27th April 2025

It’s 1949 and a Yorkshire police officer in disgrace is sent to a rural station to get him out of the way. But of course he finds more and more intrigue to investigate.

I was expecting something more traditional from this mystery story, and so was surprised by what I got. It doesn’t follow the typical tropes of the genre and lots of things go on that I wasn’t expecting.

The character is annoyingly mysteriously complex. There are a lot of suggestions of incompetence, mixed up with insinuations about previous adventures which suggest anything but. I found him quite frustrating to read about.

The plot felt a bit hard to follow - there was almost too much going on, and I think my expectations that things would develop in a certain way led me to not notice so much the things that were actually happening.

In general, probably not my cup of tea, and I think I’ll steer back in lane and follow more genre-typical mysteries when I need that fix in future.

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26th April 2025

A post-apocalyptic science fiction political romance thriller about a ballet dancer on Mars. What more could you ask?

This is one of those books where the cover alone sold it to me, it sat on my shelf for months, and then when I finally picked it up I loved it so much and wanted more.

It’s so hard to talk about the plot without spoiling anything, but it totally blew away my expectations and kept me surprised throughout. The character is super engaging, the world-building is stunning, there’s so much going on and I could spend so much time in this universe.

And it’s also insightful. There’s a ton of stuff about the human condition, commentary on our real world situations, but without ever feeling like it’s lecturing.

A wonderful book that I enjoyed throughout. I just wanted more!

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19th April 2025

The eleventh numbered Next Generation novel comes from 1990, and somehow has a feel of being science fiction from that era.

It’s a Troi-focussed novel, which does feel like a cool choice for during the series’ airing, and sees her experiencing other-worldly alien visitors to her mind, as well as her visiting a planet where fiction and imagination are entirely outlawed.

It’s a very interesting concept and there’s lots of cool sci-fi around how such a world might work. But I think what I was most interested in were some of the new characters that the author concocted to join the Enterprise crew, including a second blind character to work with LaForge and explore other assistive technology choices of the future.

As a narrative, I found it slightly hard going. The text felt somehow denser than in a 2020s novel, and so it took me longer than expected to get through, without the constant impetus to read that I get with some novels.

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12th April 2025

Carole and Jude get to spend some time in a neighbouring town when Carole decides to take on a beach hut to entertain her granddaughter, not realise its history will provide two mysteries for the perfectly mismatched neighbours to solve.

I enjoy these as very relaxed, low pressure comedy, mystery novels. There’s an element with this one of the crimes in question being possibly more horrific than the series tends to go for, but it’s still kept at fairly arm’s length.

There are perhaps some slightly more political discussions about some of the crimes than usual, and I didn’t find all of the resolutions very satisfying. It leaves a bit of a bitter taste at the end which disappointed me and I felt spoiled what was otherwise a nice visit to Fethering.

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12th April 2025

I bought this book, eventually, after being attracted to the hardback’s cover art on the shop shelves. And picked it to read when I wanted something light, and it delivered.

It’s a sort of coming-of-age story, albeit about a 25 year old, who was adopted as a baby and is starting to research his past through a series of puzzles set by his adoptive mother. Through alternating chapters we see him solving the puzzles, and the history of events leading up to his adoption.

It’s a good fun story, which takes minimal effort to read. The reader can choose to attempt the puzzles or just wait for the characters to get there. In many ways it was the easy read I was looking for.

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5th April 2025

The Hunger Games are back. This time it’s 24 years before the original book, as we meet a teenager called Haymitch, his friends and family, just in time for the fiftieth annual games, in which the 12 districts are punished for whatever rebellion against power happened half a century earlier.

It’s exactly what I think I wanted from a new Hunger Games story. It has all the classic elements, and yet doesn’t feel like a rehash. We get to see some of how the original characters got to be the way they are (quite brutally), and also grow the world building.

I particularly liked how Collins has slipped in some references that fit the 2020s into her world’s past as well, regrounding this as our future, not a random dystopian world.

I’m not sure quite what the message is that Collins wants to put across - I’m happy to have experienced it as a story - but I suspect it’s about resistance to oppression, and not giving up in the face of overwhelming odds.

I feel that it rounds the series out well, adding to the lore without taking anything away. I’m really impressed by how Collins slipped this, and the previous prequel, into her world and has built it out into something complex and totally believable.

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5th April 2025

In an opening not un-reminiscent of the previous book (to the extent that I had to double check I hadn’t already read this one) a retired Rebus learns that one of his regular foes has been attacked at home. This of course is only the start of the classic complex web of interconnected cases, and quite a lot goes on.

I feel a bit like the Rebus soap opera has finally taken centre stage, with the actual plot of the week taking a step back in favour of following the lives of the rich range of characters that Rankin has populated Edinburgh with.

Something about this series continues to grip me, and I do think it really is those characters, their fun interpersonal relationships, how much they are committed to their jobs, and how they continue to work and socialise together like a big family.

I’ve got a mental association now that these are travelling books - I think because they are able to keep me gripped while flying, but also possibly because a lot of flying in my past has been to Scotland, and there’s a thematic connection there.

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5th April 2025

The third in what I call John Scalzi’s “What if…?” series finds us in the world created by the question “What if the moon turned into cheese?”.

It’s a sort of anthology of short stories about different characters in the world when this happens, and we get to see the impact on a wide range of Americans from different backgrounds and in different personal and professional circumstances.

It feels very much a satire as well, blending good storytelling with reflections on the US of today. There are oblique references, and then characters who are clearly inspired by identifiable individuals and therefore whose actions, while absurd, are also entirely believable, because that’s the world we’ve found ourselves in.

Really nice end to this pseudo-trilogy. I’m really glad that Scalzi has the freedom to write such a range of output, and look forward to seeing what comes next.

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29th March 2025

Cordelia is back, and hired to find out who stole some books from the local yoga centre.

I'm absolutely hooked on Cartmel's novels and am worried that I've nearly caught up. His narrative is so welcoming and really aligns with the character in a way that feels like you're really seeing things through her mind. Cordelia is a great character, somehow both larger than life and totally believable at the same time.

The plot is great - it's silly and funny and yet also not entirely implausible. It holds up as a mystery, and a thriller, while remaining light and easy holiday reading.

I can't wait for more Cordelia stories and to see how this world will develop further in books to come.

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29th March 2025

The marketing for this book seemed to be absolutely everywhere over the past year, and the wait for the paperback much longer than usual, but now it's here and I've read it and found it very engaging.

It's the tale of a 'bridge' - a secret government employee tasked with looking after an 'expat' - someone removed from their own time and brought forward to the present. There are layers to the plot to peel back, and find out what is going on, and what exactly this book is about.

I think that's the only struggle the book has, a bit of a vaguery around whether it wants to be thriller, history, sci-fi, romance... and so it lands somewhere in between which to me made the second half less interesting than the first.

I'm intruiged though to see what Bradley comes up with next.

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23rd March 2025

It’s Yorkshire in the late 80s, where we meet a nearly-teenage girl with a lot of problems. But that description of the man character shouldn’t imply anything about who should be reading the novel - it would be a mistake not to pick this up as an adult.

The story is framed around Miv’s hunt for the Ripper, but is really about the people that populate the town, and the social dynamics of the time. It’s written with a more up to date awareness, but the events feel entirely plausible in context.

I felt like the quotes on the cover were misleading. They aren’t wrong as such, but don’t put across that some quite harrowing things are going on, at least in the background of the story, and often the foreground.

I found it utterly engaging, and the larger type of the paperback made it nice and easy on the eye as well. The characters are very compelling and easy to empathise with, and it’s both cute and terrifying to see the world through Miv’s naivety.

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23rd March 2025

It’s the 90s, it’s San Francisco, and it’s a vampire. Christopher Moore puts together another bizarre collection of comedy characters to explore what happens to ordinary people’s lives when someone unexpectedly becomes a vampire.

It’s old now, and clearly it’s trying to be satire, but still feels like it’s not quite escaped yet from some of the tropes it thinks it’s trying to take the mickey out of.

While it’s the fourth of Moore’s novels that I’ve read, it’s an earlier written one, and I’m not sure he’s yet developed the style of humour that I appreciated most in Lamb. It will be interesting to see how this changes when I get to the later vampire novels and see how they align.

Overall, a middling novel. I wasn’t as engaged as I wanted to be, but equally I wasn’t disengaged.

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15th March 2025

I’ve been contemplating reading this novel for years, and having watched the TV series decided that now was the time. So my reading is somewhat coloured by the acting and the way the characters were portrayed on screen.

It’s a well structured story with a likeable main character that kept me engaged as an older reader. There’s pace is fast, and there’s a lot of investigations packed in chapter by chapter.

It’s very noticeable where the TV adaptation made changes, and yet also feels incredibly familiar the rest of the time. And you can see why the TV changes work to make for something more visual, although in one case it seems like a whole plot thread was added to extend the length without adding too much more.

I’m glad I read it, but also glad I watched the series first. It made for a quite relaxing piece of escapism already knowing where things were going, which is nice in a book.

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15th March 2025

A present-tense thriller, where we arrive on the only island to have survived this dystopian future, and meet the small community there. And then gradually we learn more and more about this world.

I really enjoyed this story and the way that it slowly unfolds and builds such a rich and surprising world, while maintaining the structure of a mystery as well.

There’s a bunch of seemingly familiar elements, but the way they are assembled is unique, complex, and wonderful.

A deep and powerful sci-fi story that I suspect I might want to read again someday.

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8th March 2025

Grace Curtis manages to create a cosy sci-fi that's also dramatic, mysterious, and a mirror to today's world in the way that only the best novels can.

This is the story of an aging space hotel, on a cruise around the human-populated galaxy, and more specifically its crew members, and how this came to be their home.

It's a wonderful construction, with interesting presentation, and I really loved getting to meet all the characters, to understand how they fit together, and gradually to see the curtain peeled back on the universe that Curtis has created.

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1st March 2025

The Dahlias return for their third adventure. Caro has published the first book in the series, and the trio are met at the launch party by a group who ask for their help clearing a family member of a cold case.

I love all the moments of meta jokes that fill this book - what better 'write what you know' than a mystery set at a literary festival. There are so many throughout that just make this a delight to read.

The characters feel almost a step realer now - they've had time for their personalities to settle, and jumping between them feels less harsh than before and a better flow. I enjoyed the balance of focus with the previous novel too.

Just an enjoyable little trip into their world. I look forward to the three more promissed.

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22nd February 2025

The first book in The Drowning Empire trilogy introduces us to an empire across a range of migratory islands. We meet four point-of-view characters from different backgrounds, with different lives and objectives.

There’s good world-building, but which becomes a bit more gruesome than I’d have liked.

Weirdly, I found three of the characters much more compelling than the fourth. Somehow in just that one plot line I found my eyes failing to stick, and skipping over the paragraphs in a way that didn’t happen with the others.

It’s a book about relationships - ones with a lack of balance, new ones, and ones which are over but not forgotten. It’s quite sad in a lot of respects once you think about it.

I don’t think it’s done quite enough to grip me though, and I don’t think the sequels will make it onto my to-read pile.

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22nd February 2025

I’m not normally a reader of graphic novels, but as a Deep Space Nine fan, I found a good few aspects to enjoy in this one.

It’s a story of a Klingon and Cardassian disagreement, and a trip into the Gamma Quadrant to investigate what triggered this. It makes good use of a range of characters to display this, and the artwork reflects the actors pretty well (especially Dukat I thought).

What i liked the most though was the structure - each page served as a single scene, and then the next page the next scene. This felt properly like watching a TV episode and worked for me better than when graphic novels are more free flowing.

The book also contains an original series comic from the early days of Star Trek, which is almost comical in how out of step with everything I feel I know about Star Trek it is, representing a weird version of Earth, strange 1960s attitudes, and just didn’t seem like the Trek I know.

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22nd February 2025

Long regarded as a classic, I’ve tried to listen to a radio recording of this book before, but failed to get into it. Finally though I’ve found myself with a print copy and been able to find out what the fuss is about.

I can see why people like it - it feels like a cross between John Grisham and Richmal Crompton. The former because of the way the narrative focuses on events and less in the minds and emotions of the characters, and the latter because each chapter is almost an independent story, but they add up to a whole, like a Just William book.

I feel slightly uncomfortable conceptually with a book about a Motswana woman written by a white man, and so am not sure how confidently I can take any of the cultural information presented in the narrative.

It took a few chapters to really get into the book, but then I raced through in two days. I don’t however think it captured my attention enough to bother with the rest of the series.

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22nd February 2025

The second King’s Watch novel, which I came across randomly in a charity shop, picks up pretty immediately after the first, as Conrad is more formally accepted into the Watch.

We revisit some of the elements from the first novel, which provides a nice reminder of where we are and how we got here. Then it’s on to a new mission as an unusual Roman facility is discovered below London.

It’s a good adventure, although there’s perhaps a bit too much going on, and a lot feels like setup for books to come. I did notice however there’s a creeping sexism feeling like it’s entered the narrative, with quite noticeably different descriptions of the male and female characters that Conrad meets, which felt uncomfortable.

The other uncomfortable aspect of this book is its size. It’s a very large paperback, and yet doesn’t feel like it wants to open fully, so is a bit of a handful.

I’m ambivalent over whether to continue this series. I suspect it might depend on whether the third book presents itself to me!

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15th February 2025

Junior barrister Adam Green is back, in a second novel that manages to balance comedy and tragedy together in a really engaging read. I raced through the story in about two days - it flows really smoothly and is an easy read.

There’s a few plot lines throughout, and a decent number of references back to the first novel’s conclusion as well. Mainly Green has joined the team defending a celebrity chef who is accused of murdering a TV presenter. This provides a lot of opportunities to drop in little references to real celebrities in these fields, and the author’s clearly using his own experience of television to help paint a believable picture.

But there’s also a lot of character stuff going on as well - we see how Green relates to the women in his life, to authority figures, to people he looks up to, or has looked up to. There’s more going on than just the plot, and I’m intrigued to follow this story more as the series continues.

For the most part, a nice light legal mystery, which I enjoyed spending a couple of days with.

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15th February 2025

I chose this book mostly because the cover leapt out at me from the shelves of the bookshop, and the description sounded interesting. I really loved it, so this time my quick judgement paid off.

It’s the story of an AI inhabiting a human body - and for much of the book alternates between the ‘present’ and 20 years earlier, drip feeding the backstory that explains how it came to be the way it is.

There’s a load of interesting sci-fi concepts bundled up in this book, doing the typical great job of shining a light on various aspects of our own society.

I really like how Leckie has chosen to handle gender in the novel - showing how different cultures have different norms and different expectations - and yet it did make it harder to visualise everything that’s happening because of the differences in expectation between the novel’s cultures and the one I live in.

A great story, a compelling character, and really fascinating world building. I’ll be on the lookout for the rest of the series.

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8th February 2025

I made some bad assumptions picking up this book - that it would be a cosy crime, and that it would be a bit simple and cheesy. It’s not.

This is a surprisingly dark story - fitting the locked room mystery trope, and yet feeling a lot darker than some, particularly as we learn more of the backstory and more of this story develops. There’s a lot of introspection from the characters and the main character feels deeply real and properly traumatised.

And yet that’s contrasted with the silliness of a Christmas game that the story isn’t structured around. It weaves a complex balance that’s really interesting to see play out.

I was also pleasantly surprised by some of the demographics portrayed. There’s a decent set of representation of sexualities, which isn’t what I’d have expected from the genre and was refreshing.

A really interesting, clever, and engaging book. I’ll definitely be looking out for other similar works from Benedict.

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8th February 2025

While not my usual choice of genre, this book leapt off the table in the bookshop and demanded that I buy it, and so I did.

It’s a sort of horror romance, about a young woman bringing up her younger brother in a run down American town with a creepy house.

The story isn’t really all that creepy - and the reader sees a bit more, probably, than the character, which helps it feel a bit safer. It does however try to expose a lot of nasty things about the town’s history and what it’s done to marginalised people in both the past and recent times.

I really liked the book. Maybe not enough to want to go and hunt out more by the author, but enough to consider recommending it to a friend, if I can find one I think will be into this genre twister.

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1st February 2025

Former editor turned hotelier Susan is back, as she’s dragged into a new investigation tied to a book she previously edited.

It’s a fun adventure for the most part - and Horowitz makes really good use again of the book-within-a-book format (this time without needing to use a hard-to-read typeface too).

I love that he can write one story with two styles, with such close relationships between the stories, and yet it takes right up until the end to actually see if all and how clever it is.

My only issue was with quite the swerve in tone near the end - it’s warned about, but even then felt like a bit of a let down that it had to be that way.

I enjoyed it though, and am looking forward to a third adventure.

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1st February 2025

In the third Prodigy tie-in novel, we find the crew after the end of season one, when they take a break on a planet to look for spare parts, and get caught up in a situation that tests their friendships.

The plot feels exactly like the sort of thing that would happen in a prodigy episode, and fits neatly into the universe.

The characters are there, but don’t feel quite as strongly embedded as in the previous two novels - I didn’t feel like they were playing out quite S well in my head.

A nice little revisit to the team, and a refreshing break from long books.

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25th January 2025

Book five of the Stormlight Archive is enormous. It took me five weeks to read (although I did take breaks at the quarter and halfway marks to read other shorter books). The physical hardback became a bit unwieldy around the middle, but was seemingly better to handle nearer either end.

The plot is excellent. There are so many threads going on, wrapping things up while still setting up new avenues to explore in later books. It ties in well with the wider Cosmere series with a bunch of little Easter eggs, and still tells a compelling story.

The story takes place over 10 days, and that gives a really nice structure, and helps with following the passage of time, which sometimes I struggle with in novels. This also gives much more opportunity for chapters in the gaps between, and we explore some other characters and get to learn more about them and their motivations, which helps flesh out the world.

Despite it ultimately being a war story, Sanderson does excellently to have enough parallel storylines moving that this aspect never feels dominant in a way that I would hate to read. The battles are well described in a way that I could actually follow, which I often struggle with.

I found myself most invested in one strand though - following two characters on a quest which they didn’t really understand, and seeing them grow, and learn about themselves and their world along the way.

It’s an absolutely great way to wrap up the first half of this epic series, and leaves me waiting impatiently for more stories in the cosmere (although I’m also glad of a break after so many pages!).

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25th January 2025

The Hardy Brothers find themselves radio presenters, a job that seems to require surprisingly little training, and then naturally find themselves investigating a new crime - pirate radio. I’m not sure that really fits the 90s era, but that’s where we are.

First up, this had some of the most surprising language choices of the series. Yes the earlier stories were racist, and sexism pervades the series, but those weren’t surprises to me, as they are well known issues with these books. This time out though we have one of the main characters using ableist and homophobic slurs, which feels very unusual (although it is the 90s, so not unusual in society at large).

The aside, the plot is quite a fun one, and makes good use of Chet for light relief. It explores businesses, technology, career choices, and a new type of crime - making it quite an educational adventure too.

So all in a mixed experience.

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18th January 2025

I read the other two Johnny Maxwell novels, which follow this, as a child, but somehow have never ended up reading this, despite consuming the vast majority of Terry Pratchett's novels since. This then presented itself to me in a charity shop not long after discussing it with a friend, so home it came with me to be read.

It's the tale of a generic pre-teenage nerd at some point in the late 20th century, who is content to play counterfeit video games until suddenly it doesn't seem much of a game any more.

There's a lot going on in the story. It seems to somehow collect the youth experience of the time, which feels very relatable, but also to wrap it in discussions of the ills of the world from loads of different directions, all of which still feel very relevant today.

Pratchett's abillity to build a world in the background, never explciitly telling us things, but still painting the picture, is really clever and I feel like I might need to come back to this book again to capture and digest more of it.

Really good storytelling, and I'm glad that I occasionally get to experience these nuggets of Pratchett's writing tht I've not experienced before.

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11th January 2025

I’m not normally one for graphic novels, but I remember this one being heavily marketed at the time and found it very cheap.

It’s a post-Nemesis story, distinct from everything else that’s been told, and in particular without any knowledge (obviously) of the Star Trek to come in later TV series.

500 years in the future, Locutus has decided the Borg have failed, and recruits Data to help in a time-travelling plan to use his past self to defeat himself.

It just feels like a terrible story. It doesn’t feel like Star Trek, it feels like a random action romp with Star Trek colours. The plot barely makes sense and starts with a lot of establishing notes that feel out of place.

I get that it’s meant to be more about the art, but my brain doesn’t work like that, and generally just thinks about the art to say “that doesn’t look much like him” or “what the hell have you done with these bodily proportions” or “why does the Borg Queen wear a skimpy bra?”

My brain wants to focus on the words, and for the most part the writing of these just feels like an afterthought. The voices seem off, and the tone jilted.

My copy has a bonus story in the back from the 1960s, a TOS comic in which Kirk and Spock help a planet fight against out-of-control AI which both felt better presented and more Treky, despite the limited colour palette, rougher style, and script that felt like it hadn’t been past a Trek expert.

The main saving grace was that it’s a quick thing to read. I’m glad I didn’t pay the full price for it though as I don’t feel I can derive that much enjoyment from the format.

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11th January 2025

The Secret Seven come into possession of a Telescope, and as well as spying on their neighbours finally get to visit the Enid Blyton classic venue of a ruined castle.

As I read through the Secret Seven novels I’m more and more convinced that they are terrible children.

They bully Susie relentlessly, and I am almost always finding her a much more sympathetic character than I think I’m meant to be.

The boys in particular are really sexist again in this story, which is a weird counter to how other women in this story are presented. But the girls are even joining in with the sexism in order to hate Susie even more. It’s bizarre, especially with the knowledge of how girls are treated in later Blyton novels.

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11th January 2025

This has been on my list for so long that I can’t remember where the recommendation originally came from, and also on my shelf long enough that I can’t remember where I bought it.

It’s a classic locked-room mystery set amidst the first group of tourists to stay at the first hotel on the moon. The randomly selected cast all seem to have a secret, and nobody knows what’s going to happen next.

It’s interesting reading this while The Traitors is on TV, as it’s a very similar sort of setup, and is told really well with the dynamic of growing mistrust and random accusations thrown around for terrible reasons.

I enjoyed reading about these characters and their time on the moon. A clever mystery with so much going on.

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11th January 2025

In one of their weirdest adventures yet, the Hardy Boys visit the Olympic Games, where Chet’s cousin is both competing and under threat.

It’s 1992, and there is an Olympic Games to tie-in to (I also remember from my youth the 1996 Olympics tie-in Hardy Boys novel, but it will be years before I get back to that!). The real Olympics is in Barcelona, but clearly that’s no good for the Hardy Boys - so their version is in an unnamed city that’s far from home but not far enough to be outside America. That’s just a bizarre way to ignore the actual world which makes so little sense to me as an adult reader.

Beyond that though it’s a fairly classic story for the era, with a mix of violence, investigation, and coincidence, and one of the classic tropes of mystery fiction thrown in to wrap it up.

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