. The girl's family are part of an isolated religious community, one which likes to keep its secrets to itself. Also investigating is Lena Adams, a woman who has secrets of her own to hide.  As ever, Slaughter writes a well-constructed, fast-paced thriller with some interesting characters.

Winter in Madrid, by C J Sansom. Kindle edition.

Harry Brett, a traumatised Dunkirk veteran, is sent back to Madrid as a spy; previously, he'd been there during the Spanish Civil War. His quarry is Sandy Forsyth, a former schoolmate. Sandy's "wife" Barbara has her own secrets - she's discovered that her ex-boyfriend Bernie Piper, a soldier with the International Brigades, may still be alive in a prison camp, and is determined to rescue him.  This is a dense, intertwined novel, and very moving in parts. I found the ending somewhat disappointing, but it's a good read for all that.

The death of Lucy Kyte, by Nicola Upson [audiobook]. Read by Sandra Duncan. Rearsby, Leics.: Clipper, 2013.

Josephine Tey has inherited her godmother's house in Suffolk; her godmother was an actress who specialised in playing Maria Martin, the victim of the Murder in the Red Barn, in melodrama.  The house overlooks the site of the Red Barn, and there's something very odd about it.  Josephine begins to investigate, and becomes entwined in the life of both her godmother and the writer of a mysterious diary.  I love these books, and the combination of a historical mystery and a real-life figure is something I think Ms Tey would approve...