My Year in Books 2021: May

Time for my monthly mini-reviews round-up post, and I'm afraid it's another short one. This month has flown by, and I just don't seem to have had much time for reading (outside the books that I read for review and research, but I never include those in these posts). Interestingly, there is a little bit of a theme (certainly with the last two books on this list). I found myself using the same words ('muted', 'melancholy') to describe books published over the past year by writers whose previous work wouldn't usually be described in that way. I'm wondering whether that's an indication of a 'lockdown effect' on their writing, or a 'lockdown effect' on the way I'm responding as a reader. Or maybe it's just a coincidence!

In case you're interested, here are the posts from the rest of the year: January, February, March, April. And here are my reviews for May...

Maggie's Grave by David Sodergren (2020)

Still trying to catch up with the towering pile I’ve got from my Abominable Books subscription! I can’t remember which month I got Maggie’s Grave, but it seemed like high time I read it. This one was very much a game of two halves for me: one aspect I loved, and another not so much. So… the bit I loved… Maggie’s Grave is set in Auchenmullan, a small Scottish town that’s well-nigh deserted since the last employers closed up shop and people started moving out. The town is cursed, partly by the circumstances of the post-industrial modern world and partly by something else (which I’ll come to shortly). I really enjoyed the way Sodergren evokes the dying town of Auchenmullan. There’s something beautifully unsettling about the empty streets with just a single occupied house, and the beleaguered bowling alley that’s the town’s last remaining business. However, while I would happily have read a slow-burn weird-fiction horror set in Auchenmullan, that’s not what Maggie’s Grave is. It’s a much more in-your-face gory tale about a witch who was executed in the town and comes back periodically to take revenge. The death of Maggie Wall is described in detail in the opening chapter, so there’s no mystery here, and the rest of the story is mostly a series of cinematic bloody set-pieces as the (somewhat underdeveloped) main characters try to evade the supernatural enemy (and some human ones as well). Maggie’s Grave has its appeal, but it’s not quite to my tastes.

The Night Gate by Peter May (2021)

This next book was a bit of surprise – and by that I mean I genuinely wasn’t expecting it to be written. If you’ve read my previous blogs, you’ll know that Peter May’s Enzo Macleod books are my comfort-reading series. I’ve read all them several times, and I reread the whole series (again) during lockdown. In my previous blogs, I’ve talked about Cast Iron as the finale to the series – because I believed it was. And I was right… until this year. Plot twist: May wrote and published another (final?) Enzo novel during lockdown, which brings Enzo’s story up to the present day. We rejoin Enzo years after the dramatic conclusion of Cast Iron. Not only is he older, he’s remarried, retired and living in Cahors during a pandemic. And yet he still manages to get drawn into a cold case involving the discovery of the remains of a German WWII airman in a small French village. It’s not long before the case gets a bit warmer, though, as a present-day murder occurs shortly afterwards. There’s a more melancholy tone to The Night Gate than the previous books in the series – and not just because of the COVID backdrop. Growing old doesn’t really suit Enzo, and growing up hasn’t been easy for his daughters and sons-in-law either. Overall, it’s a far more muted end to the series than Cast Iron was. At times, the story of the (well-crafted) WWII-era mystery dominates a bit as well, so this isn’t solely Enzo’s story.

If It Bleeds by Stephen King (2020)

Next, I went back to catching up my Abominable Books pile. This one was my mystery second-hand book last month, so it came wrapped in brown paper, string and a wax seal. Very exciting! This is a collection of four novellas from King that was published last year. The title novella is a story in King’s crime series (which began with Mr Mercedes) and a sequel to The Outsider. It’s the first story to feature Holly Gibney, a minor character in previous books, as the protagonist. As it really is a sequel, I found it a little hard to follow at times as I haven’t read The Outsider. In fact, I haven’t read any of King’s crime novels, so I was occasionally confused by mentions of other characters and plots. I did enjoy the central premise though, so maybe it’s on me for reading out of sequence. The other stories here were good solid King fare – though perhaps a little muted compared to some of his other work. Mr Harrigan’s Phone is a typically Stephen King take on the idea of someone being buried with their mobile phone; Rat treads familiar ground with its story about a writer locking himself away to finish his work and… not doing so well. My favourite of the four was definitely The Life of Chuck, a three-part story told in reverse. It’s a more melancholic and beautiful take on humanity than you might be expecting, and it’s certainly the most thought-provoking of the four.

My Year in Books 2021: February

Gosh... February went by quickly, didn't it? And I hardly read anything. So I'm afraid this is a pretty short post this month, as there's only two books on my February list. I finished off my 'comfort reading' of Peter May's Enzo Macleod series, ahead of the launch of his new book in March. Sadly, there's nothing else to report on this month, but I'm hoping I'll have more to add in March!

In case you're interested, here are my reviews of the books I read in January. And here are the two books I read in February:

Blowback by Peter May (2011)

I continued my rereading of Peter May’s Enzo Macleod series this month (or, at least, the series so far, as there’s another book coming out in March). As I said in last month’s post, this is my ‘comfort reading’ series, and so I have written about all six of the books before in these monthly posts. Blowback sees Enzo entering the world of haut cuisine (giving May an opportunity to luxuriate in quite a few descriptions of food, just as he did with wine in The Critic). The cold case in question here is the death of a 3-star Michelin chef, whose body was found in a remote bothy (or buron to give the French term that’s used in the book). As with the other books in the series, there’s a really great sense of place in Blowback. May’s decision to set the story at the end of the restaurant’s season, just as it’s about to close down for the winter, really adds atmosphere (there’s something ominous about a restaurant/hotel locking down for the winter… or is that just me?). There’s not as much of ‘the gang’ in this one, but Enzo’s love life gets a bit more complicated when he meets a good-looking young gendarme – and it was pretty complicated to begin with. I think I like this one mostly for the descriptions of setting, though there’s a good little mystery at the heart. And unlike the previous two, there’s nothing here that the reader knows before the detective.

Cast Iron by Peter May (2017)

And so to the sixth and (until this year) final story in the Enzo Macleod series. It came as a bit of a surprise to readers that Cast Iron would be the last in the series, as Enzo was supposed to be investigating the seven notorious cases in Raffin’s book – and yet it appeared the series would end with just six. However, Cast Iron is a fitting end to the series, as it draws together all the loose threads that were left hanging in the other books and brings the entire narrative arc to a close (with a few explosive reveals, it has to be said). On top of this, there are quite a few developments in Enzo’s personal life, and a number of the loose threads relate more to this than to his investigations (or is there a connection…?). Last time I read Cast Iron, I think I said it felt like an appropriate end to the series, and that it brought things to a satisfactory conclusion. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in The Night Gate (at the time of writing this, I haven’t read the new book in the series), and to see what it’s like revisiting Enzo and the gang several years after the end of Cast Iron. I think it’s safe to say that the Enzo books will continue to be my ‘comfort reading’ series for a while… I just don’t know yet whether I’ll be including The Night Gate on the reading list!

My Year in Books 2021: January

So, this month's list is a little strange. I finished off my 'Books Like And Then There Were None' list, but then I found myself struggling a bit with my motivation for reading again after that. This is something that I've been experiencing on and off throughout lockdown, and this month I decided to deal with it by going back to a 'comfort reading' series. Apologies for any repetition, but some of the books on this month's list are ones I've written about before in my monthly blog posts from previous years.

That said, here's my first post of 2021, and the books I read for pleasure in January...

They All Fall Down by Rachel Howzell Hall (2019)

I continued my ‘Books Like And Then There Were None’ list into the New Year. The next one I read was They All Fall Down, which was a little more explicitly indebted to Christie’s novel than The Dying Game (it even includes a quote from Christie as its epigraph). The narrator is Miriam Macy. Keen to escape some bad experiences at home, Miriam accepts an invitation to take part in a new reality TV show. She’s to travel to an isolated – but luxurious – island in Mexico, where she’ll stay with a group of strangers until one of them is crowned the winner. On the trip to the island, she discovers a motley crew of companions: a businessman, an ex-cop, a naïve widow, a nurse – none of whom she has any inclination to befriend. But, when they reach the house (called Artemis) on the island, it seems things are not how they initially appeared. And then the killing starts… They All Fall Down is a great homage to Christie’s novel and a fun book in its own right (the dark humour in one particular passage involving the ex-cop was particularly on-the-nose). It also has an unreliable narrator in Miriam, which is something that always wins me over. However, it lacks the shock value of Christie’s ‘big reveal’ and, for all its intentions, it lacks some of the darkness too. I did enjoy this one though. It’s well-paced, a bit of a page-turner, and it’s got a great sense of narrative voice.

Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty (2017)

And now… to space! Next on my ‘Books Like And Then There Were None’ list is a science fiction story set on a spaceship staffed by clones. Not my usual fare, but it definitely seemed interesting. The story begins with one of the clones, Maria, waking up in a cloning pod. She knows this means that her previous ‘shell’ (body) has died, but she has no memories of the event. As she emerges, she discovers all six of the crew have been cloned, and that their dead ‘shells’ are still floating around in the zero gravity of the room… and they’ve been murdered! Admittedly, this one doesn’t really follow the same formula as And Then There Were None, as all the victims/suspects are already dead (but also not dead) when the story begins. But it’s still a fun book and definitely one I’d recommend. The cloning storyline is a little hard to get your head around – I had to flip back and forth on occasions to double check timelines and details to keep things straight – but that’s part of its charm. And the question as to what any of this backstory has to do with the murders on board the spaceship (which is transporting a load of cryogenically frozen people to a new home on a planet called Artemis, by the way) is something that unfolds slowly throughout the narrative. The only thing I didn’t like about Six Wakes was the incongruously upbeat ending – it didn’t quite work for me.

Murder in the Crooked House by Soji Shimada (1982)

The last book on my little list was Shimada’s Murder in the Crooked House – a ‘classic Japanese locked room mystery’. The eponymous house here is the Ice Floe Mansion, an eccentric building in a remote location in northern Japan. It was constructed by successful businessman Kozaburo Hamamoto, who has retreated from public life to enjoy a reclusive life in his unusual house. The story begins with Hamamoto welcoming a group of guests to the Ice Floe Mansion to celebrate Christmas. It’s a dark and stormy night, and some guests are (of course!) bringing secrets and resentments to the party. It’s hardly surprising that, by the end of the first day, one of them is dead. What is surprising (for the characters, though perhaps not for readers who are fans of the genre) is that the victim is a hired driver with no connection to the rest of the guests, that his body has been found in a completely locked room, that the killer left no footprints in the snow, and that there are a series of cryptic clues in the room with the body. And then another guest dies… This is a locked room mystery that’s more John Dickson Carr than Agatha Christie, and you need to pay much more attention to mechanics than motive if you want a chance of working it out. It also uses something that is generally considered a no-no in locked room fiction, but I enjoyed the story so much I can completely forgive this!

Extraordinary People by Peter May (2006)

So… this is a bit weird, and I’m not quite sure how I’m going to do this, as the next six books on my list(s) are ones I’ve already written about since I started these monthly round-up posts. I don’t imagine I’m alone in saying that January was particularly tough this year (it’s never an easy month, is it?), and so – despite having that towering to-read pile of wonderful looking books – I retreated into my ‘comfort reading’ series and reread Peter May’s Enzo Macleod books. Or, I should say, I reread the Enzo series so far, as I found out part way through my reread that there’s going to be another one out next month! Clearly, my timing was impeccable. I have written mini-reviews of all six of the books before, so I’m not sure whether I’ll be repeating myself a bit in this post. Half-Italian, half-Scottish Enzo Macleod is a lecturer in biology and forensics at a French university who turns his hand to solving France’s most famous cold cases by applying new scientific techniques to old evidence. This is mostly done as a bet – he has waged he can solve the seven cases in a book about unsolved murders written by a journalist called Roger Raffin (sometimes Enzo’s colleague, sometimes his antagonist, sometimes something else altogether). That’s a very rough series synopsis, but it doesn’t really capture the pleasure of the novels, which are often as much about the ensemble (‘the gang’) than the (very) idiosyncratic main character.

The Critic by Peter May (2007)

Continuing with my comfort reading, I obviously moved on to the second Enzo book. Extraordinary People introduces the characters and the overall series arc, plus it sees Enzo solve the first of the notorious cases in Raffin’s book (the disappearance of a senior civil servant/film critic). Enzo is based in Cahors – and occasionally in Paris – and one of the things I love about this series is the very affectionate (and very Francophile) sense of place that comes through in each one. Extraordinary People is, perhaps, the most Parisian of the series, involving a very memorable trip into the catacombs beneath the city. The Critic takes Enzo to the Gaillac region to investigate the murder of a famous wine critic. I think I said in my last mini-review, I do like the bits involving ‘the gang’ in this one (Enzo’s daughter Sophie, her boyfriend Bertrand, star student Nicole, and on/off lover Charlotte all make an appearance, as well as small appearances by Raffin and Enzo’s older daughter Kirsty). And The Critic also lets May indulge in a lot of descriptions of wine, as Enzo and the gang decide that, to understand who might have killed the wine critic, they have to immerse themselves in the culture of the wine-producing region. They sample a lot of wine to get to the bottom of this one, and there are some interesting little details about the French wine industry – just be careful not to get side-tracked by the vin and miss all the clues!

Blacklight Blue by Peter May (2008)

The next book in the series starts off pretty dramatically, with various members of the gang coming under attack (as well as some nasty news for Enzo himself). Guessing that this has something to do with the next case in Raffin’s book, Enzo decides that he needs to get his nearest and dearest to a safe place, and then start investigating. It’s time for a road trip! (Sadly, Nicole doesn’t get to join in this time, but we do see a bit more of Raffin, who is now in a relationship with Enzo’s daughter Kirsty.) This is the first book in the series that plays around with narrator and perspective, with the story of… well… a mystery man being interspersed with the present-day story of the investigation. This does mean that the reader is privy to some information that the detective isn’t – which would normally be a bit of a no-no – but the point here is that we need Enzo’s investigation to put all the pieces together and make them fit. Also, it’s quite good fun watching to find out how on earth he’ll be able to work out some of the information that we only know because we read the killer’s flashbacks. The first two books ended with a couple of tantalizing loose ends, but Blacklight Blue takes that to the next level, and there’s quite a few unanswered questions at the end of this one. It’ll be a bit later in the series before we get the answers.

Freeze Frame by Peter May (2010)

Moving straight on to the next book… as I think I mentioned in my previous mini-review, Freeze Frame uses a similar technique to Blacklight Blue, in that the reader gets a lot of backstory for the killer (and even ‘witnesses’ a key event in the run-up to the murder) before Enzo gets involved at all. In fact, there’s even more information revealed in this one than in the previous book, and so we are coming into the mystery with quite a bit of background knowledge. Enzo isn’t though, and so we are once again watching the detective to see how he’ll catch up with what we already know. Freeze Frame takes Enzo to Brittany to reinvestigate the case of Adam Killian, who was murdered twenty years ago. While there was a suspect for Killian’s murder, his involvement was never proven. And, more intriguingly (for both Enzo and the reader), Killian rang his daughter-in-law shortly before his death to tell her that he was leaving a secret message for his son in his study that would explain everything. The son died in an accident before he saw the message, and so Killian’s daughter-in-law has carefully preserved the study until the day when someone can both find and interpret the dead man’s final code. Freeze Frame sort of breaks with Enzo’s stated intention of using new scientific methods to solve old crimes, as although developments in science are an important part of the plot, it’s not actually the key to the solution.

My Year in Books 2019: August

I have to be honest here, August was not a good month. Sadly, my father-in-law passed away at the beginning of the month, after a battle with cancer. It's been very tough, and I haven't been in the mood for discovering new books or experimenting with random charity shop purchases as usual. All I've really wanted was to read a bit of comfy (but good) escapism, something I know and love, something I know I'll enjoy. And so... I turned to a series I've read a couple of times already (or, at least, I've read most of them a couple of times). Weirdly, I finished the last book in the series today, so my August post is entirely focused on the one series. But it is a very good series.

(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 my reviews for August...

Extraordinary People by Peter May (2006)

August was a tough month, and I decided I wanted a bit of comfort reading, rather than to discover something new. So, I turned to Peter May’s Enzo Macleod series. I’ve read the first five books a couple of times (though I’ve only read Cast Iron once, when it came out), so I knew what I was getting with these ones! And, obviously, I really like them. Extraordinary People is the introduction to May’s larger-than-life amateur sleuth, Enzo Macleod. He’s a half-Scottish, half-Italian former forensic scientist, who now lives in France and works as a university lecturer. He’s also got Waardenburg syndrome (giving him a distinctive white stripe in his hair and odd-coloured eyes), two daughters (Kirsty, with his estranged ex-wife in Scotland, and Sophie, with his deceased French partner), a Citroen 2CV and a penchant for playing blues on the guitar. In so many ways, Enzo shouldn’t work as a character – he’s too self-consciously ‘cool’ (or, at least, what a middle-aged man might think is cool!), and he’s too good at everything (he spends most of his time embarrassing French police officers with his insights into cold cases) – but he does. I put that down to May’s excellent writing. It’s just weirdly easy to get hooked on Enzo and his rag-tag gang of assistants. Extraordinary People sees Enzo attempting to win a bet by solving one of France’s most notorious unsolved murders. It’s great cold case fun, complete with cryptic clues left with body parts and a high-octane finale.

The Critic by Peter May (2007)

Since I’m definitely going to be rereading the entire series of Enzo books, these reviews aren’t going to be as separate as usual… they’ll probably just flow into one long review in the end. Extraordinary People introduced Enzo Macleod and his quirky band of helpers: daughter Sophie and her muscle-bound (but surprisingly knowledgeable) boyfriend Bertrand, student Nicole (who is, apparently, a whizz on computers, though really this just means she’s better on c.2007 Google than her professor), impossibly-French journalist Roger Raffin, who isn’t really a ‘helper’ but rather the author of the book of famous unsolved cases that has sparked Enzo’s quest, and psychologist Charlotte, Raffin’s ex and Enzo’s sort-of current squeeze. The Critic sees the gang investigating the murder of famous wine critic Gil Petty, whose body was grotesquely displayed in a vineyard in Gaillac, after having apparently been pickled in wine for a year. There’s a lot to like about this one, not least the very informative descriptions of wine production and tasting. May strikes a good (and very entertaining balance) between developing the ongoing saga of the main characters’ private lives – will Enzo and Charlotte make a proper go of it? will Enzo reconcile with Kirsty? will poor Nicole be able to continue at university? is there any limit to Bertrand’s hidden depths? – with puzzling, and rather old-school, mysteries to be solved. While there’s plenty of angst in the characters’ lives, there are also a healthy number of clues to the murder for the reader to ponder.

Blacklight Blue by Peter May (2008)

Blacklight Blue sees Enzo tackling the third of Raffin’s famous unsolved murders… though he doesn’t actually know he is until part way through the story. The book begins with some pretty dramatic stuff… Kirsty’s best friend is killed in an explosion, and it looks like Kirsty herself was the target. Bertrand’s gym is burnt to the ground, and all the signs suggest arson. And Enzo gets a diagnosis of terminal leukaemia. Is this the end for Enzo and the gang? Well… obviously not, but it is a sign that someone is trying to do them some serious damage. And when Enzo is framed for murder, he gets a clue that suggests who might be behind the attacks. Blacklight Blue has an interesting narrative technique in that the story of the investigation is intercut with flashback chapters told from (we presume) the killer’s perspective, so that the reader is acquainted with some information ahead of the main characters. May handles this well, as although we get the information, it’s not always immediately possible to fit it all together, so there’s still a puzzle to be solved. The series has hit its stride now, so there are some series-long strands that are picked up, but not resolved, in this one. As well as the individual cases from Raffin’s book, it seems that Enzo is facing a bigger challenge that lingers in the background. I’m really enjoying rereading these ones – they’re really fun ensemble stories with cerebral mysteries and puzzles to be solved.

Freeze Frame by Peter May (2010)

Freeze Frame breaks out of the mould of the rest of the series, which is fair enough (nice to have a bit of variety). However, I think it’s probably my least favourite as a result. The big change is that, for the most part, Enzo is flying solo in this one. Aside from a short visit from Charlotte, the rest of the gang are absent throughout Freeze Frame, which is a shame. Enzo travels to Brittany to investigate the murder of Adam Killian, the next case from Raffin’s book. Before he died, Killian asked his daughter-in-law Jane to ensure that no one touched his study until his son Peter had a chance to find the message he’d left. Unfortunately, Peter died before he could get to the study, and so Jane has simply preserved the room, hoping that one day someone will be able to find and decipher whatever it is Killian has left behind. Like Blacklight Blue, Freeze Frame includes chapters (at the beginning this time) from the perspective of other characters. Unlike the previous book, these go into quite some detail about the events leading up to the murder. This is also slightly disappointing, as I feel it gives just that little bit too much away, and the puzzle is somewhat less cryptic as a result. Nevertheless, it’s still a fun read. Charlotte’s appearance is a little ominous – she has unsettling news for Enzo and behaves in quite an unfriendly (and unfair) way. Their story’s not over yet…

Blowback by Peter May (2011)

Blowback begins in a similar way to Freeze Frame – Enzo’s on his own for this case. He’s investigating Raffin’s fifth case, the murder of 3* Michelin chef Marc Fraysse seven years earlier. The Critic gave May chance to indulge in some meticulous descriptions of wine; Blowback sees the same treatment dished out (no pun intended) to haute cuisine (although, to be fair, this is often paired with descriptions of the wine that accompanies it). Enzo travels to the victim’s famous restaurant in Puy-de-Dôme to reopen the case, which originally had precisely zero suspects. As I say, he’s initially flying solo, but he soon makes friends with the (unusually) helpful local gendarme, Dominique. I’m not going to give any spoilers, but some other members of the gang do make an appearance. Blowback is notable, perhaps, for having the strongest identification of Enzo with a victim. He really feels a connection with this one, for reasons that become clear in the first half of the book (readers may be surprised). Interestingly, May decides to drop the technique of interspersing chapter from the killer’s POV (which were used in the last two books), in favour of a glimpse into the mind of the victim. I like this – it lends the book a slightly different feel to the others. Enzo is still too cool for school in this one – and continues to be (slightly bafflingly) irresistible to women – but a bit of unexpected backstory gives some depth to this. On to the last one…

Cast Iron by Peter May (2017)

There was a bit of a wait for the last Enzo book – it was published six years after the fifth one – and I (like a lot of fans) was initially disappointed to find that the series would end after six, not seven, books. After all, Enzo is supposed to be investigating the seven notorious cases in Raffin’s book. I first read Cast Iron shortly after it was published, and I remembered it being a pretty decent finale to the series. Now that I’ve reread it, I take that assessment back: Cast Iron is an excellent finale to the series! Enzo’s taking on the sixth case – the murder of a young woman from Bordeaux called Lucie Martin – and the gang’s properly back together. Not only that, but a character who hasn’t been seen since The Critic also has a part to play. Cast Iron draws together loose ends dangling from the other books – especially Blacklight Blue (which ended with a pretty hefty unanswered question) – but also turns the individual cases into a series proper with some big reveals. Yes, there’s a little bit of a cheat with the introduction of a previously unmentioned plot point (no spoilers!), but I’m inclined to let it off with this. There’s some genuine (and upsetting) peril for a couple of characters, a rather cinematic climax, and some personal revelations for Enzo. All in all, a great way to wrap up the Enzo Files. I’m just a bit sad the series is finished, to be honest.

My Year in Books 2018: October

Okay, it's another delayed post from me. But better late than never, I guess. Another month of sticking to my New Year's resolution. I found time to read four novels for pleasure in October (though I don't appear to have been very varied in my genre choice - it's all crime fiction this month!), so here are my short reviews of the titles I read.

(You can read all the other posts from this year here: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September)

I'll Keep You Safe by Peter May (2018)

I’m a big fan of Peter May’s novels. I loved the Lewis trilogy and reread the Enzo MacLeod books a couple of times. My mum and my mother-in-law are both fans as well, and it just so happened that both of them got a copy of I’ll Keep You Safe at the same time – and then they both offered to lend me their copy when they’d finished, so I raced them! My mum won (just), so I read her copy of the book. This is a book that I’d heard May talk about prior to its completion. He described it as ‘From Paris to Harris’ (though it turns out that the Hebridean portion of the book is set in Lewis, not Harris). Ruairidh and Niamh Macfarlane are the owners and creators of the Ranish Tweed fabric brand. During a trip to Paris Fashion Week, Niamh learns that Ruairidh has been having an affair, but then almost immediately witnesses her husband and his lover killed by a car bomb. She returns to Lewis bereft, but – of course – there are further revelations to come. I do enjoy Peter May’s writing, but this wasn’t one of my favourites. I loved the flashback sections describing Ruairidh and Niamh’s relationship, but the ‘present day’ crime chapters were a bit plodding and predictable. It’s a shame, because I think I probably would have been more than happy to have read a book just about the Macfarlanes and Ranish Tweed (though that might have been less marketable!).

The Secret Place by Tana French (2014)

Earlier in the year, I read a few of Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad novels out of sequence, so managed to miss out the fifth one. This month, I finally read The Secret Place. The book sees the return of Stephen Moran (a minor character in Faithful Place) and teams him up with Antoinette Conway, a prickly and unpopular member of the Murder Squad, for the first time. The book begins with Holly Mackey – daughter of the main detective in Faithful Place – telling Moran about a development in a year-old murder investigation at her school. Moran grudgingly passes the information on to Conway, but on the understanding that he’ll be able to join the investigation. The two visit Holly’s boarding school to reopen the inquiry into the murder of Chris Harper, a pupil at the neighbouring boys’ school. The prime suspects are two cliques of girls – Holly and her friends, and a rival group – and the book switches between the police investigation and flashbacks to Holly’s gang’s involvement with Chris Harper, but also (more significantly) with each other. Like In the Woods, it’s as much about friendship as it is about a murder investigation. It’s not quite as good as In the Woods and Broken Harbour, but I preferred it to The Trespasser. Oh, and ignore any reviews that criticise the so-called ‘unexplained supernatural element’ – there’s a single, beautiful sentence that explains everything towards the end of the book, which reminded me just why I’m a fan of French’s work.

The Sleeping and the Dead by Ann Cleeves (2001)

Clearly, I wasn’t feeling very experimental this month so I seem to have stuck to writers I know. The Sleeping and the Dead is one of Cleeves’s standalone novels, so not part of the Vera or Shetland series. The book begins with the discovery of a long-dead body in a lake. Detective Peter Porteous (who is quite an unusual detective, not because he has a lot of eccentric quirks, but because he’s so calm and self-contained throughout the investigation) quickly narrows down the possibilities for identification, before concluding that the body must be that of Michael Grey, a young man who hasn’t been seen since the 1970s. Michael was an enigmatic man, who arrived in the local area to live with foster parents in his final year at school. No one appears to know where Michael came from or who his family was. The book switches between Porteous’s investigation and the story of Hannah Morton, a prison officer who was once Michael’s girlfriend. Hannah reminisces on her relationship with Michael, but also finds herself drawn into the investigation more directly (and dangerously) than she’d like. I was really drawn into this story and found myself engaged with Hannah’s story (and the mysterious Michael, of course). However, I’m not sure the mystery really went anywhere. It’s definitely a page-turner, but the denouement and explanation was a little bit of an anti-climax. There was also a bit of a tricksy coincidence that had to be swallowed on the journey to the resolution.

Unnatural Causes by P.D. James (1967)

Okay, I know I sort of concluded last time that P.D. James wasn’t for me. But I got a really nasty cold towards the end of the month, and I just wanted some comfort reading (aka a whodunnit). I couldn’t find any Golden Age stuff that I fancied, so I thought I’d give James another whirl. And this one started off well. Adam Dalgliesh (admittedly not my favourite literary detective) is staying with his Aunt Jane (not Jane Marple) in Suffolk when one of the neighbours is found murdered and mutilated. The victim was a crime novelist, and he appears to have been killed with a method taken from his own writing. The other residents of the little village are all suspects, though some big crime types in that London also drift in and out of the frame. I loved the chapters in the village, with the vague air of menace that surrounded even mundane social interactions. However, the plot was at once convoluted and underexplained. I’m still not totally sure why that particular far-fetched method of murder (and the mutilation) was chosen. James isn’t too hot on clues (unlike my beloved Agatha), but I still guessed the culprit here. I also don’t quite get what was going on with Dalgliesh’s personal life. Did he break up with his girlfriend at the end? Or not? And why was he being so randomly aloof? To be fair, I’m probably going to stick with the Dalgliesh novels now – but just for completism.