Just Read: Spook Street by Mick Herron. This is the latest in his Jackson Lamb spy series. Just as good, if not better, than the earlier ones. OK, Mick Herron isn't John Le Carre, doesn't write with the same lyrical flow, but my goodness, he's the closest I've ever come to reading. These are today's spies with today's problems and attitudes ( Read more... )

Have just finished two books this morning - well, I have one by the bed and the other on the breakfast table!

Conclave by Robert Harris is excellent.  Beautifully written, it tells what happens when a Pope dies and the Cardinals gather to vote in a new man.  Or as the tag line on the back says, "The Power of God, the Ambition of Men."  I've seen ( Read more... )

Laid a little low with sciatica at present so lots of reading being done standing up ( Read more... )

In these strange hiatus days between Christmas and New Year, I always seem to have time to spare. I have been splurging on Belinda Bauer books.

I love her work - she writes the most original thrillers I have read for a very long time. Rubbernecker is weirdly wonderful with a triple twist at the end that I wasn't expecting. I have just finished ( Read more... )

So, long before Philippa Gregory became ensnared by the feuding Plantaganet cousins and the sex-crazy Tudors, she wrote two books set at the time of Charles I. Earthly Joys is the story of the Duke of Buckingham's gardener, John Tradescant, who practically invented gardening as we know it today and travelled widely across Europe, bringing back to ( Read more... )

Been a busy reading week:

Just finished Blue Lightning the fourth in Anne Cleeves Shetland thriller series. I enjoyed it just as much as the first three. I love the background and although I think Jimmy Perez, the policeman hero, is a bit wet, the books are well plotted and thoroughly enjoyable ( Read more... )