This post has my mini-reviews of the books I read for pleasure in March (so not including the books I read for review or research). I was actually ill for the entire month, which was horrible, but as you can see, it was the sort of illness where you read a lot, rather than the sort that makes you not want to pick up a book! It was mostly comfort reading though, I have to admit.
In case you're curious, here are my other posts from 2026 so far:
January,
February
Six Stories by Matt Wesolowski (2016)
I got a really bad cold at the end of February, and I didn’t really feel much like doing anything. I needed a bit of comfort reading, so I went back to a series that I love. I think this is my third time reading it.
Six Stories is the first in the series, though it could be read as a standalone (I think they all could, to be honest, though it’s much better to read all of them). The premise of the book is that it follows a podcast – also called
Six Stories – in which the presenter, Scott King, takes an old mystery and explores it through six episodes, each of which presents a different perspective on the case. In the first book, the case is the unsolved death of a teenager in the 90s. Tom Jeffries died at an outdoor pursuits centre in 1997, when he was there with a close group of family friends. His death was recorded as misadventure, but Scott King believes there might be more to it, not least because of the creepy local folklore that hints at a supernatural element. Each of the six episodes offers a different angle on the events that led up to Tom’s death, with conflicting accounts revealing a more complicated, human narrative. Yes – there are a couple of elements in the book that don’t quite make sense (maybe should have been caught in editing) but this is a series that I know I will keep going back to.
Hydra by Matt Wesolowski (2017)
Six Stories is the book that sets up the premise of the series, but
Hydra is the one where it really comes into its own. I actually originally encountered the series partway through, and then went back to read the earlier ones, but I think
Hydra remains my favourite (or one of my favourites). The case in
Hydra is a
solved one, rather than a mystery as such. In 2014, Arla Macleod killed her family in a notorious crime that led to her being locked up in a secure mental institution. Now, she has decided to speak to Scott King, to explain some of the background as she sees it. As in the previous book, King also speaks to other witnesses or people who were involved to get different perspectives. There’s a bit of inspiration taken from the Elisa Lam case (though it was written before the amazing documentary about her aired), and a bit of inspiration taken from bits of pop culture and online subcultures. It’s an incredibly rich story, told with such heartbreaking sensitivity, and Wesolowski’s ability to write sensitively about ‘troubled’ young people is just a beautiful thing to behold. This is why I love
Hydra – the layers of Arla’s character, and the way it has been understood and defined by others, defies a simplistic explanation of why she did what she did. The final revelations are both cruel and tragic, and the ending is one that really sticks in your head (even on the third reading!).
Changeling by Matt Wesolowski (2018)
Changeling continues the Six Stories series, but this time investigating an unsolved case – but another notorious one. In 1988, a child called Alfie Marsden disappeared from his father’s car on Christmas Eve. He was never seen again, despite a national campaign and various high-profile searches. The place where he disappeared was plagued with stories of supernatural phenomena, and King’s investigation into Alfie’s early childhood seems to be haunted around the edges by something unsettlingly folkloric. But it’s also haunted by a suspicion that something wasn’t right with Alfie’s upbringing. Over the years since he vanished, suspicion has constantly fallen on his mother, a woman who was clearly battling with demons, particularly alcoholism. But, of course, the story isn’t quite as simple as that, and Wesolowski explores the complexity of the family with his characteristic nuance and sensitivity. Unlike with
Hydra, it’s not so much a real-life case that inspires this one, but rather a real-life phenomenon (I don’t want to give too much away, so ‘phenomenon’ is doing a bit of heavy lifting there) that adds a layer of real tragedy that you might not see coming. Interestingly, I mentioned last month that Cara Hunter’s
Close to Home uses a plot twist I’ve seen elsewhere – no spoilers, but this is one of the places where I’d seen it before. However, it’s
Changeling not
Close to Home that made me cry when it was used. And yes – third time reading it, and third time crying my eyes out at the ending.
Making a Killing by Cara Hunter (2025)
Speaking of Cara Hunter and
Close to Home, I took a brief pause from Six Stories to read another of the D.I. Fawley series next. I got this one out of the library and decided to read it right away. It’s actually the most recent book in the series, and it’s a revisiting (in a way) of the first instalment. It was interesting for me, because I’ve been reading the series out of order, to read
Making a Killing immediately after reading
Close to Home. I’m going to have to be careful here though, as
Making a Killing itself contains plenty of spoilers for
Close to Home and it’s hard to talk about it without also giving spoilers. Suffice to say,
Close to Home was about the disappearance of a child called Daisy Mason in 2016.
Making a Killing takes place years later, when evidence at a current murder scene suggests that Fawley and his team might have got something very wrong in the Daisy Mason case. It picks up on an aspect of
Close to Home that the reader knows, but the detectives never find out, so we actually start out knowing more than Fawley, which is an interesting introduction. I have to say, this wasn’t my favourite book in the series. I loved the fact that the continuity is perfect, so it reads like an immediate sequel to the first book, but it sadly relies on a trope of detective fiction (no spoilers) than I don’t really like.
The Red House by Roz Watkins (2023)
The next book I read was a library book. And it was another one I chose because the premise looked kinda cool. Joseph Flowers brutally murdered his family when he was just fifteen, leaving only his younger sister Eve alive. Joseph has been in a coma ever since. No one knows why he committed such an atrocious crime, and he isn’t in a position to explain. However, there’s an online rumour that Joseph built a hidden level in a videogame he created that explains everything. As a child, Eve was a terrified witness to her brother’s crime; as an adult, she has to face the fact that she might not know everything. Things come to something of a head when Eve’s grandmother, who’s been Joseph’s constant carer during his vegetative state, dies and leaves Eve as Joseph’s only surviving relative. There’s a real conflict here, as Eve absolutely doesn’t want to be responsible for the man she thinks destroyed her life, but she also can’t help but want to know the full truth of what she witnessed as a child. The set-up – and Eve’s vulnerability, in particular – is really well done, and the video game storyline wasn’t quite what I expected (in a good way). But – oh wow – it’s the ending that’s the real treat. The surprise twist is a thing of beauty, because all the clues are there, all the way through the story, but I still didn’t see it coming in the slightest. I really enjoyed this one.
Beast by Matt Wesolowski (2019)
Back to my reread of Wesolowski’s Six Stories series now, and I’ve reached
Beast. In this story, Scott King is invited to investigate the case of a vlogger who died during a terrible snowstorm. The initial enticement to investigate comes from some graffiti reading, ‘Who put Lizzie in the tower?’, which obviously echoes, ‘Who put Bella in the wych elm?’, but the echo turns out to be a bit of a red herring. Three young men were convicted of trapping Lizzie in a tower to freeze to death, but online theories abound about cults and vampires. Not least because the town in which this happened already has a vampire legend. Weaving folkloric ideas of vampires with online challenges – Lizzie was taking part in an allegedly notorious ‘Dead in Six Days’ challenge –
Beast presents a slippery story in which culprits and victim alike are hard to pin down. Each testimony gives us a different angle on the main characters, meaning that it’s hard to say
what exactly happened, never mind
why. This isn’t my favourite book in the series – it doesn’t really hit the way
Hydra did for me – but it’s probably the most atmospheric. There’s some great evocations of place in all the Six Stories series, from outward bound centres to hotels to holiday resorts, but the snowbound town of Ergarth is incredibly atmospheric. Every time I read it, I feel like I can picture the locations so vividly, and this really adds to the immersive nature of the storytelling.
Deity by Matt Wesolowski (2020)
Deity is the penultimate book in the Six Stories series, but it’s actually the first one I ever read. I absolutely loved this one when I first read it, and I think it remains one of my favourites in the series. The story involves a disgraced pop star – I don’t think you need too much imagination to work out the inspiration, though it’s by no means a direct correspondence. Zach Crystal was a child star turned megastar turned reclusive millionaire, whose career was dogged by intense fame, obsessive fans and allegations of abuse towards children and vulnerable young people. He had a sprawling forest mansion complete with treehouse where he would invite his ‘special’ fans, but there were also rumours of something more supernatural surrounding the star and his isolated home. Scott King’s investigation uncovers events that seem impossible, considers the power of celebrity to obscure genuine crimes, and brings back a character from an earlier instalment – who we see in a very different light this time. There are a few editing issues with this one, like a character talking about something happening in the 90s when surely that’s too far back in the past, and a little bit of suspension of disbelief is required to accept that we have someone hitting Jackson-like mega-stardom with just two albums, released over a decade apart. But… it’s still an insanely compelling story, and even after however many rereads, I still adore the ending and the explanation of what was really going on.
Demon by Matt Wesolowski (2022)
The final instalment of Six Stories,
Demon, is probably the darkest of the series, and I think this comes from the fact that, like all the others, there are echoes of something real here. However, the real-life story that haunts the periphery of
Demon is – possibly – just too bleak and dark to be comfortable. The story Scott King investigates in this one is the murder of a vulnerable young child by two other children. There’s no doubt as to their guilt, but – now that they have served their time and been released with new identities – the investigation is about
why this happened, rather than identifying different culprits. As in the rest of the series, there’s an incredibly evocative sense of place, hints of something supernatural, and a deeply nuanced exploration of what childhood can look like for vulnerable, neglected and ‘difficult’ children. And while there are undoubtedly echoes of a real-life case, the story is 100% not based on that tragedy. What unfolds, with heartbreaking inevitability, is the story of two children who are alone and find a bond with each other. If you’ve read the rest of the series, it should come as no surprise that Wesolowski entirely rejects the idea that children can be ‘born evil’, but rather pushes at the darker edges of what adverse childhood experiences and trauma can do. It’s not an easy read, and the ending has left me in floods of tears each time I’ve read it. A powerful finale to the series.
In the Dark by Cara Hunter (2018)
I was still ill by the end of the month, so I went back to working my way through Hunter’s D.I. Fawley series (though not in any discernible order). The next one I read was the second in the series. The team are called in when a young woman and her child are found in a basement, held captive, starving and terrified. The woman can’t speak, and the old man, William Harper, who lives in the house claims never to have seen them before but may be suffering from dementia. The case gets more complicated, as the house in which the girl is found is a close neighbour to the home of a missing journalist who disappeared some time ago. The elderly William Harper seems an unlikely suspect, but, of course, he wasn’t always so infirm. Fawley’s team have to dig into his past to find out what sort of man they’re dealing with, now that he’s not able to explain himself clearly. I’m going to be really careful not to give any hint of a spoiler here, but
In the Dark is, for me, the outright winner of the ‘things are not what they seem’ prize in the Fawley series. I loved the reveal in this one – though it does use that particular trope that’s used in
Making a Killing that I don’t really like – but I can forgive a lot with this one. As a fan of unreliable narrators and narratives, this one was right up my street.
The Busy Body by Kemper Donovan (2024)
The next book I read this month – while still convalescing – was one I picked up while Christmas shopping on a 3-for-2 bundle. I didn’t know anything about it, but I was hoping for a fun, engaging read. And that’s exactly what I got! The main character of
The Busy Body is a ghostwriter who is engaged to write the memoir of a former senator and recently defeated presidential candidate, Dorothy Gibson. Dorothy ran as an independent candidate, and is currently holed away at her home in Maine after being blamed for splitting the result and letting a terrible man win. Our unnamed narrator has always been a fan of Dorothy Gibson, so she jumps at the chance to spend time with her and learn more as she writes the memoir, despite being a rather unsociable character. And then – of course – there’s a murder. This is pretty light fare as whodunnits go. It’s not a political thriller or a dark tale of brutal slayings. What we have is a cantankerous ghostwriter, a fiercely intelligent politician, and a hunky bodyguard teaming up to solve a puzzle. There are some neat clues along the way, and a definite debt to Agatha Christie (including one plot device that Christie fans might recognize), but it’s a fun mystery in the proper whodunnit tradition. One of the things I found most interesting was the way the narrator – and, I guess, series detective – remains something of a mystery herself, which is a bit unusual but rather refreshing.
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