A bit late but reviewing books read last month. As my daughter has been undergoing an operation I have been worried and unable to concentrate on anything with great pith and moment but rather light reading or revisiting books so my brain did not have to work very hard.
First up, I revisited a series of books I really enjoy by Kate Rhodes. She created a character Alice Quentin, a criminal pyschologist and there are six books in the series. I sat down one weekend and galloped through them. I can thoroughly recommend them.
After the author finished this series she then turned to a new character Ben Kitto and a series of books set in the Scilly Isles, a place Kate Rhodes clearly loves. The latest one, Deadman’s Pool was well up to standard and I can really recommend them all. If you do start them please do read in order as the plots and characters develop over each book.
I am also rereading Anthony Horowitz – his books featuring his detective Atticus Pund. I love this author’s writing, so clear, so elegant and such a pleasure to read. He has written three books featuring Pund, Magpie Murders, Marble Hall Murders and Moonflower Murders. They are excellent. the BBC have produced dramatisations of two of them and a third in the offing and, for once, they did not ruin the story, but stuck to the script and the result is good.
Horowitz has also written books featuring a Scotland Yard detective Hawthorne, and I can recommend these as well. A new one coming up soon and I have preordered it.
I have turned to Jane Austen again but this time, sequels and a writer, no longer with us sadly, produced an excellent title Mansfield Revisited in which we learn more about Edmund, Tom et al. Fanny is now married to Edmund, Aunt Norris is no more, but Julia is as obnoxious as ever. Mary Crawford, who is a really interesting character, returns and the book and plot is plausible and beautifully written. I have had it on my shelves for a long time and enjoyed reading it again.
I then read a book by a good friend of mine, Diana Burchell, who is a true Jane lover and has written several Austen sequels etc. She is the author of Mrs Darcy’s Dilemma which lets us know what happened after Elizabeth and Mr Darcy got married and I read, for the first time, The Bride of Northanger which is a sequel to Northanger Abbey. Catherine Morland is my least favourite Austen heroine as she is incredibly silly but in this story she has married and matured and I found myself rather liking her after all.
And then, whenever I am fed up, I turn to Georgette Heyer. I will do a post sometime on my favourites but this time I will mention Lady of Quality, one of her later book. Not her best but still delightful. Read in three hours. And, finally the new Ann Cleves, The Killing Stones. This features Jimmy Perez who is back in the Shetlands. The author announced a few years ago that she could no longer continue killing off the entire population of the Shetlands and Perez vanished over the horizon. The excellent TV series based on these books also lost the actor who played Perez, and now we have two women running the police force there. All very politically correct.
But now he is back. Why? I can only assume that pressure was brought to bear by her publishers who have had a lot of feedback from readers. I am delighted but I do wonder what happens now if they decide to film another series with Jimmy? how will they do it?
we shall see.
OK so that is the round up. I have been playing around with fonts etc and hope to get the size and colour sorted soon so please bear with me if the type is large. It was looking so tiny and pale that I had to do something!
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