29th June 2024

After reading a hefty non-fiction tome and trying to read something which turned out to be very much not my thing, I turned to Andrew Cartmel, whose previous novels I’ve found very relaxing and enjoyable.

The Paperback Sleuth is the opening to a new series with a new main character, but very quickly becomes clear that it’s the same world as the Vinyl Detective series, and Cartmel makes great ongoing jokes out of cross-over between the two.

This though has a new tone. Cordelia, our main character, has a more chilled attitude to life, and that’s reflected in slightly more graphic sex and drugs references than those in the previous series.

It’s a really good book, and I absolutely stormed through it in two days, aided by the weather being perfectly attuned for sitting out in the garden in the evenings.

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7th April 2024

Book six sees the Vinyl Detective and ever expanding posse head to Sweden on the trail of a rare special edition album which has totally nothing dangerous about it whatsoever.

It’s a great detective novel, with a bunch of really compelling characters who are essentially going on holiday together and having a laugh.

I don’t feel that the humour is as strong in the earliest novel, but that’s doesn’t get in the way of adding some. One new character in particular feels like she brings a remarkable joke that someone is endearing despite it keep giving more and more material for the book to work with.

I find these novels very comforting to read and am happy to see that Cartmel has another series now started that I can catch up with too.

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17th September 2023

The fifth Vinyl Detective novel feels back on form after I found the previous one a little lacking.

I’m not convinced that the humour in the narrative is up to the levels of the earliest novels though, which my memory tells me had me laughing much more.

Instead it’s a light but dangerous plot, as the quite highly expanded cast of regular characters gets together again to try to find a) who is trying to kill one of them, and b) a valuable record.

I raced through this one and enjoyed it all round. Looking forward to more.

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3rd April 2023

The fourth adventure for the Vinyl Detective sees him trying to track down a rare record for a friend, and visiting the quite wacky band who produced it.

I found that this entry lacked something that I’ve come to expect from the series. The humour felt muted and less laugh-out-loud, and the peril almost felt more real and therefore less escapist.

The plot is outlandish, but I’m not sure it’s not too far, and seems to be a lot driving on coincidence rather than events that are caused by events. I’m still not entirely sure why many of the things in the plot even happened.

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3rd July 2022

The Vinyl Detective’s third adventure is triggered by the discovery of an ancient record from WW2, and the appearance of the daughter of a band member, who hires him to find more.

It’s another really strong tale, hilarious throughout, but especially the opening chapter, which I unusually read aloud and couldn’t get through without giggling.

The plot is a bit complex but keeps moving at a good pace, bringing together familiar characters and new and developing the investigation in a great fun way. I can’t believe nobody’s done a TV version of this series yet as it would work really well.

Love it. Looking forward to more, as I bought books three, four, and five together.

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1st June 2022

I’m not typically one for graphic novels - but after reading the latest Rivers of London novel I finally decided that I was missing out on story by not consuming this format too, and so started here at the beginning.

This is the tale of an investigating into haunted cars.

The format remains I think not my favourite. I struggle to recognise the illustrator’s depictions of the characters from the visions I had formed in my head, particularly Nightingale and Molly. And I find that my eyes only really want to focus on the words. There was one place where the experience felt really disjointed, which I think might have been a transition where the issues where split when this was published as comics, and it didn’t really give any explanation of the transition or repetition of some scenes.

However the story itself was good, and I enjoyed filling in some of the gaps in the characters’ lives. I found it interesting that there seems to be more time spent away from Peter, when not tied exclusively to his first person narrative, and seeing particularly more from Nightingale felt like a new take.

I don’t know if I will continue reading these graphic novels - I suspect it will depend on what sort of prices I can find them at.

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4th July 2021

On reading the second book in the series and writing a review, I discovered that I’d somehow missed reviewing this first book when I read it last October. So, based on what’s now a distant memory, here are my thoughts.

I really enjoyed this opening novel, which tells the story of a record collector and seller who is hired to find the rarest of rare records, a project which leads to a bizarre set of circumstances and relationships.

It’s a surprisingly believable, but incredibly fun, detective story with a wide variety of well defined and entertaining characters and locations.

I’m very much planning to now read the whole series.

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