Keeping Track of my Reads

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Have finished Silver by Chris Hammer. I've read this author "backwards" i.e. I read his latest book first and this is his second book his first being Scrublands which I feel I have to read now! This was good, better that his latest one I thought. It was about a small seaside town in Australia that is about to be developed into a large tourist area. Martin Scarsdale is the reporter who returns to Port Silver, the place of his birth, to start a new life with his partner, Mandy, but when he arrives, he finds a dead body in the house Mandy is renting and Mandy in shock, with blood on her hands. He discovers the body is an old school friend of his, so he sets out to clear Mandy and find out who killed his friend. I enjoyed it but there was a lot of twists and turns to keep track of and of course, there was a dark secret to be discovered as well (isn't there always). 😊

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I did it again, have finished Vera Kelly is not a Mystery by Rosalie Knecht, this is the second book with this character I enjoyed it, it was a bit unusual. Vera Kelly was formerly in the CIA and decides to set up on her own as a private detective when she is sacked from her job in TV. It's set in the late 60's in New York. The reason she was sacked was her employer discovered she was gay after overhearing a telephone conversation she had with her ex. It gave a good insight into life for a gay person in the the late sixties. She's hired by a couple to find a missing child who was brought to the US from the Dominican Republic following a coup there, but she suspects they are not what they seem to be.

I must try to find the first book in the series Who is Vera Kelly?

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I've just finished Another Life by Jodie Chapman. I enjoyed this book. It is basically a love story set over a few decades from when the couple meet in their teens up to their mid thirties. They work together during the summer at a Multiplex and get together, but there's a problem as her family are members of a religious cult and she isn't supposed to date anyone from outside the religion. The book happens in flashbacks, back and forth, but it's easy to keep track of. The boyfriend has a brother, and as the book moves on it tells the story of his family and the tragedies that occur, and the relationship he has with his father.

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My latest read was the second Richard Osman book about the Thursday Murder Club. I enjoyed it, it was an easy read. I thought it was better than his first one as the story had a bit more to it. It was about a former MI5 agent, an ex husband of one of the main characters (Elizabeth) who turns up saying that 20 million worth of diamonds are missing, and he is being blamed on taking them during a raid on the house of a Mafia middleman. There follows the usual red herrings and adventures for these elderly detectives who set out to find the diamonds. Easy to read and easy to follow, nothing too taxing.

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Have just finished The Killing Hills by Chris Offutt. It’s set in Kentucky, in the Appalachian mountains. It was about a combat veteran home on leave because his wife is pregnant, but he suspects it’s not his. His sister is the sheriff in the small town and a woman’s body is found. She asks him to help her find who did it while he is home on leave. It was a good read with short chapters and fast moving action. Some of the language and expressions were hard to understand, but also with some lovely prose and descriptions of wildlife and nature. I enjoyed it.

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My latest read was Game On - Tempting Twenty-Eight by Janet Evanovich. I've read all of this series of books in sequence. It's just a habit now really as they are all more or less the same with the same characters, but they can be funny in places. It's an easy read and I feel like I know the characters personally at this stage! Stephanie Plum is the main character who is a bounty hunter/bail bonds enforcer in Trenton, New Jersey and each story deals with a list of oddballs who haven't turned up for their court hearing and she has to get them to re-schedule. There is a boyfriend who's a cop and a very sexy/hot man who heads up a security company she tries to avoid in case she sleeps with him. It's all good harmless fun.....

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I’ve been away on holidays for nearly three weeks and read 8 books, they were:

Scrublands by Chris Hammer - set in Australia, a page turner with a few too many twists and turns.

Nickel Boys by Coulsen Whitehead - very good, but very sad.

Silverwiew by John le Carre - good, his final novel, but fairly straight forward, not as complicated as his earlier stories.

The Dark Remains by William McIlvanney and Ian Rankin - good, again a bit straight forward, this was an unfinished novel by William McIlvanney and finished by Ian Rankin.

Shoot the Moonlight Out by William Boyle - very good, a new author for me, very similar to George Pelecanos and Dennis Lehane, strong Irish content in this book, set in Brooklyn.

Little Siberia by Antti Tuomainen - very good, quirky book, set in northern Finland.

A Treacherous Paradise by Henning Mankell - good, a bit different for him, about East Africa Portuguese as it was called.

City on Fire by Don Winslow, very good, didn’t like it as first thought it was a bit cliched, but it was a good yarn. First of a trilogy.

That was it, enjoyed them all.....

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I’ve finished Harlem Shuffle by Colton Whitehead. Really enjoyed it, it takes a while to get used to his style but when you do, it’s easy reading. This book, of course, is set in Harlem in the early 60s. Ray is the owner of a furniture store in Harlem who is only slightly crooked! His cousin is the crooked one who gets him involved in some shady dealings. The book also touches on the race riots in 1963 and its effects on Harlem and it’s people. Would recommend.

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Just finished Punishment of a Hunter by Yulia Yakovleva. It’s about a series of murders and is set in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, during in the 1930s when Stalin was in power and the political situation was precarious, to say the least. The detective is arrested and is under suspicion by the secret police, but after 6 months is freed to help solve the crimes. There may also be link to paintings that are disappearing from the Hermitage museum. I enjoyed it but found the Russian names hard to keep track of. It also left a few loose ends, so there may be a follow up to this one. An interesting read.

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My last read was The Pact by Sharon Bolton. It was a story about a group of rich kids in Oxford who get their kicks by driving the wrong way on the motorway, but this time they cause an accident and the death of a mother and her two children. One of them offers to take the blame but when she gets out of jail, she will come looking for them, and they will all owe her. Twenty years later, she’s back, and its payback time!

I enjoyed it, but as usual it was a bit unbelievable in places, but it was a page turner.

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My last read was something a bit different, for me anyway. It was The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal. I’d read something about it a long time ago and made a note to read it, I just happened to spot it in the library so took it out. It was an interesting read, about Jim Willard, a high school athlete who is gay, it was written in 1948 and it caused a sensation at the time. It’s fairly tame by today’s standards. He has an obsession with a high school friend following a romantic tryst with him that he didn’t follow up on. They went their separate ways. Jim going to Hollywood and later joining the army. He continues his gay lifestyle throughout, hoping to see his pal Bob along the way. He eventually returns home at the same time as Bob who has married and has a child, he’s determined to rekindle the friendship/romance with unsavoury results.

I enjoyed it but the language was very dated.

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Have finished Trace Elements by Donna Leon. This is another one in the series of books set in Venice with Commissario Brunetti. I’ve read all of these books and really enjoy them. The stories are fairly simple, it’s the setting of Venice and the characters that make the stories. This one was about the pollution of the water system in Veneto. A woman is dying and asks Brunetti to find out who killed her husband, a water inspector, and why. An easy read, a bit formulaic at this stage, but will keep reading them.

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I’ve finished the latest spy novel by Mike Herron, Bad Actors. I’ve read all of this series of books and really enjoy them. This one was no different. His characters go from one novel to the next, unless they’re killed off! He always has a political angle, this one had characters thinly disguised as Cummings and Johnson. It involved a Russian secret agent arriving in London, but why has he come? The Cummings character called Sparrow, wants to control MI5 and sets out to get rid of First Desk, i.e, the head woman in MI5. These books have been made into a series on Apple I think, I don’t have it so I don’t know if it’s as good as the books, usually they’re not.

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Have finished reading The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex. I was a bit disappointed with it. It was about thee men who disappeared from a lighthouse in 1972. It was locked from the inside with the table set for a meal and the clocks stopped. I didn’t find the characters likeable and the style of writing where the narrator was talking to a character who was writing a book on the disappearance, but who didn’t speak, was a bit irritating. It was a bit like they were talking to themselves. But it did create an atmosphere when it was set in the lighthouse.

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I’ve just finished Different Class by Joanne Harris. I really enjoyed this book. It was a psychological thriller set in a boys private school in the north of England. The story started in 1981 and went between 1981 and 2005. It was set around the Classics teacher and three boys that were in his class in 1981 and have reappeared as adults in 2005. One of them arrives as the new Headmaster tasked with turning the school around which means change, just what the Classics teacher doesn’t want. There was a background of alleged sexual abuse weaved through the story. But, parts of it was very funny, especially the Classics teacher wit. If you like a story that slow to unfold and has a few surprises, I’d recommend it.

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I read the second book in this series Vera Kelly is not a Mystery, back in August and managed to get the first one in the library, Who is Vera Kelly. It was very good. It covers her early life as a teenager and her difficult relationship with her mother, and how she was recruited by the CIA. She is sent to Argentina, Buenos Aires to infiltrate a group of what they think are KGB spies. She’s there for 9 months altogether and nearly gets stranded there. It was interesting to read about this time in history. It was easy to read with short chapters and the story moved along nicely, would recommend.

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I’ve finished Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. I’d read his first book which won the Pulitzer All the Light We Cannot See which I really enjoyed. This was not as good, but still enjoyable. It’s based around an old Greek text and follows it’s journey from the 15th century, right into the future through the lives of 5 different people. It was a big book, but I enjoyed it and found it interesting.

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My latest read was Transient Desires by Donna Leon another in her series set in Venice with her Police Inspector Guido Brunetti. This involved two American tourists who are injured during a boat ride on the Lagoon late at night and when investigated uncovers human trafficking. I enjoyed it, it follows a formula, so it’s “comfort reading” for me.

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I’ve finished a Michael Connolly book Lost Light, in the Harry Bosch series. It’s one of his older ones, published in 2003. Harry has retired from the LAPD and there’s a case that was never solved which he sets out to solve. It involves a murder, followed by a robbery of 2 million dollars. It was a good read, a page turner until the end.

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I’ve just finished Knife by Jo Nesbo, I read a few of these during lockdown and found them entertaining. This was a continuation of his previous novel. His wife is murdered and as he was in a drunken haze at the time, he can’t remember anything. Did he kill the woman he loved, or is he being set up for it... A good read with a lot of twists and turns and red herrings.

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My latest read was The Hard Revolution by George Pelecanos, another one of my favourite writers. This was set in Washington and it was about two different groups of men, one black and one white. It was set in 1968 and was about race tensions and it’s consequences. I enjoyed it, but there was a lot of references to American football and obscure R&B and Soul artists. I think his later books are better. I enjoyed it, another page turner, and easy to read.

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I’ve just read The Favour by Laura Vaughan. This was about a girl who, as we would say, “had notions”. Her mother married a older man who lived on a large estate in Wales, but had no money. He died and her mother, much to her dismay, sold up and moved to suburban London. She wanted to get in with a better class of people than those that attended her local comprehensive, so she decided to go on an art trip to Italy, mimicking the Grand Tours of the 18th century. It turned out that this group of wealthy people were not very nice, but she tried to ingratiate herself with them nonetheless. Of course something happens that puts some of them in her debt, hence the title. It was a good read, but they weren’t a group you could warm to or empathise with.

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Have just finished Free Love by Tessa Hadley. I enjoyed this book. It was about a 40 year old woman living in Suburban London in 1968. She’s married to a senior civil servant in the Foreign Office and has a beautiful Art Deco house and two children, a boy and a girl, life should be perfect, but she’s unhappy and starts an affair with a 20 year old when as the son of an old family friend, he’s invited to dinner. He’s a bohemian and London is ‘swinging’ she starts to visit him in his flat and it goes from there. It’s also told from the viewpoint of her daughter, who is 15 and starting to experiment as well. I really enjoyed it and would recommend it.

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My last read was A Welcome Grave by Michael Koryta. It was a page turner, very similar to Michael Connolly, but not as polished, I thought. It was about an ex cop, now a private investigator. He was sacked from the police for beating up a man who started a relationship with his ex fiancé, the man is then found dead and he is in the frame for it, so has to find out who really killed him, and why. I found the plot a bit convoluted with plenty of twists and turns, all in all I enjoyed it. I never heard of this writer before I got this book from someone who’d bought it in the states.

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I’ve finished The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle by Neil Blackmore. This was like an updated version of the book I read before called The Favour about the Grand Tour. This was set in the 18th century and was about two brothers who came from a wealthy background. Their father owned a shipping company so they were considered not quite good enough by the nobility who went on the Grand Tour. Their parents wanted them to be acepted by the upper class and were hoping this would do it. One brother was all for it, but the other, who was beginning to accept that he was gay, didn’t. He meets a man who he becomes infatuated with, who turns out to be a thief and a bit of a rebel. He becomes besotted with him and they begin a relationship. This of course will lead to tragedy. I enjoyed it, the storyline was unusual and interesting.

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I’ve just finished The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri, this is the first book in the Inspector Montalbano series that was televised by Italian television and shown on BBC4. I watched some of them, but thought them a bit repetitive. The book was good. The television series was very faithful to the style of the book. Plenty of red herrings and all sorts of characters. It was a small book and easy to read except it took a while to get used to the Italian names. It was about a local politician found dead in strange circumstances, but he died of natural causes, but Montalbano finds it interesting as to why he was found where he was and so, tries to solve the mystery.

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I’ve finally finished Ulysses. It’s taken me about two years only reading a page or two a day. Found the Nighttown section the hardest to read, the rest wasn’t too bad. I can see how it was banned back in the day. Somof the “sayings” in the book I remembered my mother using, she was born in the 1920’s. I have a companion book for it. I might try reading it again using it for reference.

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My latest read was All the Colours of Darkness by Peter Robinson. This was a Detective Banks novel and the first one I’ve read. The books were serialised on TV and I’d seen a few of them. It was good but a bit too long. It was about the murder suicide of two gay men, one of whom was a spy for MI6. Banks was warned off it, but, of course, that didn’t stop him or his side kick Annie from investigating. It turned out not to be as complicated as everyone thought and ended badly for the suspect, who was technically innocent. I might see if there are any of his books in the library, I got this one from a family member who thought I’d like it.

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Have read The Ruins by Phoebe Wynne. I didn’t really enjoy this. It was told from the point of view of a twelve year old child so I found it a bit disjointed. It was set in 1985 and then also moved to 2010. It was about three children spending the month of August in a Chateau with their parents who are minor Aristocracy who are running out of money. They weren’t very nice people, and child abuse was hinted at but again I found it difficult to tie it down, maybe because it’s told from the point of view of a child, things are hinted at, but not fully said, the adults can’t seem to have a proper conversation and spend their time drinking and fighting with each other. One of the children returns as an adult to buy the chateau and exorcise some of the demons associated with the house. It got better towards the end when the tragedy happens, I was glad that something had happened at last.

boccy23

Thanks for that. Very interesting reading list. Used some of your recommendations and ordered some new reads!