Category: week in books

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: The Ballad of Sean and Wilko

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I’m on my second week of nights, so I’m hoping that when this publishes, I’ll be asleep. Or if not asleep, just waking up well rested and raring to go. Fat chance Fingers crossed.  Anyway, this week’s BotW returns to a familiar face to regular readers – yup, it’s another Fahrenheit Press book.  In fact I had to go back through the archives to make sure I hadn’t already talked about Christy Kennedy,  aside from the brief mention in last week’s Half-Term Reading* because The Ballad of Sean and Wilko is the fourth in the 10-book series.

Cover of The Ballad of Sean and Wilko
The covers are all quite dark and brooding – and Camden

In the Ballad of Sean and Wilko we rejoin Christy Kennedy as he investigates the murder of the frontman of a 70s band who is found dead in his locked dressing room mid-show.  Kennedy has to pick his way through a tangle of complicated relationships – professional and personal – to try and figure out what happened.  Then another body turns up, in another locked room.

Christy Kennedy is a Northern Irish detective with a fondness for the Beatles and a soft spot for a local journalist called ann rea (no capital letters – like kd lang). He has a methodical approach to solving mysteries and you know as much as he knows (most of the time).  There’s a collection of supporting characters who are interesting in their own right and who never feel like fillers.  And late 1990s Camden is a character in itself, painted with love and affection

Paul Charles started writing the Christy Kennedy series nearly 20 years ago and they have aged well.  The music may be on CD or vinyl and there may not be many mobile phones, or much talk of the internet but because it was written at the time it all feels perfectly natural.  Charles has worked in the music industry and boy does it show.  I’ve learned so much about the mechanics of the industry from these books – particularly this one – but it’s all worn very lightly so you only realise later how many facts are packed in there.

Anyway, to summarise: good murder, great setting, excellent detective.  What more could you want.  The Ballad of Sean and Wilko is available on Kindle for the bargain price of £1.99.  I got my copy as part of my Fahrenheit Book Club subscription which I have banged on about enough already.

Now I’m off back to bed.  I can only hope this post makes sense.  My brain is not a very coherant place right now.

Happy reading.

*Which I’m obviously now regretting because it’s making me sound repetitive and I hate that.  But I did like it best out of last week’s books so sod it, and let it be a lesson to me to plan better in future.

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: February 13 – February 19

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Nightshifts all this week.  Nightshifts all next week.  Take a guess at what I’ve been reading.  Yup. No literary fiction in sight!  There are some very good books among them and I’ve managed to get away from the cozy crime a little too!

Read:

The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett by Chelsea Sedoti

The Wicked City by Beatriz Williams

The Prime Minister’s Secret Agent by Susan Elia MacNeal

Shunned No More by Christina McKnight

The Ballad of Sean and Wilko by Paul Charles

Headgirl at Vivians by Patricia K Cauldwell

Kennelmaid Nan by Elinor M Brent-Dyer

Started:

Seven Minutes in Heaven by Eloisa James

Still reading:

First Women by Kate Andersen Brower

Shock and Awe by Simon Reynolds

No books bought.  I’m actually quite proud of myself for resisting the urge to order a tonne of Kindle books in the early hours.

Book of the Week, Book previews, crime, mystery, new releases

Book of the Week: The Riviera Express

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Nightshifts are well underway here, so hopefully I’ll be asleep when this publishes.  I say hopefully, if day one is anything to go by I’ll have been woken up half a dozen times by  assorted phone calls, tradesmen and delivery people.   Anyway, as I said last week, I’ve been looking for a new cozy crime series. And as you know, I’m always looking for new historical crime series.  So this week’s BotW is a new historical crime novel from the cozier end of the spectrum which I’m hoping is going to be the start of series.

Cover of The Riviera Express
Cover of The Riviera Express

The Riviera Express is the first book from TP Fielden* about Judy Dimont, a newspaper reporter in a south-coast seaside town in the 1950s.  Miss D has a nose for a scoop, an editor who doesn’t always appreciate her and a rivalry with the paper’s other lady reporter.  The Riveira Express is both the name of the paper and the name of the train which brings holiday-makers to the resort of Temple Regis and one of Miss Dimont’s regular jobs is meeting the train if it’s got a celebrity on board.  But when she and her photographer arrive to meet film star Gerald Hennessey, they find him dead in his first class compartment.  Called away from the scene to a second death, Judy becomes convinced that there is a link between the two – even though the police aren’t convinced that either is the result of foul play.  Soon she’s investigating the links between the film star and the seaside town as well as between the two men and dealing with a couple of highly strung actresses who are mourning the dead star.  Will Judy find out the truth – and if she does will her editor let her publish it?

I hope that sounds like fun, because this book is a lovely romp through an English seaside town with pretensions of grandeur led by a charming character in Judy Dimont.  One of the toughest things to do in stories like this is create a leading character with an excuse to go poking about in murders and mysteries – and a reporter is an ideal one.  Judy has a perfect excuse to nose around and to get information from the police and the authorities.   It also means that she is going to keep coming across bodies in a more natural way than a private citizen would.  And it makes a change from private detectives of all shapes and sizes well.  The secondary characters are well drawn and there’s plenty of potential here for on-going plot strands without it feeling like there’s lots of set up being done.  I’m looking forward to finding out more about Miss D’s past in the next book.

Here’s the rub – The Riviera Express isn’t actually out for another 9 days yet – but you can pre-order the hardback from Amazon or Waterstones  and hope it turns up on the day or on Kindle or Kobo and it’ll download itself on the 23rd as a lovely treat.

Happy reading.

*I would love to know who TP Fielden is – this doesn’t feel like a first novel and there’s very little information that I can find on TP, but their Goodreads biography says that they are a “leading author, broadcaster and journalist” so it feels like a pen name – and I’d love to know who is behind it!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: February 6 – February 12

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A busy week at work, with four and a half commutes means lots of reading done, which is nice. I finally finished American Wife – which took me a while because it was my bedtime book – and made some inroads to my NetGalley list (it’s so easy to find and request stuff on there).

Read:

Copy Cap Murder by Jenn McKinlay

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

Waiting for an Earl Like You by Alexandra Hawkins

The Mystery of the Painted Dragon by Katherine Woodfine

The Riviera Express by TP Fielden

Verity Fair: Custard Creams and Pink Elephants by Terry Wiley

Circle of Influence by Annette Dashofy

Started:

The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett by Chelsea Sedoti

Still reading:

First Women by Kate Andersen Brower

Shock and Awe by Simon Reynolds

I didn’t buy any books this week – although I did pick up a big stack of books that I ordered a few weeks ago for a bargain price.  Two steps forwards, one step back!

American imports, Book of the Week, cozy crime

Book of the Week: The Semester of Our Discontent

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Last week was almost entirely taken up with cozy crimes, many of them the first in series as I’m on the hunt for another one to add to my lists.  It’s proving a harder quest than I had imagined.  Quite a few of the books that I read last week had a problem (or two).  But in the end I settled on the first book in Cynthia Kuhn’s Lila McLean series – mostly on the basis that I went out and requested the second book from NetGalley after I finished it – which is out later this month – and then read that too.

Cover of The Semester of Our Discontent
I like the simplicity of the cover – it looks classy to me.

So, in the Semester of Our Discontent we met Lila, newly appointed English professor at a small but prestigious university.  But no sooner has she arrived at Stonedale than she has more to worry about than whether she’s going to get enough published to get tenure when she finds one of her colleagues dead.  Her cousin (also on the staff and up for tenure) is one of the prince suspects, so Lila starts gathering evidence alongside teaching and settling in to her new job.

Now as a Brit, I had to google tenure the first time I can across it in a book a few years back, because it wasn’t something I had come across in the UK system, but this actually explains it really quite well and it made sense to me (or at least as much sense as it can make!) without slowing down the plot or doing an info dump.  There’s a large cast of characters in this, who don’t always get a chance to become more than just names* but the people you do get to know are engaging and three dimensional.  There’s definitely set up here for running threads for the series, but it’s done much less obviously than some of the other books I read last week.

There are a couple of moments that are a bit over the top (and I can’t tell you what) but Lila’s investigations are sensible enough and she never strays over the Too Stupid to Live or the Why the Monkeys Hasn’t She Been Arrested lines – which again was a problem in some of the other books that I read this week.

The Semester of Our Discontent isn’t perfect, but it’s engaging and readable and the depiction of campus life feels like it has plenty of potential for plots that don’t neccesarily revolve around loads of bodies**.  And at time of writing its available for the bargain price of 99p on Kindle.  It’s also available, but more expensive (£2.04) on Kobo.  The second book, The Art of Vanishing, is available on the 28th – Kindle and Kobo are taking pre-orders now, and again at time of writing Kindle is the cheaper.  They’re both published by Henery Press, who were the source of a fair few of my cozies last week, and they have more links to outlets where you can buy on their websites as well as sign up to their newsletter, which sometimes has freebies.  Wink wink.

Happy reading!

*Although this is sorted out in book 2

**As demonstrated in book 2

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: January 30 – February 5

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So it turns out that I read almost nothing but cozy crime this week.  I realised this was happening on Friday and decided to roll with it and work my way through some advance copies I had waiting on the kindle.

Read:

A List of Cages by Robin Roe

Cropped to Death by Christina Freeburn

The Semester of Our Discontent by Cynthia Kuhn

River City Dead by Nancy G West

The Art of Vanishing by Cynthia Kuhn

Tell Me No Lies by Lynn Chandler-Willis

Fatal Brushstroke by Sybill Johnson

Started:

Copy Cap Murder by Jenn McKinlay

Still reading:

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

First Women by Kate Andersen Brower

Shock and Awe by Simon Reynolds

Three ebooks bought this week – but no actual books, I’m not sure whether that’s progress or not!

Book of the Week, fiction, mystery

Book of the Week: Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars

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I had such a tough job picking a book for BotW this week, because I really didn’t read anything that I whole-heartedly loved.  I started reading a lot of books and then gave up on them, and I finished a few – including a real stinker.  But in the end I plumped for Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars by Miranda Emmerson.

Cover of Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars.
As I mention below, Im not quite sure the cover for this is quite right.

Anna Treadway is a dresser, working in a London theatre and living above a Turkish cafe in Soho in 1965.  When the actress who she works with disappears, she sets out to try and find her as the trail grows cold and the newspapers lose interest.   As she hunts for the mysterious Iolanthe Green she finds herself in new world of jazz clubs, police cells and backstreet doctors.

Whilst this wasn’t perfect, it was an interesting idea and a great cast of diverse characters. It’s got an interesting mystery that’s well thought through and several different plot strands which tie together quite nicely.  Underneath the mystery of where Iolanthe has gone there are issues of prejudice and race and people struggling to be heard and believed. From the look of the (UK) cover and some of the write ups I was expecting it to be ultimately more uplifting, but perhaps given the issues that it’s dealing with, I was being unrealistic.

This is Miranda Emmerson’s first novel and it does a great job of creating the atmosphere of 1960s London and the grimier side of life.  In fact that was what I liked best about it – the mix of people thrown together, some times living side by side without ever intersecting.  I think I would have liked more of Anna’s backstory and I wanted a bit more of what happened next at the end, but I pretty much always want more of what happened next at the end!

My copy came via NetGalley, but you can get Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars from Amazon, Foyles and Waterstones or on Kindle and Kobo.  It only came out a couple of weeks back so it’s hardcover and the ebooks are priced accordingly too I’m afraid.  The paperback is out in July, so it may drop a little then, if you want to add it to your wishlist and wait it out.

Happy Reading.

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: January 23 – January 29

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I started the week (unexpectedly) doing a bit old 50 and out cull – nothing was capturing my fancy.  But it has got a few books off the virtual to-read pile.

Read:

The Flying Classroom by Erich Kästner

Danny Dingle’s Fantastic Finds: The Super-Sonic Submarine by Angie Lake

A Thrilling Term at Janeways by Elinor M Brent Dyer

Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars by Miranda Emmerson

Murder of a Chocolate Covered Cherry by Denise Swanson

Started:

Shock and Awe by Simon Reynolds

Still reading:

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

First Women by Kate Andersen Brower

I didn’t buy any books this week – but I acquired quite a lot because the arts department upstairs at work is moving offices and everyone seems to be having a clear out of there shelves – meaning lots of books up for grabs.  Oops.

Book of the Week, non-fiction

Book of the Week: Blitzed

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So, you may have noticed from yesterday’s WiB that I didn’t finish that many books last week. But that was not a problem when it came to picking a BotW, because one of the books that I did finish was Norman Ohler’s Blitzed.

It’s only in hardback at the moment I’m afraid, but I’m just happy it’s been translated at all.

Ohler’s thesis is that large amounts of drugs were consumed by Nazi troops as they steamrollered through Europe, that drugs were equally consumed by people on the homair front and that during the latter stages of the war (from around 1941 onwards) Hitler himself was dependent on hard drugs. Ohler backs up his assertions with primary source research using documents held in archives in Germany and in America and makes a persuasive case.

Now before I go any further, I need to say that although I have a history degree, I have, in the main, avoided study of Nazi Germany because I find it too unbearably terrible. Luckily my school stopped studying WW2 Germany at A-Level the year before I started sixth form* and at university I managed to avoid Twentieth Century history for all but one term** so I am no expert.

I found Ohler’s book incredibly readable and very well researched. It’s an appealing idea. The Nazis were off their heads on drugs. That’s why they did it. It’s comforting and reassuring – it was the drugs which made them do it – and means that you don’t have to worry about what you would have done in their place. I don’t think this is what Ohler is trying to say. In the case of Hitler he’s very specific that it doesn’t explain all of Hitler’s actions – just enabled him to maintain and continue his rule. As for the man on the street, or the soldier in a panzer regiment, the drugs enabled them to keep going for longer than otherwise. So I suppose what I’m saying is that this book shouldn’t be seen in isolation or viewed as the whole story. That would be far too simplistic. But it has new ideas and research I haven’t heard about before and is worth reading, if only so that you know what the historians are arguing about.  Because they are going to argue about this.

Get your copy of Blitzed from Amazon, Waterstones or Foyles or on Kindle or Kobo.  The paperback is out in May – pre-order on Amazon. Or if you don’t want to read the whole thing, Dan Snow interviewed Norman Ohler on his History Hit Podcast and it was reviewed in the December issue of Literary Review (subscription needed).

Happy Reading!

*We did Tudor England, the French Revolution, France 1814-1914 and the Italian Risorgimento which was much more to my taste.

** the second term of my first year, where my seminar tutor was a German Post Grad whose thesis was on “images of death in 20th Century Germany”.

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week In Books: January 16 – January 22

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Well the week started with my birthday (yes I know, I was celebrating last week.  We take birthdays seriously in my house) and although I read a lot of American Wife and First Women I didn’t finish them, and I also spent a lot of the second half of the week reading about the handover of power in the US, the end of the Obama administration and the start of the Trump one.  So not a lot of books got finished.

Read:

Rivers of London: Night Witch by Ben Aaronovitch, Andrew Cartmel and Lee Sullivan

A Killer Plot by Ellery Adams

Blitzed by Norman Ohler

Privates on Parade by Peter Nichols

Started:

A Thrilling Term at Janeways by Elinor M Brent Dyer

Still reading:

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

First Women by Kate Andersen Brower

I had a mega spending spree in Hay on Wye on my birthday (Monday) buying half a dozen books for myself and another couple as gifts for other people.  But beyond that I was very good and restrained.