Six in July

I read six books in July.

 

The Lady in the Park by David Reynolds

I enjoyed David Reynold’s travel memoir The Road to Brownsville (and have yet to read his family memoir Swan River) so I was interested to see that he’d written a cosy-ish crime novel featuring Max, a retired CID inspector, as a private investigator; Max’s sidekick as it were is his observant six-year-old grandson which worked really well.

 

‘When a woman is found unconscious on a ping-pong table in Peckham's Warwick Gardens, it looks like a case of mistaken identity. Why would anyone want to injure this popular local mum of six?’ Danny spots a vital clue in CCTV footage.

 

I look forward to the next outing of this duo.

 

 

Long Story Short by Victoria Walters

Hmmm. Wasn’t keen despite its literary agent/book publishing background.

 

 

Wycliffe and the Tangled Web by W. J. Burley

When I was in Orkney in the summer we passed a hall with a jumble sale, raising funds for the RNLI, and couldn’t resist going in. It was a jumble sure enough … after a good rummage the cousin I was with found a dress for a couple of pounds that she was delighted with. The ladies running it were so lovely and chatty I wanted to buy something so (last of the big spenders) I paid 50p for this tangled tale. I quite enjoyed it, and its Cornish setting, but I couldn’t really believe in the victim, a very troubled teen called Hilda.

 

So, as a palate cleanser as it were, I reread Clock Dance by the peerless Anne Tyler.

 

 

 

The Cliff House by Christopher Brookmyre

A take on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None – a hen party on small island goes very very wrong. Brilliant.

 

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry

My first Sebastian Barry but definitely not my last. What a staggering feat – to sustain the voice of teenage Irish-born Thomas McNulty, driven to emigrate to the United States after the death of his family in the potato famine. After signing up for the army, Thomas and his beloved friend, ‘Handsome John Cole’, fight in the Indian Wars and the Civil War, both viscerally described, and gain and lose comrades along the way. When they think they have finally settled down to farm life, the past comes back to haunt them.