A Book Post

 Obviously with an imminent move we are rather busy, with packing, admin ( don't talk to me about BT for at least a month) farewell visits to/from people and oh! did I mention packing. So the blog is a tad neglected. Also I see it is a long time since I updated my reading posts, so here is one about some of the books I have been reading or listening to. Can't do them all, I'm up to 38 and I suspect I've forgotten to write  a few down tbh, so I would be here all day and readers might give up. 

There is a new Mick Herron Slough House book out in autumn and with that in mind I have been re- listening to some of the earlier ones to keep me company while filling in boxes. So far I have done Slow Horses, Real Tigers, and Spook Street, plus the three linked novellas The List, The Drop and The Catch. I've just started on the most recent which was Bad Actors and which is a personal favourite. There are gaps because some of them I don't want to listen to again, or at least not just now. Herron seems to go from strength to strength and I'm eager to get my hot little hands on the new one, Clown Town, once it's out.

Back in the autumn when I went to Bloody Scotland in Stirling Elly Griffiths did a talk and she was publicising her new series of books which features time travelling detectives solving historical cold cases. I wasn't particularly sold on the idea so didn't buy the book when it was published, but recently it was available on Kindle for 99p, so I splashed out and I enjoyed it much more than I anticipated. It's called The Frozen People if anyone wants to check it out. 

Talking of Elly Griffiths a while ago she recorded some Podcasts called The Plot Thickens. I forget how I stumbled across this - possibly Audible brought it to my attention and I enjoyed listening to them. there weren't very many but she had some interesting guests who talked all things crime fiction with her. One of them was her friend and fellow writer Lesley Thomson and as a result I checked out the first of Thomson's series about a mismatched couple called Stella and Jack. It was called The Detective's Daughter. I borrowed this from the library and I have to admit to finding it hard going. Jack is distinctly off-beam, and Stella has a lot of her own hangups and neither of these are as fully articulated as they might be; also there were jumps in the sequence of events, and timelines which were difficult to understand. It was well plotted and with some interesting characters and some surprises along the way and I may well persevere with the series and put the oddities in Book 1 down to sloppy editing if subsequent ones are better. 

Eight down, twelve to go - but it will be more than that by the time I manage another book post I suspect!