The "I am currently reading" thread

[Zinger549]

The Bullet That Missed. It's the 3'rd book in the Thursday Murder Club series by Richard Osman. Enjoyed the first 2 books and this one is good as well.

[feargal]

Dark Pines by Will Dean. Scandi crime thriller, I'm 3/4 of the way through.  Everyone's raved about this series, but I'm not sure I'm getting what the fuss is about yet, maybe it will have a big finish 🤔

[metalman]

The usual mix of crime and science fiction for me.

 

George Bellairs - The Cursing Stones murder. Body of notorious womaniser is fished out of the sea by a Manx trawler. Inspector Littlejohn is called over to investigate. Very good - Bellairs set several books on the Isle of Man and it was clearly a place he knew well.

H.R.F. Keating - The bedside companion to crime. Short pieces on various aspects of detective stories and their authors by well known crime writer and critic.

Jack Vance - Galactic Effectuator. Typical Vance hero Miro Hetzel is a sort-of investigator, here taking on two different cases (it's actually two novellas rather than a proper novel) at the edge of the Gaean Reach. As usual with Vance one of the main plus points is the unusual world-building. Excellent.

Mark Davis - Voices from the Asylum. Another book consisting of photos and case histories of mental patients, this time in the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum at Menston in Leeds (now a large housing estate). Fascinating.

John Bude - The Cheltenham Square murder. Continuing his location-themed mysteries, in this one a man is shot by an arrow through the open window of a house in Cheltenham. Inspector Meredith investigates. Another excellent reprint in the British Library Crime Classics series.

John Rhode - Death in Harley Street. Wealthy doctor is given news of an inheritance and then apparently kills himself by accident with an injection of strychnine. Dr Priestley comes up with a particularly ingenious solution. Not as impossible to find as many other Rhodes, but not easy.

Robert Reed - Down the bright way. In the far future (maybe), humans can travel between an infinite series of parallel Earths on an alien-constructed pathway called the Bright. However their mission to assist newly encountered ones is hijacked by others wishing to destroy the Bright. Very good.

Stephen Booth - One last breath. Finally managed to unearth my copy of this, the next Cooper and Fry mystery set in the Peak District. Here they try to hunt down a released prisoner who has killed again, while at the same time winding each other up. Enjoyable but still a bit overlong in my view. Probably a series best read in order as both main characters have backstories (as is the way these days).

 

Now reading; The book of the year 2018. Next in the series of roundups of odd news stories by the people behind the No Such Thing as a Fish podcast. Still haven't got rid of the pointless cross-referencing.

[wearysmith]

[Mister M]

I've just started Alison Moore's The Retreat.

She's been on my radar for quite a while, though because she's considered quite an intellectual writer, I was a little intimidated.

Will report back once I finish it.

[wearysmith]

A few years back, when I knew we were going to New Orleans, I picked up a few books about the place. 

 

This is fiction based on real murders there. 

 

I put it on the bookshelves and promptly forgot about it. 

 

Unearthed it yesterday while looking for something else. 

 

So....nearly 2 years later.....

 

[ukdobby]

Killed in the Kremlin by John Sweeney,saw him on tv not long back and thought him a weirdo,how wrong was I.

[metalman]

More crime and science fiction mainly for me in February:

 

M. W. Craven - The Botanist. Maverick detective Washington Poe and autistic nerd  Tilly Bradshaw hunt a serial killer while at the same time trying to extricate their pathologist friend from a charge of murdering her father. I wasn't so keen on his last one but he's definitely back on form here. Excellent.

Julia Chapman - Date with betrayal. The latest in the Yorkshire Dales-set cosy detective saga sees Samson trying to elude a hitman. To say it stretches credibility is something of an understatement, but I quite enjoyed it all the same.

Ian Wilson - Worlds Beyond. Cases from the files of the Society for Psychical Research, and a tie-in with the ITV series of the same name in the mid-80s that dramatised some of them.

Richard Kadrey - Metrophage. This was an early example of the cyberpunk novel (from 1988) and it hasn't aged well because it now seems quaintly old-fashioned, but it wasn't bad. I'd have been more impressed with it if I'd read it in 1988.

Robert Reed - Sister Alice. About two million years in the future, humans have godlike powers and manage to unleash a catastrophe while creating new universes. Mind-boggling sensawunda science fiction and pretty good.

Mary Ingate - The Sound of the Weir. 14-year-old Ann's testimony sends her cousin Miranda to the gallows for the murder of her older husband. Some years later Ann lives in the same house as Miranda with an older husband - will history repeat itself? Obscure crime novel from the mid-70s, when Macmillan used to publish lots of this sort of thing; Ingate was a late starter and only wrote three, but the two I've read have been very good.

Robert B. Parker - Stone Cold. Police chief Jesse Stone hunts a pair of serial killers and tries to sort out his complicated personal life. As good as his always are.

Richard Hull - Murder of my Aunt. Effete wastrel Edward tries to bump off his aunt but things don't go according to plan. Recently reprinted in the British Library Crime Classics series and this one certainly deserves the label.

[Guest]

I have three books on the go right now: Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children by Hannah Barnes (review in the Observer here - it was their book of the week - for those who aren't aware of this distressing story); Hags: The Demonisation of Midle-aged Women by Victoria Smith (me and my broomstick have been waiting eagerly for this one); and Dead Men's Bones by James Oswald.

 

I've been a bit unfair about James Oswald's Inspector McLean series in the past. Yes, the first one was a wee bit misleading in its marketing as a straight crime fiction tale, as you actually get to the end and find out that

 

Spoiler

a demon did it.  Literally, a demon.

 

But once you acknowledge that though this is Edinburgh this is no Rebus, they're rather enjoyable, in a gory, mad sort of way.  The main bloke is oddly bland though; three books later and I've still not got a good grip on who he is, even as he's surrounded by colourful, well-drawn supporting characters. 

[XPertByExperien]

Creating your first game in Godot Game Engine - Foundation edition.