No spoilers please, Lago!

Finished a couple of murder mysteries this week:

The Guest List, set on an Irish island where a wedding is being held, what's unusual is the victim isn't identified until the end and the arrest/conviction is almost immediate. What precedes that is the relationships and motives the detective usually draws out but here told through the eyes of the various characters. I thought it well done, believable characters, decent writing and plot but somehow unsatisfying.

The Shadows in the Street by Susan Hill; a killer is stalking a city's street prostitutes, meanwhile there are tensions at the Cathedral as the new Dean tries to make changes to old traditions. The two worlds are connected by a lady doctor who is on a committee battling the Dean, has one of the women as a patient and is sister to the hero detective. Well written, if a bit rushed at the end, the womens' world was particularly believable, if Ann Cleaves collaborated with Trollope this would be the result.

I’m half way through The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre, translated from French. It’s funny and well-plotted so far, and I note that the offhand racism in Spiral seems to be a French thing, still.

I loved that. Pitched the translation, had four publishers interested but someone else got in there first. I was super bummed out.

On the subject of rubbish books, I would like to recommend the Sentimental Garbage podcast. They take a book, that has often been dismissed because it's seen as chick lit or for women and talk through what's so great about it. Not to serious, but always with plenty of food for thought. At the moment they are doing Sex and the City, the TV show and I'm enjoying it very much.

What a shame for you 10g!

This book sounds rather good so I’ve ordered it from the library- and the publisher sounds worth-following:

Where Stands A Wingèd Sentry by Margaret Kennedy

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/4d692c7e-872a-11eb-bb21-db0220819036?shareToken=e6dde810084022dd656a14d34e
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There’s a film of the Godmother book too, called Mama Weed.

I read the Richard Osman Thursday Murder Club but I have a query re the final whodunnit, but can't find the symbol for spoiler alerts on this keyboard, so will have to save it until I'm on my phone.

Or just the | symbol if you have one on your keyboard - mine's shift-\ , down between the z and the left shift key.

Thanks, but found the phone.

Do not read this spoiler if you intend to read the Thursday Murder Club, but this bugged me:

I read a lot of rubbish, in between serious stuff, but non more than Rebecca Shaw. For murders and killing she's worse than a Gatling Gun. Even much loved characters are killed in one way or another.

I'd never heard of her so looked her up on wiki:

A review in The Telegraph[3] for 'A Village Deception' described her style as 'The Archers meet Midsomer Murders'.

And that she was in her 60s when the first of her 27 books was published which is impressive.

I'm enjoying Heavens river more than I expected, on the surface Dennis E Taylor seems a shallow writer, all rye jokes and nerdy references but underneath that he's discussing complex ideas, like the nature of identity, colonialism, etc, all mixed up with some good old hard sci-fi.

Rye jokes? Corny.

I might have a go at Heaven's River, having just finished the 'Expanse' cycle of novels.

Remember it's the fourth in a series which is probably best read in order. Now I've finished it I can't help feeling it was rather padded out, it's twice the length of previous books, with a long 'heroes journey' that could have been cut by a lot.

Just finished Alan Moore's epic Jerusalem, 60hrs on Audible and longer than War and Peace in print, I feel as if I've finished a marathon. It's a really extraordinary book, as if a someone has created a novel from the rambling theories of a well educated lunatic, so well described the words just dissolve into visions. Moore here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_(2016_nove
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Fantastic use of obscenity too, rarely but perfectly deployed to make certain passages all the more visceral.

Does he read the audiobook?

No, it's very well read by Simon Vance (no idea), it had to be to stick with for that long even with breaks but it was an easy voice to have in my head.

I have listened to a number of books narrated by Simon Vance and he's usually very good.

I'll look out for them, the reader makes a big difference, especially with a long book.