My Year in Books 2026: March

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.

My Year in Books 2022: August

Well... here's a turn of events... after months and months of reluctantly publishing posts with a single book on them (two at most), my August post has TEN titles! Famine or feast, I guess. By way of explanation, I had a week off work in August, and I'd planned to just spend it at home, recharging my batteries. Also, five of the books on today's list were rereads. But then again, five of them weren't!

In case you're interested, here are my posts from the rest of the year: January, February, March, April, May, June, July

And here are the books I read in August...

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas (2020)

I borrowed Catherine House from my local library last month, but I only finished reading it this month. The blurb for this one is cryptic, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. And even now that I’ve read it, I’m not sure what genre I would say it is. The eponymous Catherine House is a prestigious – though somewhat secretive – university that selects its students carefully and makes them an offer they can’t refuse (namely free tuition and accommodation for the three years of their degree). In return, Catherine House asks its students to give themselves entirely to their studies, not leaving the university at all during their time there and renouncing everything from their former lives, including their friends and family. The protagonist is Ines, a troubled young woman who is running away from some pretty dark experiences, but who has no real inclination towards the idiosyncratic courses of study. I’ve read a few other books that use ‘archaic place of learning hides sinister secrets’ as a premise (most recently Madam by Phoebe Wynne), but Catherine House was quite different. I enjoyed the slow-burn descriptions of the university itself, as well as the claustrophobic intensity of Ines’s experiences. The devil is really in the detail here, and Thomas uses some subtle techniques to develop the madness of Catherine House (hint: watch the descriptions of food as the book progresses!). Catherine House is off-beat and sinister in all the right ways, and its ending is… well… let’s just say questions remain!

Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz (2020)

This next book was also from my local library. Despite being a fan of his television work (Foyle’s War and Poirot specifically), I only read my first Horowitz novel earlier this year. I saw this – which is a bit of a hefty tome – and thought it might be a good one to read on my week off. And wow – I was so right about that! Moonflower Murders is the follow-up to Magpie Murders, though you don’t need to have read the first book to enjoy the second (and there aren’t any spoilers for the previous book, as far as I can tell). Editor Susan Ryeland has left the publishing world and now runs a hotel in Crete with her partner. Out of the blue, a couple (also hoteliers) ask for her help with a mystery. Several years earlier, there was a murder at their hotel. One of the staff was arrested, but they now suspect the police got the wrong man. A novelist – Susan’s star novelist who was murdered in Magpie Murders – wrote a book that their daughter believes reveals the true killer’s identity. But their daughter has disappeared without revealing what, exactly, she read in the novel. What I loved – loved – about this book is that you follow Susan’s investigation up until the point she decides to reread the novel, and then you read the entire fictional novel yourself to find the clues! As ‘story-within-story’ novels go, this one is incredibly ambitious, beautifully written and a lot of fun.

Six Stories by Matt Wesolowski (2016)

If you’ve read some of my previous review posts, you might have seen me talk about Wesolowski’s Six Stories series. I’m a big fan of this series, so I was delighted when I got the sixth book, Demon, in one of my monthly Abominable Books subscription boxes earlier this year. I’ve been saving Demon for a treat, and since I was on holiday for a week (and it was my birthday), it seemed like the perfect time to read it. But then I decided I should reread the other five books first… so the next few reviews are of rereads before I got to Demon. Six Stories is the first book in the series, and so it’s the one that introduces the concept and style that I love so much. Six Stories is a fictional podcast, hosted by the enigmatic Scott King, which looks at cold cases. Each of the podcast episodes covers a different ‘story’ connected with the case, and then at the end Scott King asks listeners (meaning that Wesolowski asks readers) to make up their own minds about what might have happened. In the first book, the case is the death of a teenager a couple of decades earlier. The body of Tom Jeffries was found at an outdoor pursuit centre a year after the boy was reported missing. Scott King speaks to six witnesses (or does he? there is a bit of a twist with this one) to hear their stories and piece together the truth.

Hydra by Matt Wesolowski (2017)

Continuing with my series reread… Hydra is possibly my favourite one of the series, and it has a bit more of a punch to it than Six Stories. The first book introduces the overall concept – including the way possible supernatural explanations will be woven into each of the ‘episodes’ – but it’s really with Hydra that the series properly finds its feet. I was totally blown away by this one when I first read it, and fortunately it did hold up to a reread. The case in this one is that of Arla McLeod, a young woman who brutally murdered her family several years earlier. At first glance, it might seem like this is an open-and-shut case – there is no question that Arla committed the murders, and the explanation for her actions appears to be ‘paranoid schizophrenia’ – but there is so much richness to the story that unfolds, it’s hard to do it justice in a mini-review. Taking in various odd niches of internet culture (including Korean and Japanese challenge games, and old-school trolling), plus moral panics about dark music (via Wesolowski’s fictional ‘bad boy’ musician Skexxixx), Hydra handles its subject material with sensitivity and nuance that’s really second to none. When it comes to the Six Stories series, I came for the quirky format and unreliable narration, but I stayed for the depth and complexity of the explorations of darkness. Although Six Stories hints at some of the series’ underlying concerns, Hydra expands on these in original and thought-provoking ways.

Changeling by Matt Wesolowski (2018)

The next book in the series is Changeling, which goes in a different direction (though still exploring some of those underlying concerns). This time the case is that of a missing child: Alfie Marsden was seven years old when he disappeared from his father’s car one Christmas Eve, and no trace of the boy has been found since. Scott King is contacted by someone claiming to be a ‘friend’ who encourages him to feature the case as one of his podcast series. His coverage begins with interviews with people who knew Alfie’s parents before the boy’s disappearance, and when I first read the book I had an almost instant distrust of the narrative that was being told by the interviewees, which was heightened by being ‘primed’ not to take things at face value by the previous books in Wesolowski’s series. Obviously, on rereading, you go into knowing what you should and shouldn’t trust, but this just makes the story being constructed in the initial interviews feel that much more painful. As with Hydra, there’s a real punch to Changeling. Yes – there is the story of Alfie Marsden (and the resolution of that element made me cry both times I read the book), but there’s also another story, related to the missing child, that lingers with you for longer. Again, the sensitivity and here is really what holds your attention. Life – in all its dark, murky complexity – is far more unpleasant, and far more compelling, than anything the supernatural can offer.

Beast by Matt Wesolowski (2019)

On to Beast now, which is the one I read most recently as I originally read the series slightly out of order. In many ways, this is familiar territory if you’ve read the previous three. Scott King takes on another case – the death of an up-and-coming YouTube star in a small town in north-east England. As in Hydra, the case in Beast isn’t actually a cold one. Elizabeth Barton was found dead in a derelict town (known as the ‘Vampire Tower’) on the edge of the town in 2018. Her killers were immediately apprehended and are serving life sentences for her murder and the mutilation of her body (which was decapitated). Once again, this feels like an open-and-shut case, but Scott King is determined to see it through, to see if he can uncover an explanation for why the young men would do something so macabre. The book weaves together vampire folklore, socio-economic commentary and some internet and urban legend touchstones (I particularly enjoyed the ‘Who put Lizzie in the tower?’ graffiti that echoes ‘Who put Bella down the Wych Elm?’), but ultimately – as we’ve come to expect from the series – the underlying themes start to emerge. There’s a bit of bleakness to the end of this one, particularly in the case of one character (no spoilers!) who, it would seem, never really stood a chance. But as well as the bleakness, there’s more Gothic wildness to Beast than the previous instalments, including some wonderfully evocative descriptions and set pieces.

Deity by Matt Wesolowski (2020)

Deity was the book that originally introduced me to the series. I remember when I got it as the featured book in one of my Abominable Book boxes – I knew straightaway that this was the series for me. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this a million times before, but I’m a sucker for unreliable narrators and narratives, and so I was instantly intrigued by the series concept. Rereading the series in order this time, I’m not sure Deity has the same sort of punch as Hydra and Changeling (or, to a lesser extent, Beast), but it’s still got a lot to hook you in. Scott King investigates the case of legendary pop star Zach Crystal, who died in 2019 in his enigmatic mansion in the Highlands. Part of the fun of Deity – even more so than with the other books in the series – is spotting the pop culture tales that may have inspired the fiction. I also enjoyed the return of Skexxixx, and the development of this character, which (thankfully) moves him further away from the real-life ‘shock rocker’ who I’ve no doubt was an initial inspiration. As with Beast, there are some fabulous descriptions of place here, but that’s really something that’s run through the series since Six Stories. The juxtaposition of unimaginable wealth and fame with the struggling families of Zach Crystal’s fans is very well done too. In the end, there’s more of an ‘urgh’ than an ‘ouch’ at the end of Deity but variety’s no bad thing!

Demon by Matt Wesolowski (2021)

And so to Demon… Another thing you may have noticed if you’ve read my other review posts is that I sometimes don’t read blurbs before I start books. Sometimes I think it’s just better to go in without any preconceptions. Given how much I love this series, and how excited I was to read Demon, it probably goes without saying that I didn’t read the blurb or any of the marketing beforehand. So I was totally unprepared for where this one was going to go. The case in Demon is the murder of a child in the 1990s. The boy was killed by two other children, who were sent to secure units to serve out their sentences before being granted lifelong anonymity on their release. It has to be said, this is a pretty bold move from Wesolowski. The fictional case covered in Scott King’s podcast bears some similarities to the real-life inspiration (which, I’m sure, can be in no doubt), but it’s also substantively different in a lot of ways, and I think this was a sensible move. It allows Wesolowski to create a fiction – one which includes his now-trademark supernatural elements undercut by sensitive social commentary – without accidentally romanticizing what is still a very raw and painful story. However, it has to be said that Demon differs in some significant ways from the rest of the series, particularly in the ending. No spoilers, but it’s a very good conclusion, and really the only one that could be reached.

The Appeal by Janice Hallett (2021)

Demon left me a bit reflective, so I wanted something a little lighter next. I borrowed The Appeal from my local library, and (as is sometimes my way) I didn’t read the blurb properly. I got the impression it was a straightforward murder mystery, possibly with a courtroom element, and so I felt like I knew what I would be getting. I was wrong! And I’m very glad about that, because The Appeal is an absolute joy, and it was great to be surprised. This is a great one to go into without any prior knowledge, because then your experience of reading mirrors the experience of Femi and Charlotte, the two characters through whose eyes we see the story unfold. Femi and Charlotte are law students, and, as we discover in the WhatsApp messages and email at the beginning of the book, they’ve been given a bundle of documents to read by their supervisor. The students are given no information as to what the documents relate to (and so neither is the reader), they’re just ask to read through them and work out what’s going on. It turns out, the documents are (mostly) a series of email exchanges between various members of an amateur dramatics society. What’s the story behind the emails? And what can this have to do with a legal case? Ah well… that’s what Femi and Charlotte (and you, the dear reader) have to work out. Ambitious, original, very entertaining, and a great companion to Moonflower Murders.

The Cottingley Cuckoo by A.J. Elwood (2021)

The next book I read this month was from my Abominable Books box back in December. I didn’t realize until I started to read it that A.J. Elwood is also Alison Littlewood, and so I have read one of the author’s previous novels (Mistletoe). To me, it is quite clear that Mistletoe and The Cottingley Cuckoo were written by the same person, so I’m not totally sure about the distinction between pen-names. But this isn’t a criticism! The things the two books share were all the things I really liked about Mistletoe, particularly the slightly uncanny narrative voice and the deceptively-domestic-but-actually-quite-horrifying storylines. The main character in The Cottingley Cuckoo is Rose, a young woman who dropped out of university when her mother became ill, and who now works in a residential care home for older people. One of the residents is an enigmatic and unsettling woman named Mrs Favell. The other staff leave Rose to deal with Mrs Favell, who begins to draw her into a story of fairies and changelings. I loved the way the horror – and make no mistake, this is a horror novel – grows at a slow, claustrophobic pace, almost to the point that it becomes unbearable. I also very much enjoyed the use of fairies as horror in the book. It’s not easy to do (given the twee, cute character of modern ideas of the fair folk), but it’s done exceptionally well in Elwood’s book. No spoilers, but I absolutely loved the book’s ending as well.

Tiny Birthday No. 18

I'd been saving Demon by Matt Wesolowski to read as a birthday treat, but, as I had a week off, I decided to reread the rest of the Six Stories series first, accompanied by Bertie's Revenge tea from The Tea Crew in my new upside-down cat cup (a present from Rob).

(This is how I'm celebrating my birthday this year - see here for the reasons why.)

My Year in Books 2021: August

Time for my monthly round-up of the books I've read for fun recently. Once again, it's not a long post - most of the things I read in August were for review (though many of them were fun as well, of course). So there are just three mini-reviews in this post.

In case you're interested, here are my posts from the rest of the year: January, February, March, April, May, June, July

Beast by Matt Wesolowski (2019)

I’ve been saving this as a treat. I first stumbled on Wesolowski’s Six Stories series when I got Book 5 (Deity) from Abominable Books. I loved it so much, I immediately bought Books 1-4. After I’d read Six Stories, Hydra and Changeling, I suddenly panicked as Wesolowski apparently hadn’t even started writing Book 6. I didn’t want to leave myself with a massive wait (I really do love the series that much!), so I decided to keep Beast for as long as I could. This month we went on holiday for the first time since December 2019, and it seemed like the perfect time for a book I was looking forward to. You’ll be glad to know that it didn’t disappoint. The Six Stories books all follow the same format: podcaster Scott King explores a mystery (not usually a cold case, but rather a case where the solution has left lingering questions) through six episodes of his show. Each episode (each chapter) offers a different perspective, with the answer only becoming apparent at the end. Beast is about the death of a YouTube influencer, Lizzie Barton, during a cold snap in a small north-east town. Three men were tried and convicted for the crime, but their motive has never been explained. Was it jealousy? Or was it something to do with the town’s legend about a vampire who was killed in the same tower where Lizzie’s body was found? Absolutely loved this one (and I can’t wait for Book 6)!

Death in White Pyjamas by John Bude (1944)

Another one I’ve been saving... I like reading British Library Crime Classics when I’m on holiday, so I’ve saved this one since my mother-in-law bought it for me. It’s a double-bill of John Bude novels, but I read Death in White Pyjamas first. In many ways, it’s pretty classic Golden Age detective fiction. A group of people gather in a country house, and someone gets bumped off (and, of course, all the other guests have a motive for seeing the victim off). What gives this one its charm is that a lot of time is spent describing the world in which the suspects and victim live, with the murder only coming a good way into the story. The assembled guests are all members of a London theatre company, who are staying at the country home of their millionaire investor. There’s intrigue, blackmail, theft and threats, but there’s also a lot of backstage chatter and theatrical gossip. I’ve read some of John Bude’s other novels, most of which have a strong sense of place that I really enjoy. Rather than focusing on a specific location, this one is more evocative of its theatre backdrop, which turns out to be equally enjoyable. It’s perhaps a bit more light and airy than other Golden Age novels (though the murder method turns out to be surprisingly unsettling), and Martin Edwards’s introduction explains that this was a deliberate choice by Bude. I found it nicely immersive, and there were some rather neat clues as well.

The Children's Secret by Nina Monroe (2021)

And now… another free eBook from Secret Readers, despite my insistence last month that I was going to stop reading free eBooks. Perhaps that was a bit hasty, as The Children’s Secret wasn’t too bad. There were some bits of it I really enjoyed, and Monroe’s writing is very good. The story is set in Middlebrook, a small town in New Hampshire near the Canadian border. It begins with Kaitlin preparing a party to bring local families together before the start of the new school year. Her son Bryar has been having difficulty socializing, and Kaitlin believes a party with the neighbours will help him. It all goes horribly wrong when the children sneak off to the stables. Someone gets hold of a gun belonging to Kaitlin’s husband Ben, and one of the children ends up seriously injured. What happened in the stables? Well, that’s the children’s secret. They aren’t telling, and growing suspicions set the adults against one another. What I liked about this book was the ease with which Monroe introduces a large cast of characters, but without it being bewildering. I also liked the way the relationships between the children emerge and evolve as the story goes on. What didn’t I like? The ending is remarkably heavy-handed and a bit too idealistic for me. Some of the points (specifically about gun control), which had been handled with nuance and sensitivity, are glossed over in the end. So, great characters, bad ending. I’d still probably recommend it though.

My Year in Books 2021: March

Well... this is definitely a longer post than last month's! I've read a few more novels this month than in February, mostly due to me finding a new series I like and binge-reading most of it.

So here come my mini-reviews of the books I read in March, and in case you're interested, here are the other posts so far from this year: January, February

The Boatman's Daughter by Andy Davidson (2020)

I’ve fallen really behind with my Abominable Book Club reading (that’s the amazing monthly horror book box that I subscribe to). I’ve got a few months’ worth of books from them to read – all of which look great – and so I thought I’d make a start on catching up this month. The first one I read was the featured book a couple of months ago. The Boatman’s Daughter is the story of Miranda Crabtree (the daughter of the title). It begins with Miranda accompanying her dad on a job – he is taking the local ‘witch’ out to perform some clandestine service for Billy Cotton, the local (unhinged) preacher. Things take a pretty unpleasant turn early on, setting in motion a dark tale in which Miranda is forced to take on horrible work for horrible people, before realizing that things have to change if she’s going to ensure her survival (and the survival of those she cares for). That plot summary is a bit rubbish, to be honest, but I don’t want to give too much away. The dark, unsettling pleasure of The Boatman’s Daughter lies in its feel as much as its plot. The book is Southern Gothic, but in the best possible way. It’s full of sleazy darkness, the oozing murk of the bayou, and crumbling old buildings that house really nasty secrets. And, like all good horrors, the shadowy supernatural threats are utterly overshadowed by the human ones. It’s darkly lush and really quite compelling. Definitely recommend this.

Deity by Matt Wesolowski (2020)

The next book I read was also from the Abominable Book Club, but it was actually the featured book in this month’s parcel. Despite still having some books to catch up on, I couldn’t wait to read Deity. It appeared to have been written especially for me. Deity is the fifth book in Wesolowski’s Six Stories series (though you don’t need to have read the others). The series premise is that online journalist Scott King presents a podcast exploring the darker mysteries of the online world. Each story is presented through six interviews, each offering a different perspective. It’s Rashomon for the internet age. I was completely intrigued by this premise (and if you’ve read my blogs before you’ll know how much I adore unreliable narrators/narratives). And I was not wrong to be intrigued – this book was absolutely right up my street. Deity has Scott King explore the case of Zach Crystal, an enigmatic pop star who died amid a flurry of #MeToo allegations. The book came out in late 2020, and it’s understandably been described as ‘timely’. It opens with epigraphs from books about Trent Reznor and Marilyn Manson, but I suspect they were added shortly before publication. Wesolowski’s Zach Crystal is an amalgamation of elements inspired by other pop culture stories (not least a certain iconic pop star who was… bad?), but with a very British backstory. Deity is incredibly readable, and I loved it. And I bought the rest of the series the minute I’d finished it!

Shame on You by Amy Heydenrych (2017)

For reasons best left unsaid, I jumped away from my Abominable Book pile and grabbed the first eBook to hand. This next one was on Prime Reading, and I chose it because the blurb looked the most intriguing of the available titles (and I know, I know, I said I wasn’t going to do that again). Heydenrych’s novel is about Holly Evans, a lifestyle influencer who has amassed large numbers of followers on Instagram and YouTube. Holly posts food videos, espousing a vegan, raw food, clean eating diet that – raise your eyebrows here – she says helped to her to beat cancer without the aid of chemotherapy or other chemical intervention. However, Shame on You doesn’t start with Holly’s rise to social media fame. It starts with a dishevelled and bleeding Holly stumbling into McDonald’s one night after being attacked. What could have led to this? And is Holly’s social media life somehow to blame? Actually… you don’t have to read very much of the book to find out the answers to this, as the circumstances of the attack and the motivation of the attacker become apparent very early on. Sadly, what isn’t said outright in the first couple of chapters is pretty easy to deduce. Shame on You has an interesting premise, but the execution is rather pedestrian and lacking in surprise (unless you count my surprise that, despite knowing her attacker has been in her flat, Holly never once considers calling a locksmith). Not a strong recommendation from me.

Six Stories by Matt Wesolowski (2016)

So after that slightly random departure, I went back to Matt Wesolowski’s series and started at the beginning. Six Stories is Wesolowski’s debut novel and the first in a series of (at the current time) five books. It was little weird reading Six Stories having already read Deity, though I can’t explain exactly why that was without giving a major spoiler. This did make me wonder what it would’ve been like to pick up Six Stories without any preconceptions, but it also made me realize that this is a series that can stand being read out of sequence. Six Stories follows the same format as Deity – a mystery is explored and discussed via interviews on a podcast, and each of the six chapters is an ‘episode’ of the show. The mystery here is the death of teenage Tom Jeffries, who disappeared during a trip to Scarclaw Fell and whose body was found a year later. Podcast host Scott King speaks with people who knew Tom, or who were involved in the case, to try and get to the truth of the case. There’s plenty here about the complexity and nuance of teen dynamics, but also a healthy dose of sinister folklore and urban legend, particularly focused around the supposedly supernatural threats that lurk on Scarclaw Fell. The mystery here held, perhaps, fewer surprises than Deity (and some things were quite obvious early on), but the way the story is told is just captivating, and I really couldn’t put it down.

Hydra by Matt Wesolowski (2017)

After Six Stories, I went straight into the second book, Hydra. And I think this one is my favourite of the three I’ve read so far. Following the same format as the other books, Hydra sees Scott King look into the ‘Macleod Massacre’ of 2014. A young woman named Arla Macleod killed her family in a shocking and frenzied attack. She was found guilty of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility and sent to a secure unit. But why did Arla do it? Is ‘psychosis’ enough of an explanation? Spoiler alert: no, ‘psychosis’ is not enough of an explanation, and the book does an admirable job of attempting to cut through some of the panic induced by the word (though I will say, as a minor criticism, it doesn’t go far enough and still relies on the idea that ‘psychosis’ only exists in the super-scary hallucinations-and-violent-delusions flavour, ignoring the somewhat more mundane breaks from reality that are more common). That said, I enjoyed the way the book’s fictional podcaster pushed to get under the skin of Arla’s story, revealing some pretty horrible things in the end. While Six Stories and Deity cloak their stories with a folk horror fog, Hydra draws on urban legends, creepypastas and internet games (Black-Eyed Kids, the Korean Elevator Game). It was also nice to see the first appearance of Wesolowski’s own antichrist superstar Skexxixx, who appears in Deity as well. This fictional character is turning out to be way more sympathetic than his real-life counterpart!

Changeling by Matt Wesolowski (2018)

I really have just ploughed on with Wesolowski’s series, haven’t I? I’m finding them a bit moreish! And I’m now really not sure whether Hydra is still my favourite, or whether it’s been usurped by Changeling. I’m definitely noticing some themes that run through the Six Stories series as well. While the mysteries in each book have a hint of the supernatural, they all have a very human heart, dealing with social issues that are both current and, sadly, deep-rooted. There’s a recurrent sympathizing with the disenfranchised – particularly children in care – and an implicit criticism of just how much of blind eye is turned when someone is exhibiting behavioural problems indicative of trauma. But all the books also reveal a fascination with both traditional and contemporary folklore and, strikingly, terrifying forests. Changeling has all of this in spades: podcaster Scott King investigates a thirty-year-old missing child case. One night in 1988, little Alfie Marsden went missing from his dad’s car on the edge of Wentshire Forest Pass (and Wentshire joins Six Stories’ Scarclaw Fell and Deity’s Crystal Forest as a place of sylvan terror and folk legend). But there’s more to the story than just the threat of the forest’s fair folk. I’ll admit to spotting the secret here, though I wasn’t totally sure that it was really going to go where I suspected. But it did, and the ending packed the punch I was anticipating. As with the other books in the series, I couldn’t put this one down.