Reviews

Invisible is a great thriller. I can’t say too much more about the plot because the twists and turns are the whole point of reading a book that wrong foots the reader at every turn . . . Christine Poulson kept me reading by giving out just enough information to intrigue and puzzle so that I had to read just one more chapter. That’s why, in the end, I just dropped everything else and read the last half of Invisible in one sitting.’

- I PREFER READING BLOG

Village School

Posted on Nov 29, 2013 in Dora Saint, Miss Read, Village School | No Comments

Lyn over at I Prefer Reading mentioned Miss Read the other day. It reminded me that I saw her obituary (she was the writer, Dora Saint) and was mildly surprised. I remembered reading her years and years ago, when I was at school and had assumed that she was elderly then. I wondered if it […]

Doris Lessing

When I graduated in the seventies from Leicester University, Doris Lessing was the guest speaker. I don’t remember much of what she said, something about how we should make the most of the privelege of our education comes vaguely to mind. Only now do I connect that with the fact that she herself left school […]

A Proustian moment

The other day I got The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen down from the shelf to check something. It must be years and years – maybe even decades – since I opened it and I got a surprise when I saw written inside the front cover the name of a boyfriend that I’d gone out […]

Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case

So at last it’s over. After twenty-four years David Suchet’s magnificent run as Hercule Poirot came to an end last night – and what an end. The last few episodes had been a bit disappointing, but last night’s was a return to form and I loved it. It had an appropriately elegiac and autumnal feel. […]

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union

Posted on Nov 13, 2013 in Uncategorized | No Comments

Meyer Landsman, the policeman protagonist – hero woud be pitching it far too high – has a drink problem, a failed marriage, and is inevitably taken off the case after maverick behaviour. But that’s where Chabon’s novel parts company with classic noir. Because the mean streets in question are not those of Los Angeles, but […]

The Romance of the Internet

This morning a book arrived in the post, another Michael Gilbert, Body of a Girl, which I ordered through Abebooks. Once I have read this, I think I’ll have read all of his. It was sent from Green Earth books, Auburn, Washington State, not very far from Seattle. Including postage, this cost me only £4.96, […]

Grinding to a halt

I’m am admirer of Barbara Kingsolver’s work, and think The Poisonwood Bible is a masterpiece, so a copy of her most recent book, Flight Behaviour, was a welcome present last Christmas. I took it on holiday with me last week, and it got off to a good start. It begins with the main character, Dellarobia, […]

Maigret in Vichy

Posted on Oct 25, 2013 in Maigret in Vichy, Simenon | No Comments

I’m making it a rule now always to have something French on my ereader. Earlier in the year it was Simenon’s Maigret’s Little Joke, which I blogged about in June, and I have just finished Maigret in Vichy. I loved them both. Simonen wrote over eighty Maigret stories – that is quite some going for […]

More Treasure

In my previous blog I wondered if ebooks would herald a resurgence in the publication of short stories and novellas. What I hadn’t fully realised was the extent to which it is already far easier to get hold of collections of short stories that in the past have been very hard to find or prohibitively […]

Treasure

I’d almost finished browsing in the charity shop last Saturday, when my eye was caught by a title on display on the top shelf, THE MAN WHO HATED BANKS AND OTHER MYSTERIES. I reached up for it and was delighted to see that it was a collection of stories by a favourite writer, Michael Gilbert. […]