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Books I’ve Read: Varia

Over the past few weeks, during a dose of shingles, I’ve been raiding the Kindle store for cheap or free books to give me something easy to read. Here are my brief thoughts on a few of them.

Death of a Snob (Hamish Macbeth): the pick of the bunch. A pleasing Agatha Christie like mystery story set on an isolated island in the Scottish Highlands. Agatha Christie with more likeable characters.

A Reason To Kill (DI Matt Barnes): this book is currently available for free and may be slightly over priced. The plot was thin and the characters unsympathetic. However, I did quite enjoy some of the bits that slipped past the editor. One character was born at least two years after his father died; a gestation period which would impress a blue whale. I was fascinated by a glass of wine which changed from white to red while the heroine drank from it. To be fair, this book has lots of five star reviews on Amazon, so it must please some people.

Master Of War: The Blooding; a thrilling and engaging story of an English archer during the Black Prince’s rampage across northern France which builds up to a thrilling depiction of the battle of Crecy. Unfortunately, this occupies only the first third of the book and the rest was dull.

Road Closed (DI Geraldine Steel); not a bad book at all. A pleasing police procedural with a believable and sympathetic heroine. Get it while it’s cheap.

Moon Over Soho (PC Peter Grant); there are only so many possible variations on the theme of a murder mystery. I’m not sure that adding a supernatural overlay to the gritty streets of London adds anything to the genre.

The One You Love (Emma Holden suspense mystery trilogy); this book gets lots of good reviews on Amazon, but I found it excruciating and gave up about a third of the way in. Perhaps the second two-thirds are fantastic and I am doing it an injustice.

I’m now starting to feel a little better and I hope to finish off some of the serious books that have been mocking me from my desk for the last month.

2 replies on “Books I’ve Read: Varia”

I have greatly enjoyed all four of the Peter Grant series – in large part for the layer of dry humour which your comment doesn’t really mention, but also for some quite sharp observation which weaves in and out of the story.

Glad you enjoyed them, Doug. It could be that I wasn’t feeling at my best, but I really don’t recall the dry humour and sharp observations. If any of the others come up cheaply on Kindle, I’ll give them a go on your recommendation! (But I’ll bill you if I don’t like it 🙂 )

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