24th December 2022

Book 10 in Fethering sees us revisit a growing cast of familiar characters, who are out for lunch at the pub when disaster strikes.

I was looking for something light after some heftier novels, and this fit the bill perfectly. Crimes are much better to read about when you are aligned with a couple of random middle-aged ladies rather than the police or the criminal.

Nice relaxing fare. Only at the very end did I finally feel I was a step ahead of the characters.

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19th December 2021

Back to the seaside town of Fethering we go, to find nobody particularly suspicious that there’s been another in a complex series of unrelated murders that the local police can’t solve, and so two armchair detectives must step in.

It’s another great tale pulling a range of characters that seem typical of modern village life and tying their lives together in interesting ways that make for humour, must yet, and an enjoyable read.

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5th October 2021

This is the second Malcolm Fox novel, following the story of a police inspector tasked with investigating other police officers. The previous novel was the first Ian Rankin that I read, and I’ve now caught up through his Rebus novels to the point where this pair fit into the timeline.

Initially created to be a new replacement series, meta knowledge now means I know the two merge, so despite some reluctance I picked this one off my shelf to read.

I can barely remember what happened in the first book - but this time out Fox and his colleagues are off to investigate some officers from a neighbouring force after one of their colleagues is arrested.

While Fox is clearly deliberately not Rebus, I found this makes him just too bland to be an inspiring lead character, and his set of colleagues felt a bit too uncomfortable to class as likeable.

It was a slow story that I felt like I had to put effort into reading, rather than flowing smoothly like I’d expect from Ian Rankin. The plot felt a bit too convoluted, and I found myself missing what I’ve been enjoying in the Rebus novels.

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12th December 2020

This early Agatha Christie mystery was a refreshing return to her writing after I completed my read-through of the Poirot novels some months ago. It’s a slightly complex plot which sees a young woman find herself by chance investigating a crime that leads her on quite an adventure.

There are a lot of the hallmarks of classic Christie, and yet also quite a different feel in places. The pace feels fast, and the setting changes constantly, whereas many of those I’ve read before have been geographically static.

There are lighthearted and even comedic elements, and it seems obvious that the writer is having some fun in putting the characters and story together.

Ultimately it felt something lacking though. Possibly the mystery was too complex, or not quite explained in such a way to make me feel I had reached a satisfying conclusion.

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16th August 2020

I’ve found the previous novels in this series very relaxing to read, and Death Under The Dryer continues this trend. While set in the modern era, it continues the spirit of the classic mystery novel, with a casual attitude and relaxed mildly comedic turn to the characters and their relationships.

This time out, our two amateur detectives find themselves on the scene when a murder is discovered, and surrounded throughout my new characters who are richly varied and live the complex intertwined lives that are necessary for this sort of plot.

The normalcy of the lives of Brett’s characters make for very chilled reading - which is something I really appreciate in a novel at the moment. Exactly what I was looking for.

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1st May 2020

Originally marketed as the final Rebus novel, Exit Music covers the final two weeks of Rebus’ career as he approaches retirement, with a collection of unsolved cases hanging over his conscience, and a fresh murder to investigate.

I’ve been off reading crime novels recently, because they became a bit too violent for my liking, but this was much more what I look for - there’s crime, but its not crime that’s celebrated or glorified or too graphic, and the focus is on the investigation - interviewing witnesses and suspects, hunting for clues, and so on.

I’ve grown quite fond of the varying characters over the years reading this series, and would certainly have been sad reading this at the point of publication, although now of course I’m aware that there are more books to come.

Reading this has certainly reinvigorated me to think more about crime and mystery novels. I think there’s a fine line in finding exactly the right tone to pitch at, and Rankin’s totally found it in this novel.

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19th May 2019

Book nine for Bryant and May takes a different route than the one I had expected. The previous two novels having formed a mini-series, I was expecting this to form part three of the trilogy, but I was wrong and it stands alone.

The crime seems rather more brutal than those of previous novels, and somewhat more of the classic locked room mystery, just with the usual peculiar crime aspects bundled in - such as the apparent only suspect being a puppet of Mr Punch.

Somewhat confusingly, this isn’t the only paranormal crime novel set in London featuring Mr Punch that I’ve read this year, and I did find I needed to remind myself every so often which bits of plot belonged to which book.

It’s a good mystery though, and continues to explore the characters who work with the Peculiar Crimes Unit, and I look forward to continuing adventuring with them.

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