Month: April 2025

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Habemus Papam

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It’s Wednesday, and as we have a Papal conclave starting next week, I’m bringing you a Recommendsday themed around the Vatican City and or the Catholic Church. You’re welcome.

Of course one of the big movies of Oscar season was Conclave, which is based on a book of the same name by Robert Harris. So you could read that or if you haven’t already seen the film, now might be the perfect time! But before Conclave, if you’d asked me to think of a book that’s set around the Vatican I would have said Angels and Demons, which is the first book in Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon series. This has the Illuminati and a bomb in the Holy See on the eve of Conclave. This was the third Dan Brown I read, 20 or so years ago and I had started to spot his tropes and patterns by that point, but there’s a reason he’s sold so many books – he’s very easy to read, particularly if you’re not a big reader. There’s a sixth book coming in the autumn – and all of the others have also had strong links to religion in some way. I still think the Da Vinci Code is probably the best of them though.

After not having thought about these books for probably actual years, I’m now mentioning Gyles Brandreth’s Oscar Wilde myseries twice in just a couple of weeks – as book five in that series The Vatican Murders (if you’re buying on Kindle) or Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (if you’re buying in paperback) sees Wilde and Conan Doyle in the Holy See in the aftermath of the death of Pope Pius IX – my review from all the way back in 2016 (!) says it’s a bit like a Victorian Da Vinci Code, so it would seem like a really apt choice for this post!

Not set in the Vatican, but very much about the Catholic Church is Umberto Eco’s In the Name of the Rose. I mentioned this last year in my post of books set in Italy, but it also fits here. Like The Da Vinci Code, it’s one of the best selling books ever published – with about 50 million copies worldwide compared to 80 million for the Da Vinci Code – but people are a lot less sniffy about this one than they are about Robert Langdon. As I’ve said before I read it as part of my history degree because of all the research and detail that Eco put into this, and its set in the fourteen century during the Avignon Papacy. Fun fact: there hasn’t been a French Pope since all of that went down, which didn’t stop the French media from really, really hoping the new Pope would be French during their coverage of the Conclave after the death of Pope John Paul II, which happened while I was living in France. Ahem. Anyway, back to In the Name of the Rose: this has got lots to unpick in it – from the Sherlock Holmesian hero – William of Baskerville – to spotting the deliberate anacronisms and errors and working out why they’re there. There was a TV adaptation five or so years ago (which I found way more gruesome than the book) which was an Italian and German co-production but also featured Rupert Everett in the cast. It was shown on BBC Two (that’s how I watched it) and I enjoyed it but thought some of the dubbing was clunky as well as the simplification of the plot but it’s very expensively done (and they spent the money better than Disney+ did on the Shardlake adaptation) – it’s still available to rent from Amazon should the mood take you.

On my to read list in this sort of area is Katte Mosse’s Labyrinth which has got an archaeological mystery set around some bodies discovered near Carcassone and a crusade 800 years earlier. To be honest the only reason I haven’t read this yet is because it is absolutely huge and my record with very long books right now is not great. I’m pretty sure I’ve got some Medici fiction somewhere on my shelves too – but I can’t remember if it’s Papal-Medici or other Medici doing things around Florence! And I’m also pretty sure I’ve got some Father Brown on my shelves somewhere too.

But what I’m actually doing at the moment is listening to Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods, which is his satire on religion and philosophy and the role of religion in politics. It would have been Sir Terry’s birthday this week and it’s been ages since I read this – and the shiny new recording has Andy Serkis narrating it which is a lot of fun. And in a weird quirk of fate, I’ve just had an email saying it’s actually the Audible Daily Deal today (Wednesday) so if you don’t already own it, now is your chance…

Happy Humpday everyone.

Book of the Week, Fantasy, reviews

Book of the Week: Legends and Lattes

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Happy Tuesday everyone. The weather here in the UK is distinctly summery, and I’ve started to one again think about my lack of a summer jacket. But of course as we have a bank holiday coming on Monday, this will not last, and we will soon be plunged into rain and misery again. But I’m enjoying it while I can. Today’s pick has got what I would call strong autumnal vibes – but it was the perfect book for what I needed last week, which was comforting, low angst reading.

Viv has spent her adult life as a barbarian bounty hunter, but as we meet her at the start of Legends and Lattes, she is hanging up her sword. She’s got a plan for a new life and has just finished the last mission she needs to do to be ready to carry it out. And so she leaves her crew behind her and heads to the coastal town of Thune where she wants to open a coffee shop. Just a few issues: no one there knows what coffee is, she’s never run a shop before and not everyone wants her to be successful.

I’d heard lots of people say that this was really, really good and it totally lived up to the hype for me. As I said at the top, this is such a comforting read. The cover even says “low stakes” and although there is some peril here, that is pretty much exactly what you get. Viv sets up a coffee shop and creates herself a found family whilst facing down a few challenges. I can be a bit iffy with fantasy, but this is definitely at the end of things that I like – the world made sense, it’s high fantasy but in some ways it reminds me of the sort of fantasy you get from the Discworld, but with less peril and a lot less satire. It’s a proper hug of a book and I do love a found family type story. I bought this a while ago when it was on offer (based off all those recommendations) and had been saving this for a Time of Need, and it did exactly what I needed it to do.

I read Legends and Lattes on Kindle, but it’s also available on Kobo and as an audiobook – read by Travis Baldree himself as is also a prolific audiobook narrator. There’s a prequel called Bookshops and Bonedust which also features Viv which I now need to read, and a third book in the series coming in the autum.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: April 21 – April 27

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Another pretty solid week of books. I’ve got one of the long running list and I’ve made progress on some of the others too. Perhaps not quite as much progress as I wanted but it was a very busy week in real life and there’s nothing you can do about that.

Read:

A Clutch of Constables by Ngaio Marsh

Barking! by Grace Smith

A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie

Fell Murder by E C R Lorac

The Oscar Wars by Michael Schulman

Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree

Murder Will Out by Alison Joseph

Started:

Wish You Were Here by Jess K Hardy*

Death at the Playhouses by Stuart Douglas

Still reading:

Murder on Line One by Jeremy Vine*

Abdication by Juliet Nicolson

Cher: The Memoir Part One by Cher

Three books bought.

Bonus picture: a misty morning on the train. It’s nearly impossible to get a good photo from the train but I keep trying because it can be so beautiful.

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

not a book, streaming

Not a Book: Scamanda

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I’m back with another documentary this weekend – but this time it’s the documentary version of a podcast that I binged when it came out a couple of years ago.

Scamanda is the story of Amanda C Riley, who was a blogger who documented her cancer journey. She was a wife, a mum and a Christian and raised tens of thousands of dollars from supporters who wanted to help her. Except as you can tell from the title of the podcast and documentary – it was a scam. None of it was real. The four part documentary series digs into her story – what she did, who she conned and how she was found out. The podcast series was eight parts – with another five bonus episodes, so there’s more depth in the original version, although the documentary will bring you more up to date.

As long time readers of the blog will know, I love a podcast and I also love a scam story. I usually prefer my scams to be the large financial, slightly less personal ones, but this is at the intersection of scamming and family blogging so it’s very much in my wheelhouse. And this is a really intriguing scam – partly because why would you doubt someone who says they have cancer – but also how do you fake something like that especially over such an extended period of time?

I binged all four episodes of the new series over a weekend – and I would have watched them quicker if I could, but you know real life is a thing that happens. And I had a pretty similar experience with the podcast when that came out – I binged it across a few days during my commute and my lunchbreak wanderings around central London.

The podcast is on all the usual podcast platforms – but the documentary is on Disney+ in the UK, so if (like me) you rotate your subscription services through you can add this to the list for next time you have an offer!

Happy Sunday everyone.

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Stately Homes edition

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We’ve been taking advantage of the nicer weather and the early starts on a Sunday for flyaway start to the Formula One and MotoGP seasons to go and do some of the (relatively) local National Trust and English Heritage properties. And so of course I’ve been in the gift shops and looking at what books are on offer so that I could report back. And voila!

Lets start with English Heritage’s Kirby Hall. It’s a very small shop and this was about it – Kirby Hall is mostly in ruins and so it’s a spend a couple of hours here, doesn’t have a cafe sort of property. I don’t have a photo of the shelves on the left for some reason, but you can see the Collins guide to English Castles and there were a couple of DK kids books too along with puzzle books and the like for children. Kirby Hall was built in the Tudor period, so it’s no surprise that their main offer for adults is around the Tudors. And we’ve got a couple of overview books for the period as well as a Henry VIII biography from a respected historian and two of Alison Weir’s Tudor Novels (as opposed to her non-fiction works).

Next up we have National Trust and their selection at Baddesley Clinton. This is a much bigger property – the house has been there since the medieval period but was still lived in into the twentieth century (albeit with loads of changes over the years) and it’s got gardens, a lake and a stable and barn complex that’s been turned into a cafe, gift shop, plant shop and second hand book shop. It’s also not far from Birmingham and has a lot of visitors

Most of the shop is the usual mix of local food and drink gifts, outdoors-y things and National trust merch, but they’ve also got these two cases of books. And as you can see it’s a lot of cookbooks, puzzle books and gardening books with a few National Trust books that round up their properties on various fronts – I’ll admit I was tempted by National Trust on Screen which is a guide to their properties that have been most used in television and movies. But I had already bought three books, because the reason that there isn’t any fiction really here is….

The second-hand bookshop. This is just one bit of it – the crime section – and as you can maybe tell it’s in the old stables, with the horse stalls used to separate out the different types of books. This was a fairly ok split between non-fiction and fiction, and all of my purchases came in the crime section – mostly because I went through that bit first and they wanted cash, which I was running out of! It’s always interesting to see what crops up in these NT book shops – it can sometimes be brilliant, but you can also get the shops that have loads and loads of (probably) out of date non-fiction or very aged and worthy classics and almost antiquarian books which are not at all my thing. This one was somewhere in the middle – three books that I bought, but nothing that I could find in any of the series that I’m trying to pick up at the moment.

So there you are – a tale of two bookshops. I’ve got a list of places that I want to go to this year so hopefully I’ll be able to report back on some more as the summer arrives.

series, Series I love

Series I Love: Dr Ruth Galloway

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I did have a debate with myself about whether this should be a Series I Love or a mystery series or a bingable series post, but given that I read all fifteen books in the series in less than six weeks and kept going out to get more of them so I could find out what happened next it has to count as a series I loved surely.

Ok so first book in the series, The Crossing Places was a BotW at the end of February, but I’ll recap you the set up any way. Dr Ruth Galloway is a forensic archaeologist who teaches at the (fictional) University of North Norfolk. At the start of the series she is in her late 30s, single and living in a cottage in a pretty bleak area of the Norfolk coast that she fell in love with while working on a dig some years before. She’s fiercely independent and the isolation of her house mirrors the life that she has created for herself. In The Crossing Places she is called by the local police when the bones of a child are found on a beach. This is how she meets Detective Inspector Harry Nelson, originally from Blackpool but who moved to Norfolk to run the Serious Crimes Unit. Ruth becomes the North Norfolk force’s resident forensic archaeologist, which means their paths keep crossing every time historic remains are found and and through the cases Ruth’s life starts to change and expand in all sorts of ways, personal and professional. There are fifteen books in the series, which cover about the same period of time – starting in around 2008 and taking us right through the pandemic – which is quite the experience to revisit in a book!

This has got a lot of things that I love in crime books as well as a good mystery to solve – namely a great cast of supporting characters that form a sort of found family, lots of links and call backs to previous books in the series which reward reading in order and a romantic thread with a strong will-they/won’t-they vibe. Now I know I review a lot of romance books and so some of you reading this are going to be romance readers (as well as crime readers) so please follow this * to the bottom of the post for a spoiler-y point that may be a deal breaker for some of you.

As I’ve said, I binged my way through all of these in about six weeks to the detriment of my other reading plans – and it would have been quicker if I could have got hold of some of the books faster. And yes, it gave me a massive book hangover when they were over because I’d grown so attached to the characters and enjoyed being part of their lives. However, I’m glad that I came to them when the series was already complete because it meant I could just gobble them up and not have to wait a year to find out what happened next – and there are a couple of these that end of cliff hangers which would have driven me mad!

I’d read four of the seven books in Elly Griffiths’s Brighton Mysteries before I came to these – and as I said in the BotW for Crossing Places, I think I had been avoiding these because the covers looked like they would be too dark for me. But they’re no darker than the Brighton ones (which I started because I spotted the first one on NetGalley back in the day) and although they’re darker than most of the American cozy crimes I read, they’re not dark-dark. They’re probably somewhere around the Hawthorne and Horowitz and Thursday Murder Club point in the scale, if such a scale existed.

These are really easy to get hold of – I bought several of these from various Waterstones and Foyles around central London when I finished the one I was reading while I was staying in London. Do read them in order if you can because as I said there are lots of links between them. And of course they’re on Kindle and Kobo too – including omnibus editions of some of them if you want to save some cash on buying them individually.

Have a great weekend!

*As you’ve probably guessed Nelson is the love interest here – but he’s also married and if cheating/infidelity is a deal breaker for you in your reading you will not like this series, do not read, do not pass go, do not collect £200 etc.

Book previews

Out this week: New Simon Brett series

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Given that I’ve already written series posts for most of Simon Brett’s other series – namely Fetherings, Charles Paris, Mrs Pargeter – it would be remiss of me not to mention that he has a new book out this week and it’s the first in a new series. It’s called Major Bricket and the Circus Corpse and there is already a second book in the series listed on Amazon for this time next year. Our new amateur sleuth has just retired to the village in Suffolk where he’s owned a home for years, although he hasn’t really lived there because his work has taken him abroad a lot. The village has speculated about his occupation, but when he discovers a body on his lawn, he uses his professional skills to try and figure out what happened. I’ve actually read this already (thank you NetGalley) so this could actually count as a bonus review so your luck is in!

Now I’ll admit that I haven’t read Brett’s Blotto and Twinks series, so i can’t include them in this but if there is a scale of realism in his books where Jude and Carol in Fetherings live in the most realistic world and Mrs P is the least – then Major Bricket is the new measure of the far end out beyond Mrs P. Brett is doing his thing on your spy-thriller-secret identity type novel with more than a dash of the OTT about it. I’ve been trying to figure out what it reminded me of, and I can’t quite work it out – but it’s definitely closer to the M C Beaton Hamish MacBeth-everything-falls-into-place end of the cozy scale than it Brett usually is. Overall, I’m glad I read it, but I would rather have had another Charles Paris I think!

detective, mystery, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Real People Detective Fiction

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So I said yesterday that I had plans for some of the other books that I read last week – and one of them inspired this post. So here I am delivering on my promise that you’d hear more about some of last week’s reading and not just the BotW! This post is about mystery books that feature real people as the detectives.

So lets start with the book that inspired this: The Mystery at Rake Hall by Maureen Paton. This new mystery novel came out earlier this month (I got my copy via NetGalley) and is set in post-war Oxford and features C S Lewis – known as Jack – getting drawn into a mystery after one of his brightest pupils stops coming to her tutorials. Susan it turns out is at Rake Hall, a seemingly respectable hostel for unmarried mothers. But there’s more to it than meets the eye and along with Lucy, one of Susan’s friends and the daughter of a college servant, Jack starts to investigate. I don’t know a lot about the real C S Lewis, but this is a good mystery in a great setting. I love Gaudy Night, and that world of scouts and bulldogs is very much still in evidence here a decade or more after Sayers’ novel – and Sayers herself makes an appearance here too.

From one golden age author to another – and Nicola Upson’s Josephine Tey series. I’ve written about these before, but they’re probably the most well known of the fictionalised real person solves crimes books. Because of the circles that Tey moved in, this also features people like Alfred Hitchcock and Daphne Du Maurier in the stories as Upson weaves the mysteries around the real events of Tey’s life. There are eleven books in the series, and I don’t remember feeling like it was all wrapped up when I finished Shot With Crimson – but that came out in 2023 and there hasn’t been another yet. And although Upson has a new book listed on Amazon, it seems to be a standalone Christmas mystery set in 1943 (which I will definitely be looking out for) rather than another Tey novel but details are sketchy so we will see. Margery Allingham makes an appearance in one of the Upson novels – and I’m pretty sure there’s a mystery series featuring Agatha Christie doing the detecting as well, so only Ngaio Marsh to go to complete the set of Queens of Crime!

It’s been a few years since I read them, but there is also Gyles Brandreth’s series of Oscar Wilde murder mysteries which also feature Arthur Conan Doyle and Wordsworth’s great grandson Robert Sherard. There are seven in this series, and I’ve read the first three and book five (I used to get them from the library, but my local library closed down for: reasons and I’ve not been a library regular since) but they’re clever mysteries with a dash of wit – although obviously you are heading towards Wilde’s eventual imprisonment (which is part of book six) and some of the foreshadowing of that can be a bit… clunky. But if you see them around, they’re worth a look.

And finally a slightly tangential one – and one where I’ve only read two of them. Jessica Fellowes’s Mitford Murder mysteries. I say they’re tangential because they’re set in the Mitford household, but its one of the staff who is doing the actual mystery solving. Louisa is nursery maid to the younger children and chaperone to the older ones (at least to start with), and this means that she has a ringside seat to the events of the Mitford sisters’ eventful lives. I will say that I thought the first one didn’t quite live up to the promise that it had in the blurb, and the second one had more of the stuff that I didn’t like about them and so I haven’t read any more of them – but the fact that they got to six in the series and I see various of them in paperback in the crime sections of the big bookshops fairly regularly suggests that other people liked them more than me!

That’s your lot for this week – hopefully there’s something here for you – but also, don’t forget I’ve got a whole post about Novelised Real People (in books that aren’t mysteries) from back in 2021.

Have a great Wednesday!

Book of the Week, historical, mystery

Book of the Week: A Case of Mice and Murder

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I said yesterday that I’d had a really good week in reading, and I had several options for this today – but I’ve gone with this because I went straight on to the sequel (thank you NetGalley!) and I also have a plan for some of the other options, so fear not, you will hear about more of last week’s reading in due course…

In A Case of Mice and Murder it is 1901 and the calm of the Inner Temple is about to be disrupted as the body of the Lord Chancellor is discovered with a carving knife in his chest outside the chambers of Gabriel Ward KC. Ward is coerced/inveigled into investigating by the Head of the Temple, who is anxious to keep scandal – and the police – at bay as far as possible.

For those of you who aren’t aware of the eccentricities of the English legal system, the Inner Temple is one of the four Inns of Court. Along with the Middle Temple, it is situated between Fleet Street and the Embankment on the bank of the Thames, opposite the Royal Courts of Justice in Central London. The four societies (the other two are Greys Inn and Lincolns Inn) are responsible for the training, regulating and selection of barristers in England and Wales. The Middle and Inner Temple were founded by Knights Templar in the twelfth century and has special powers that mean it has operated as a special independent enclave throughout its history. This makes it a great setting for a closed community murder mystery in the middle of a city. Sally Smith is an Inner Temple KC herself and uses all her knowledge from living and working in the Inner Temple to bring the setting to life.

Gabriel is a great character too. He’s definitely a reluctant detective, but reluctant could also apply to a lot of the rest of his life. The way that the Inner Temple works has enabled him to create a life that he loves within a very small area, hedged around with routines and traditions. He’s also very solitary and keeps himself out of the politics and wrangling of the Inner Temple – because he has no desire to hold any of the leadership roles. So the discovery of the Lord Chancellor’s body disrupts this life and brings him into contact with all sorts of new things and people. One of these people is Constable Wright of the City of London Police (not to be confused with the Metropolitan Police) who is one of the police officers charged with investigating the death and the two very different men work together to figure out what happened.

I really, really enjoyed this and as I said at the top I went straight on to the sequel (which is coming out in July) and if there had been a third book I would have gone straight on to that too. I love a historical murder mystery and not only did I love the setting, I also loved the time period – it starts in May 1901, just a few months after the death of Queen Victoria at the start of the Edwardian era. There are lots of Victorian set mysteries and there are lots set in the years between the World Wars, but really not that many in the Edwardian era. So it’s a delightful change all around.

I bought this in paperback (thank you buy one, get one half price deal) but it’s also out in Kindle and Kobo. I suspect the price of this one will drop when the second one is imminent, so if you’ve already blown your book budget this month, do add it to your watch list.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: April 14 – April 20

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A really, really lovely week. I was off work and it has been really productive and just generally delightful. I’ve read some really good stuff too – a train journey to Brighton and back really helped with that! I have made some more progress on the long runners, but maybe not as much as I would like. I will get there though. I will. I have, however, had a good week on the NetGalley front, so I’ll take my wins where I can get them!

Read:

Devil’s Food by Kerry Greenwood

The Witching Hour by Catriona McPherson

Miss Caroline Bingley, Private Detective by Kelly Gardiner and Sharmini Kumar*

Death at the Dolphin by Ngaio Marsh

A Case of Mice and Murder by Sally Smith

A Case of Life and Limb by Sally Smith*

The Mystery at Rake Hall by Maureen Paton*

The Cat Who Saved The Library by Sosuki Natsukawa*

Started:

Fell Murder by E C R Lorac

Murder on Line One by Jeremy Vine*

Still reading:

The Oscar Wars by Michael Schulman

Abdication by Juliet Nicolson

Cher: The Memoir Part One by Cher

Two books bought, because I can’t resist a bookshop…

Bonus picture: Brighton Beach on Thursday, looking out at the remains of the West Pier.

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.