Title: The Pawn

Author: Steven James

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Onyx

Copyright: 2009

ISBN: 0451412796

Pages: 448

Keywords: thriller

Reading period: 13–19 September, 2010

Patrick Bowers PhD is an environmental criminologist for the FBI. A serial killer who calls himself the Illusionist is killing women in North Carolina and leading the FBI a merry dance. There's a major subplot involving another killer and Jonestown. And Bowers' personal life is complicated by a sullen teenage stepdaughter.

Despite the ludicrous complexity of the plot, it's an entertaining and relatively thoughtful thriller.

Title: Matter

Author: Iain M. Banks

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Orbit

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 978-0316005371

Pages: 624

Keywords: science fiction

Reading period: 29 August–19 September, 2010

Sarl is a barely industrial backwater on the Eighth level of a Shellworld, a vast artificial planet of concentric levels. King Hausk is secretly murdered after a battle by his top aide, tyl Loesp. His oldest son, Ferbin the fop, witnesses the murder and flees for his life. Meanwhile, his sister Djan, who has long been a Special Circumstances operative in the Culture, hears of the death halfway across the galaxy and heads for home. Their younger brother, Oramen, is still a minor and tyl Loesp becomes the Regent.

It turns out that there's much more at stake than regicide in a primitive society. Banks moves the narrative back and forth across several levels of societal advancement, from Sarl at the bottom to the High-Level Involved like the Culture at the top of the food chain. He examines the bloody futility of war, personal heroism, (literal) world building, and an aeons-old evil, weaving them together in a well-crafted tale.

Title: Union of Renegades: Rys Chronicles I

Author: Tracy Falbe

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Publisher: Brave Luck Books

Copyright: 2006

ISBN: 097622352X

Pages: 409

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 12–18 September, 2010

I gave this free ebook a fair shake, but eventually the clunky writing grew too much for me.

A renegade warrior and his escaped-slave girlfriend penetrate the vast wilderness where no human has trod, and find a new race ruled by an ancient queen who needs to be overthrown…

Title: MetaGame

Author: Sam Landstrom

Rating: 2 stars out of 5

Publisher: Smashwords

Copyright: 2009

ISBN: 2940000723418

Pages: 400

Keywords: science fiction

Reading period: 15 September, 2010

A free ebook that I quickly gave up on because I couldn't stand the leaden writing and the heavyhanded exposition.

Title: Blood Engines

Author: T.A. Pratt

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Spectra

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0553589989

Pages: 368

Keywords: urban fantasy

Reading period: 7–14 September, 2010

Marla Mason is the chief sorcerer of Felport. She's abrasive, hard-headed, and ruthless enough to stay on the top of the pile. But a challenger has arisen and she's gone to San Francisco with her sidekick Rondeau to seek the help of an old friend. That friend has been murdered by an Aztec sorcerer who's trying to bring back an Aztec god.

Fast-paced and entertaining. I found Marla too obnoxious at first, but then she grew on me.

Title: Bitter Seeds

Author: Ian Tregillis

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Tor

Copyright: 2010

ISBN: 978-0765321503

Pages: 352

Keywords: fantasy, alternate history

Reading period: 8–9 September, 2010

A German doctor has been training a handful of children for 20 years to develop superpowers such as precognition and fire starting. They are the Nazis' secret weapon, swaying the progress of the War. To stop the Germans from crossing the English Channel, the British recruit a handful of warlocks to make a devil's bargain with ancient evil beings.

Told from the viewpoint of one of the German superbeings and two of the British agents, we see the terrible costs to each of them, as they lose their honor and draw close to insanity.

Recommended.

Title: The Unsuspecting Mage: the Morcyth Saga I

Author: Brian S. Pratt

Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: PUBLISHER

Copyright: YEAR

ISBN: 0595376304

Pages: 311

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 12 September, 2010

Teenage D&D-playing bookworm responds to a help-wanted ad, steps through a door, and finds himself wandering in a forest where he can do simple magic.

I couldn't take more than an hour of the clumsy writing in this free ebook.

Title: Hour of the Hunter

Author: J.A. Jance

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Avon

Copyright: 1991

ISBN: 978-0380711079

Pages: 416

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 10–12 September, 2010

Diana Ladd is the widow of a man believed to have killed an Indian girl seven years ago in the Arizona desert. The girl's grandmother, Rita Antone, is helping Diana rear her son in a remote house. Now the real killer, Andrew Carlisle, is out of jail, blaming Diana for his being put away for manslaughter.

Jance weaves together several interesting characters, their backstories, and Indian myths to make a satisfying thriller.

Title: Hostile Intent

Author: Michael Walsh

Rating: 2 stars out of 5

Publisher: Pinnacle

Copyright: 2009

ISBN: 978-0786020423

Pages: 360

Keywords: thriller

Reading period: 9–10 September, 2010

Superspy Devlin, head of the U.S. government's most secret black ops team, is on the run, apparently having being framed by someone with inside knowledge.

Second-rate ripoff of Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy. Ludicrous plot, cliched characters, risible technobabble. I gave it longer than I should before abandoning it.

Avoid.

Title: 1812: The Rivers of War

Author: Eric Flint

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Del Rey

Copyright: 2005

ISBN: 978-0345465689

Pages: 560

Keywords: alternate history

Reading period: 25 August–8 September, 2010

1812: The Rivers of War is the first novel in an alternate history series that recasts the War of 1812 and later the Trail of Tears. Sam Houston, Andrew Jackson, and several Scots-Irish and Indian characters head off in a somewhat different direction than they did in our history.

Flint tells a rousing, entertaining story, with exciting battles and engaging characters. It's a period of U.S. history that I knew little about, and I enjoyed the book.

Title: Frankenstein: Prodigal Son

Author: Dean Koontz & Kevin J. Anderson

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Bantam

Copyright: 2004

ISBN: 978-0553593327

Pages: 496

Keywords: horror

Reading period: 30 August–6 September, 2010

Deucalion was once the first of Victor Frankenstein's creations. In 200 years, the monster has grown wise and ethical. He learns that Victor also still lives—Victor is creating a New Race in New Orleans, a race of superhumans loyal to him, who will destroy ordinary humanity. Some of the New Race are not quite as loyal to “Father” as he thinks; some are veering far off their prescribed courses. Victor is the true monster here, the ultimate mad scientist.

The premise is interesting, but I found the writing to be flat and by the numbers. I'll probably read another book or two in the series, to see if the other co-authors do a better job.

Title: The Girl Who Played with Fire

Author: Stieg Larsson

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Vintage

Copyright: 2006

ISBN: 978-0307454553

Pages: 630

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 29 August, 2010

Sequel to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Mikael Blomkvist's Millennium magazine is about to publish an exposé of sex trafficking in Sweden, when the two researchers are gunned down. Lisabeth Salendar's prints are on the gun and she immediately becomes the most wanted woman in Sweden—but it's not so easy to catch her. We learn a great deal about Salander's traumatic past by the end of the book.

While the book is enthralling—I read it in less than a day—it's not especially well-written. The plot is often ludicrous, relying heavily on improbable coincidences, and the characters can be implausible. Even so, I scarcely put the book down until I finished it.

Title: White Witch, Black Curse

Author: Kim Harrison

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Eos

Copyright: 2009

ISBN: 978-0-06-113802-7

Pages: 549

Keywords: urban fantasy

Reading period: 27–29 August, 2010

Sequel to The Outlaw Demon Wails; best read in sequence.

Rachel Morgan's life is complicated. She's investigating the murder of her boyfriend, the vampire Kisten. There's a banshee on the rampage in Cincinatti and the human police want her help. And she's being shunned by her fellow witches because she's thought to consort with demons. And then there's her personal life. That's complicated too.

Entertaining, but far over the top.

Title: Once Around the Track

Author: Sharyn McCrumb

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Kensington

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 978-0758207784

Pages: 320

Keywords: fiction

Reading period: 18–25 August, 2010

Badger Jenkins is a shy, unassuming NASCAR driver with chiseled cheekbones and a rabid fanbase. He's recruited to drive for the first otherwise-all-female team. For several months, we follow Badger and several of the women who work in the crew or behind the scenes, as the team coalesces and the season progresses.

This is an entertaining and well-written look at NASCAR racing from the perspective of insiders. We learn a great deal about the sport and what it takes to run a NASCAR team. We also get to see Badger from several viewpoints, ranging from the tongue-tied hero worshipper to the gruff crew chief. Most of the time, he's an irresponsible country boy who just wants to fish on his lake, but when he dons his fire suit, he becomes dangerous, almost irresistible, and wholly focused.

Recommended.

Title: Beyond Reach

Author: Karin Slaughter

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 978-0385339476

Pages: 416

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 16–17 August, 2010

Dr. Sara Linton and her husband, police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, travel to a small Georgia town to find out why Jeffrey's detective, Lena Adams, has been found beside a burnt-out car with a corpse. They uncover a lot of dirty secrets in Reese, including neo-Nazis and drugrunning.

I found the plot gripping but also unpleasant. Slaughter seems to enjoy torturing her characters.

Title: Every Man Dies Alone

Author: Hans Fallada

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Melville House

Copyright: 1947

ISBN: 978-1933633633

Pages: 544

Keywords: fiction

Reading period: 2–24 August, 2010

Every Man Dies Alone was published in German in 1947, and became a “surprise bestseller” after it was translated into English in 2009. It's a novel of the little-known German resistance against the Nazis, loosely based on true events.

Otto and Anna Quangel are apolitical, middle-aged, working class Berliners, who become radicalized after the death of their son early in the War. Otto starts writing seditious postcards and dropping them in public buildings, hoping to foment unrest. The Gestapo grow furiouser as this goes on for two years, and several people are caught up in their dragnet before they eventually catch the Quangels.

Fallada is very good at capturing the paranoia and the aloneness of the ordinary Germans living in the Nazi police state. Even Gestapo inspectors have reason to be fearful. Fallada had, of course, just lived through it himself, under some degree of suspicion. The plotting and the characterization are clumsy and not as good as the atmosphere.

Somewhat recommended.

Title: Siren of the Waters

Author: Michael Genelin

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Publisher: Soho Crime

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 1569475857

Pages: 304

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 1 August, 2010

Jana Matinova is a senior Slovak police officer following the trail of a master criminal across half of Europe. His old rivals think he's dead and are squabbling over his legacy.

The book is more interesting in the long flashbacks to her early career under the Communists than in the fairly preposterous present-day plot, which relies too heavily on coincidences and clichés.

Title: Shakespeare in an Hour

Author: Christopher Baker

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Smith & Kraus

Copyright: 2010

ISBN: 1936232049

Pages: 112

Keywords: drama, history

Reading period: 28 July–1 August, 2010

Quick, readable intro to Shakespeare's life and plays, setting him in the context of the religious and political turmoils of the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean eras. You can't do justice to Shakespeare in an hour, of course, Most useful if you didn't already know anything about him or his work.

Title: A Nail Through the Heart

Author: Timothy Hallinan

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: HarperCollins

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0061257222

Pages: 352

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 31 July, 2010

Pock Rafferty is a "rough travel" writer trying to form a family in Bangkok with ex-bar girl Rose and former street kid Miaow. When he is asked to look into the disappearance of an Australian expat after the Tsunami, he finds both a sadistic child pornographer and a Khmer Rouge torturer.

Hallinan clearly knows a lot about Thai culture and brings the seedy back streets of Bangkok to life. Rafferty is no hard-bitten Marlowesque cynic however. He is a soft-hearted would-be family man, trying to bridge the cultural and emotional gaps between himself and his new family, while not getting them killed.

Either of these story lines would have been enough. Somehow, Pock in his desperation manages to play multiple sets of new enemies against each other and comes out intact.

Title: Assassin's Apprentice

Author: Robin Hobb

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Bantam Spectra

Copyright: 1995

ISBN: 055357339X

Pages: 448

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 30 July, 2010

The boy is abandoned at the castle gate when he's six, Prince Chivalry's bastard. Over ten years, he grows up on the sidelines, where he is ignored by most save the stable master. The king eventually finds a use for him, apprenticing the boy to his assassin.

There are few swords swung in this book. It's a character study of an outcast boy and his often strained relationships with others. It details his developing awareness of court intrigue and national politics, and the difficult choices that confront him.

Highly recommended.

Title: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Author: Alexander McCall Smith

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Anchor Books

Copyright: 1998

ISBN: 1400077656

Pages: 235

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 28 July, 2010

The first of the The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.

Mma Precious Ramotswe sets up a one-woman detective agency in Gaborne, the capital of her native Botswana. She is shrewd and observant and makes a go of it, despite the naysayers. The book is a collection of short episodes, loosely tied together. Her good nature helps lead her to find satisfactory resolutions for most of her clients.

Enjoyable, if frothy.

Title: His Majesty's Dragon

Author: Naomi Novik

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Del Rey

Copyright: 2006

ISBN: 0345481283

Pages: 384

Keywords: fantasy, alternate history

Reading period: 26 July, 2010

The first in the Temeraire series.

Capt. Will Laurence of the Royal Navy captures one of Napoleon's ships. It's carrying a dragon egg, from which the dragon Temeraire promptly hatches and bonds with Laurence. Laurence must leave the Navy and become an aviator in the socially undesirable Royal Aerial Corps, where he and Temeraire will fight against Napoleon's dragons.

This is a delightful cross between the Napoleonic seafaring of the Aubrey-Maturin novels and Dragonriders of Pern, with a little bit of Hogwarts for dragons thrown in. Temeraire is a precocious and intellectually curious dragon of exceptional abilities, who charms not only the readers but most of those he meets.

I'm looking forward to reading the next few books in the series.

Title: Bulldog Drummond

Author: Sapper

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Copyright: 1920

ISBN: 1842325434

Pages: 280

Keywords: crime, pulp

Reading period: 25 July, 2010

First of the Bulldog Drummond novels.

Bored former army officer, Capt. Hugh Drummond, “late of the Royal Loamshires”, puts an advertisement in the paper looking for adventure. He gets more than he expected when a young woman puts him on the trail of a master criminal who is organizing a would-be socialist putsch.

Entertaining in a square-jawed, stiff-upper-lip sort of way.

Title: Playback

Author: Raymond Chandler

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Vintage

Copyright: 1958

ISBN: 0394757661

Pages: 176

Keywords: crime

Reading period: 23–24 July, 2010

Playback is the last Philip Marlowe novel completed by Raymond Chandler. Marlowe is hired to tail a woman who arrives on a train from the East. He follows her to a small town near San Diego, where she falls under the influence of a blackmailer—and Marlowe starts to fall for her.

Not Chandler's best work—one is left feeling that both Chandler and Marlowe are old and tired and going through the motions—but enjoyable none the less.

Title: The Scent of Shadows

Author: Vicki Pettersson

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Publisher: Eos

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0060898917

Pages: 464

Keywords: urban fantasy

Reading period: 28 May–23 July, 2010

The plot is more than slightly ridiculous. Young woman discovers that exactly on her 25th birthday she will come into her hitherto unknown powers and join the secret superhero zodiacal troupe that protects Las Vegas from their nemeses. For her own protection, she must assume the identity of her murdered sister.

It's better than it sounds though. The heroine is appealing and copes fairly well with the traumatic upending of her life.

Title: Containment

Author: Christian Cantrell

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Cantrell Media Company

Copyright: 2010

ISBN: 0984550518

Pages: 248

Keywords: science fiction

Reading period: 20–22 July, 2010

Arik is the smartest of the 100 young humans born to the only colony on Venus—a colony that needs to develop its independence from Earth. After he wakes from a three-month coma, he grows to realize that there is something very wrong going on in the colony.

The book starts off very slowly, with massive amounts of exposition that the author apparently couldn't bear to cut. Later, it develops some interesting ideas and unexpected plot twists, making it worthwhile.

Available as a free ebook from the author's website.

Title: The Trade of Queens

Author: Charles Stross

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Tor

Copyright: 2010

ISBN: 978-0-7653-1673-8

Pages: 303

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 12 June, 2010

Sixth and final book in the Merchant Princes series, sequel to The Revolution Business.

Everything's going to hell in all three parallel worlds, our United States, the Gruinmarkt, and New Britain. The conservative faction of the world-walking Clan has launched a nuclear attack on the U.S.—and the U.S. is going strike back, hard. The only realistic option for the progressive wing is to find sanctuary in New Britain, where the monarchy was recently overthrown in a bloody revolution.

Charlie Stross brings the series to a haunting, nuclear-fired conclusion.

Title: The Winds of Dune

Author: Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Publisher: Tor

Copyright: 2009

ISBN: 978-0-7653-2272-2

Pages: 448

Keywords: science fiction

Reading period: 5–12 June, 2010

The Winds of Dune is another interquel in the Dune franchise, following on from Paul of Dune, taking place between Dune Messiah and Children of Dune.

The Emperor Paul Atreides has disappeared into the desert, leaving behind his new-born twins and his half-mad sister Alia as the Regent. His mother Jessica arrives from Caladan and comes to understand a great deal about her son's legacy, and the galaxy-wide Jihad that had grown beyond his control.

Title: Requiem for an Angel

Author: Andrew Taylor

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: HarperCollins

Copyright: 2002

ISBN: 0007134363

Pages: 914

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 16–28 May, 2010

Requiem for an Angel is subtitled “The Secret History of a Murderer”; it is also known as the Roth Trilogy.

The Four Last Things is a psychological thriller set in the present day (late 90s, when it was written). Four-year-old Lucy Appleyard is abducted in London by the dimwitted Eddie. We follow her mother, the Rev. Sally Appleyard, as she disintegrates. Her husband, Michael, is the godson of David Byfield. We also follow Eddie who comes to realize that his partner Angel is quite terrifying.

The Judgement of Strangers's opening line is “We found the mutilated corpse of Lord Peter in the early evening of Thursday the 13th August, 1970.” It appears, at first, to be an Agatha Christiesque romp, narrated by the Rev. David Byfield, the vicar of Roth. But Christie's heyday is long past and Roth is a former village, now a dormitory town for London; there are teenage louts swilling cider on the village green; and the manor house is bought by rich hippies. David, a sexually frustrated widower, and his teenaged daughter, Rosemary, get caught up in events.

In The Office of the Dead, the narrator, Wendy Appleyard, leaves her husband. and goes to stay with her old friend Janet Byfield in the cathedral town of Rosington. It is 1958 and David is attached to the Theological College; Rosie is only four. They are soon joined by Mr Treevor, Janet's half-senile father. In the gothic precincts of Cathedral Close, strange things are happening: mutilated birds, bad smells, a mysterious man asking questions. Wendy becomes obsessed with Francis Youlgreave, a disgraced priest and drug-addled poet, who died half a century before.

Each of the three books can stand by itself (I originally read the last book some time ago). Each book provides backstory to its predecessor, unfolding a tragedy in reverse. We see England in three very different decades and different locales, the traditional cathedral town, the changing village, the squalor of contemporary London. We see the foundering fortunes of the Church of England, its decline is becoming apparent even in 1958. We watch the unravelling of the Byfields and the Appleyards. Most of all, we are caught up in the suspense of each book.

Highly recommended.

Title: A Hat Full of Sky

Author: Terry Pratchett

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: HarperTeen

Copyright: 2004

ISBN: 0060586621

Pages: 407

Keywords: humor, fantasy

Reading period: 25–26 January, 2010

Sequel to The Wee Free Men.

Tiffany Aching, now 11, becomes a trainee witch. But an ancient evil, the hiver, has noticed her and possesses her. Her Nac Mac Feegle friends, the diminutive and indomitable blue pictsies, come to her aid.

She may only be eleven, but she's as tough as nails.

Recommended.

Title: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Author: Susanna Clarke

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Copyright: 2004

ISBN: 1582346038

Pages: 846

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 1–9 January, 2010

In the year Eighteen-Six, it has been two hundred years since last a practical magician walked in England, when Mr. Norrell shews himself after many years of study. In time, he is joined by a student Jonathan Strange who later distinguishes himself in the Peninsular War against the tyrant Bonaparte. But their most dangerous adversary is the capricious gentleman with the thistle-down hair from Faerie.

Susanna Clarke's debut novel is a startling take on fantasy, evoking the work of Austen and Dickens, pitting madness against reason, exploring magic and Englishness.

Highly recommended.

Title: Nature Girl

Author: Carl Hiaasen

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Grand Central

Copyright: 2006

ISBN: 0446581755

Pages: 304

Keywords: humor

Reading period: 30 December, 2009–1 January 2010

Hiaasen drags a motley cast of characters to a remote key in the Everglades and lets their various lunacies duke it out.

An entertaining romp.

Title: White Riot

Author: Martyn Waites

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Pocket Books

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 1847390587

Pages: 452

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 29–30 December, 2009

The Northern English city of Newcastle is on edge as racial tensions have been whipped up. Joe Donovan's team are asked to investigate a seemingly unrelated case where a one-time radical is getting threatening calls.

The main characters—Donovan's team and some teenaged no-hopers way out of their depth in a white supremacist organization—are credible and well-drawn. The plot however relies overly on coincidence after coincidence.

Title: This Girl for Hire

Author: G.G. Fickling

Rating: 2 stars out of 5

Publisher: The Overlook Press

Copyright: 1956

ISBN: 1585676845

Pages: 220

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 28–29 December, 2009

Honey West is a “private eyeful”, a kick-ass statuesque private investigator tough enough to take on the guys at their own game and sexy enough to dazzle them. Somehow she manages to lose her top all the time, but it never goes further than that. The plot is ludicrously complicated, switching gears on every page, with snappy Mike Hammeresque dialog.

The books inspired a mid-sixties TV show that Emma remembers with great fondness. The sex was excised from the show, of course.

Title: Silent in the Grave

Author: Deanna Raybourn

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Mira

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0778325245

Pages: 511

Keywords: mystery, historical

Reading period: 27–28 December, 2009

A year after Sir Edward Grey's sudden collapse and death, his widow Lady Julia realizes the truth in what Nicholas Brisbane, the private inquiry agent, had told her: Sir Edward had received threatening letters. She engages Brisbane to investigate the possible murder and starts asking questions herself.

The most respectable member of her large, eccentric family, Julia starts to shed her Victorian conventionality as she is drawn to the enigmatic Brisbane.

Title: River of Darkness

Author: Rennie Airth

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Penguin

Copyright: 1999

ISBN: 0140291962

Pages: 435

Keywords: mystery, historical

Reading period: 26–27 December, 2009

Inspector John Madden, like so many of his generation, came back from the Great War a changed man. When a particularly savage and senseless murder takes place, he must persuade his superiors at Scotland Yard to adopt some new and unwelcome practices, such as psychological profiling.

This well-done thriller is as much about the aftermath of World War I as it is a police procedural.

Title: The Wine-Dark Sea

Author: Patrick O'Brian

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: W.W. Norton

Copyright: 1994

ISBN: 0393312445

Pages: 352

Keywords: historical fiction

Reading period: 23–26 December, 2009

After the events of The Truelove, Aubrey and Maturin set sail for Peru to undertake the intelligence mission originally begun four books ago in The Letter of Marque. O'Brian packs more than usual into this book: multiple sea battles, the Reverend Martin's descent into madness, Stephen inciting a revolution of independence against the Spanish, naturalism high in the Andes, Jack almost being lost at sea in a small boat, and a nerve-wracking encounter with an American frigate amongst the ice floes of Cape Horn.

Highly recommended.

Title: In the Woods

Author: Tana French

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Penguin

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0143113496

Pages: 429

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 16–22 December, 2009

Twenty years ago, three twelve-year-olds went into their local woods in Knocknaree near Dublin. Hours later, only one was found, catatonic. Now, under a different name, Rob Ryan is a detective in the Irish Murder Squad and another twelve-year-old has been murdered in Knocknaree.

Tana French's debut is subtle and gripping. The story unfolds in unexpected ways. Ryan's relationship with his partner in detection, Cassie Maddox, is tested to the breaking point while he tries to conceal his past and stay on the case.

Highly recommended.

Title: Where There's a Will

Author: Aaron Elkins

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Berkley

Copyright: 2005

ISBN: 0425208524

Pages: 278

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 13–16 December, 2009

Gideon Oliver, the “Skeleton Detective”, is on vacation again; this time he's staying on a family cattle ranch in Hawaii. The bones of the Torkelsson paterfamilias who disappeared ten years ago have just been found. When Gideon formally identifies them, the Torkelsson survivors get more than they bargained for.

Elkins works in the cozy mystery vein and, despite the anatomical detail, the deaths and murders in his books always feel detached and unthreatening.

Title: Too Many Magicians

Author: Randall Garrett

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Ace

Copyright: 1966

ISBN: 0441816983

Pages: 342

Keywords: fantasy, mystery

Reading period: 13 December, 2009

In an alternate world where the Laws of Magic have been codified, a master sorcerer has been murdered in a locked room at a convention of sorcerers. Lord Darcy must resolve the mystery.

The puzzle is first-rate, well constructed, yet plausible on its own terms. The characters, alas, are perfunctory.

Title: The Truelove

Author: Patrick O'Brian

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: W.W. Norton

Copyright: 1993

ISBN: 0393310167

Pages: 256

Keywords: historical fiction

Reading period: 12–13 December, 2009

Leaving Sydney after the events of The Nutmeg of Consolation, Aubrey and Maturin sail for Moahu, a fictional British island near Hawaii. Jack Aubrey is out of sorts for various reasons; most notably a young female convict, Clarissa Harvill, has been smuggled aboard by Midshipman Oakes. Like many sailors, he is superstitious about women on board his ship. Not without reason: even after her shipboard marriage to Oakes, men vie for her attention and factions form aboard the ship.

Few battles in this one. Most of the conflict arises from individuals.

Highly recommended.

Title: The Flood

Author: Ian Rankin

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Orion

Copyright: 1986

ISBN: 0752873091

Pages: 205

Keywords: fiction

Reading period: 7–11 December, 2009

Ian Rankin's first novel is a coming-of-age tale. Mary Miller is a single mother, with a reputation as a witch since childhood. Her son, Sandy, is fifteen, and as lost and confused as you'd expect. They live in Carsden, a small, dying Scottish town in the 1980s.

A creditable first novel.

Title: Princep's Fury

Author: Jim Butcher

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Ace

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 0441017967

Pages: 622

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 4–7 December, 2009

Princep's Fury is the fifth book in Jim Butcher's fantasy series, Codex Alera, and the sequel to Captain's Fury.

Tavi, now recognized as the princeps (heir apparent to the Crown), has been sent on a diplomatic mission to the distant Canim homeland. There he finds that they have been overrun by the Vord hivemind. Back at home in Alera, the Vord have returned too, killing and enslaving huge numbers of humans. Desperate rearguard actions follow.

Butcher knows how to spin a yarn that moves quickly from one cliffhanger to the next. Grim in places, but it certainly holds the attention.

Title: The Lizard's Bite

Author: David Hewson

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Bantam Dell

Copyright: 2006

ISBN: 0440243009

Pages: 498

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 29 November–3 December, 2009

A married couple die in a bizarre murder in an archaic Venetian glass foundry. Three exiled Roman cops are asked to investigate by the Venice authorities but are given to understand that their work should be pro forma. Of course, they don't listen and find far more than was wanted.

The cops and their visiting girlfriends are interesting characters. Their stubborn insistence on digging for the truth has real consequences for their own lives, and the case scars most of them. Venice itself is also a character, a shabby strumpet living on its former glory, as are the bizarre Arcangeli family of glassblowers.

Title: Industrial Magic

Author: Kelley Armstrong

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Seal Books

Copyright: 2004

ISBN: 1400025281

Pages: 528

Keywords: urban fantasy

Reading period: 28 November, 2009

Paige is a modern young witch. Her boyfriend, Lucas, despite being the heir apparent to the Cortez Cabal of sorcerers, wants nothing to do with the family business. But they get sucked in when the teenaged children of the various cabals are being murdered.

An entertaining urban fantasy that's ridiculously fast-paced.

Title: The Ghost Brigades

Author: John Scalzi

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Tor

Copyright: 2006

ISBN: 0765354063

Pages: 347

Keywords: science fiction

Reading period: 27 November, 2009

Sequel to Old Man's War.

Jared Dirac is a superhuman clone in the elite Colonial Defense Forces. A backup of the brain patterns of the traitor Charles Boutin have been implanted in his head so that his superiors can learn what happened. He can't access those memories so he's sent out on missions. Then the memories start trickling in.

Scalzi has constructed a scary but credible universe, where the clones can be more human than the “Realborn”.

Title: The Digger's Game

Author: George V. Higgins

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Popular Library

Copyright: 1973

ISBN: 0948164077

Pages: 223

Keywords: fiction

Reading period: 26–27 November, 2009

Digger Doherty is a smalltime Boston crook who went to Vegas for a few days and blew a lot of money that he didn't have. Now he has to figure something out.

It seems like all of George V. Higgins' books—[1], [2]—involve lowlifes who like to talk. A lot. He had a wonderful ear for dialogue. Surprisingly, none of his books seem to have been adapted for the stage and only The Friends of Eddie Coyle was filmed.

Title: The Nutmeg of Consolation

Author: Patrick O'Brian

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: W.W. Norton

Copyright: 1991

ISBN: 0393309061

Pages: 384

Keywords: historical fiction

Reading period: 22–26 November, 2009

At the end of The Thirteen-Gun Salute, Aubrey, Maturin, and the crew of the Diane were marooned on an East Indian island. They are rescued eventually by a passing junk and taken to Batavia, where the governor gives them a new ship, the Nutmeg of Consolation. They resume their original mission and travel to the penal colony in New South Wales. Sydney is a hellhole, ruled by capricious sadists.

This is another fine entry in the long-running Aubrey–Maturin saga. Seafaring, a long chase, a couple of battles, politics, and a great deal of naturalism occupy the pages delightfully.

Highly recommended.

Title: The Kite Runner

Author: Khaled Hossein

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Riverhead Books

Copyright: 2003

ISBN: 1594483019

Pages: 401

Keywords: fiction

Reading period: 21–22 November, 2009

Two boys grow up together in Kabul in the 1970s. Amir is the son of Baba, a wealthy merchant; Hassan is the son of Ali, Baba’s servant. Amir betrays Hassan, and his guilt pushes Hassan and Ali away. When the Russians come, Amir and Baba flee to America. Twenty years later, Amir returns to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan to atone.

The Kite Runner is well written and touching. Betrayal and redemption, fathers and sons, love and hatred, cowardice and sacrifice—all against a backdrop of Afghanistan's horrible modern history.

In the end, I found the story circled around too neatly. I think the author has spent a little too much time in writer's workshops.

Title: Dead Beat

Author: Val McDermid

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Harper

Copyright: 1992

ISBN: 0007142919

Pages: 275

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 20–21 November, 2009

Kate Brannigan normally investigates white-collar crimes, but reluctantly agrees to find popstar Jett's lost muse, Moira. When Moira is murdered at Jett's mansion six weeks after Kate finds her, Jett engages her again to discover which of his entourage did it.

Kate is engaging and cheeky and it's fun to ride along with her.

Title: Public Enemies

Author: Bryan Burrough

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Penguin

Copyright: 2004

ISBN: 0143115863

Pages: 592

Keywords: history

Reading period: 7–20 November, 2009

For two tumultuous years of the Depression, 1933 and 1934, the first war on crime caught the American imagination. John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barkers robbed banks and killed people, mostly across the Midwest. The war on crime also caused the FBI to rise from obscurity.

The movie of the book concentrated on Dillinger and Melvin Purvis of the FBI. The book itself tells a broader, more nuanced story, skipping between its subjects in chronological order.

Hoover's FBI comes off badly. Staffed mostly by clean-cut college boys with no law enforcement experience, they regularly miss clues, fail to ask the right questions, lose evidence, fight with other agencies, and generally exhibit incompetence. By the end of the book, though, they have started to learn some lessons. Ironically, much of the material in the book is drawn from declassified FBI records.

That's not to say that the crooks come off well either. They're robbers and killers, generally stupid and often unpleasant. Baby Face Nelson is an out-and-out psychopath; Bonnie and Clyde are nasty children, way out of their depth. Only Dillinger and Alvin Karpis of the Barker gang have any smarts or charms.

An interesting history, told well.

Title: The Hanging Valley

Author: Peter Robinson

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Pan

Copyright: 1989

ISBN: 0330491644

Pages: 324

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 2–6 November, 2009

A faceless corpse has been found in a remote valley in the Yorkshire Dales. Is it connected to another murder there, five years earlier? Chief Inspector Alan Banks investigates in the village of Swaineshead, which leads him to Toronto to dig into the dead man's background.

Competent, thoughtful police procedural told from the viewpoints of Banks and Katie Greenock, the doormat wife of one of the villagers.

Title: The Scourge of God

Author: S.M. Stirling

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Roc

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 0451462661

Pages: 511

Keywords: speculative fiction

Reading period: 1 November, 2009

Sequel to The Sunrise Lands. The travellers continue to head eastwards across post-apocalyptic America. They encounter many obstacles and not a few enemies on their quest.

Entertaining enough that I read it in one day. Scourge did not fall prey to Middle Book Syndrome.

Title: Farthing

Author: Jo Walton

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Tor

Copyright: 2006

ISBN: 076535280X

Pages: 319

Keywords: alternate history

Reading period: 26–31 October, 2009

Farthing is set in a world where the British agreed to a peace with Hitler in 1941, eight years ago. This book starts out like a classic British murder mystery: a prominent right-wing politician is murdered at the Farthing country estate and Scotland Yard are called in. The story is told from two viewpoints, that of the secretly homosexual Inspector Carmichael and that of the daughter of the house, Lucy Kahn, who married a Jew. The dead man has a yellow star pinned to his chest, making David Kahn a likely suspect.

The murder precipitates Britain's further descent into a police state, and both Lucy and Carmichael lose their illusions as it happens.

Highly recommended.

Title: The Way of Shadows

Author: Brent Weeks

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Orbit

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 0316033677

Pages: 677

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 19–25 October, 2009

Kylar Stern apprentices himself to Durzo Blint, the city of Cenaria's most accomplished assassin. A truly successful assassin can have no friends or emotional attachments, something that Kylar struggles with.

This coming-of-age story set against a backdrop of intrigue and sorcery is entertaining but somewhat clumsy.

Title: Bangkok 8

Author: John Burdett

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Corgi

Copyright: 2003

ISBN: 0552771406

Pages: 431

Keywords: crime

Reading period: 11–19 October, 2009

Sonchai Jitpleecheep is a devout Buddhist, half Thai and half American, and one of the few Bangkok cops who is not on the take. An American marine is murdered grotesquely in a manner that accidentally kills Sonchai's partner and soul brother. Sonchai must help the FBI investigate and seek his own revenge. The trail takes them through the foulest gutters and the palaces of the wealthy. We encounter prostitutes, monks, shemales, jade collectors, and gangsters in a tour of the Thailand that most Westerners barely glimpse.

Title: Pragmatic Version Control Using Git

Author: Travis Swicegood

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 1934356158

Pages: 179

Keywords: computers

Reading period: 10–18 October, 2009

As part of my personal conversion to Git, I read Swicegood's Git book. It's a decent introduction to Git and you learn how to do all the basic tasks as well as some more advanced topics. The examples are clear and well-paced.

I would have liked to see more about collaboration and workflow in a DVCS world, perhaps a few case studies: how is Git used in the Linux kernel development process; how a small, distributed team uses Git and GitHub; how a collocated team migrates from more traditional tools.

The book avoids discussing the lower levels of the Git object model, which is a reasonable choice for a pragmatic guide.

Recommended.

Title: March to the Stars

Author: David Weber, John Ringo

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Baen

Copyright: 2003

ISBN: 0743488180

Pages: 589

Keywords: science fiction

Reading period: 4–10 October, 2009

Third in a series, but the first that I've read.

Prince Roger and his Marine bodyguard have been marooned on an alien planet for six months. With local allies, they fight their way halfway around the world to the spaceport. And then the trouble really starts.

Well-done military SF: plausible, hard-bitten characters; good plotting; and exciting battle scenes.

Title: The Lighthouse

Author: P.D. James

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Vintage

Copyright: 2005

ISBN: 0307275736

Pages: 383

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 22 September–3 October, 2009

Nathan Oliver is a great writer, but a horrible man. Adam Dalgleish of Scotland Yard is called in when Oliver is found murdered on an island that is exclusively reserved for VIPs. Only a handful of people could possibly be the killer.

P.D. James adds psychological insight to a tightly plotted classic mystery. Dalgleish is both a poet and a detective. Both aspects are required to get to the heart of what happened on Combe Island.

Title: Spook Country

Author: William Gibson

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Berkley

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 0425221415

Pages: 384

Keywords: fiction

Reading period: 14–21 September, 2009

William Gibson has abandoned cyberspace for the present day. No matter. The same elements of paranoia, adrenalin, and technospeak are present.

His story follows three sets of characters, all of whom ultimately intersect, chasing the same mcguffin.

Enjoyable, if confusing.

Title: The Stockholm Syndicate

Author: Colin Forbes

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Publisher: Pan

Copyright: 1981

ISBN: 0330267698

Pages: 321

Keywords: thriller

Reading period: 13 September, 2009

The SPECTRE-like Stockholm Syndicate is ruthlessly spreading terror among the European governments. The shadowy Telescope organization, led by former cop Jules Beaurain, is fighting it.

The plot is preposterous but engaging in a classic Cold War thriller way.

Title: The Thirteen-Gun Salute

Author: Patrick O'Brian

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: W.W. Norton

Copyright: 1989

ISBN: 039330907X

Pages: 368

Keywords: historical fiction

Reading period: 7–13 September, 2009

After the events of The Letter of Marque, Jack Aubrey is reinstated as a post-captain in the Royal Navy. He and Stephen Maturin are sent on a diplomatic mission to the South China Sea. Stephen gets to indulge in both a great deal of natural history and in behind-the-scenes political intrigue during the negotiations. Soon after their departure from Pulo Prabang, the Diane beaches upon a reef and breaks up during a storm, marooning them on a remote island.

The book stands on its own merits, but it also advances the story that builds throughout the series. Ledward and Wray, the English traitors who nearly brought down Jack, get their comeuppance in a ghoulish way. Stephen, weaned of his longstanding dependence on laudanum, is both sharper and less pleasant. There is plenty of sailing, but very few battles. Much time is spent on land, but little of it in England.

Recommended.

Title: Bad Debts

Author: Peter Temple

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Quercus

Copyright: 1996

ISBN: 1847241549

Pages: 319

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 7 September, 2009

Jack Irish is a one-time lawyer who makes a living doing odd jobs—investigations, racehorse handicapping, cabinet making—in Melbourne. A former client, who went to jail years ago while Jack had crawled into a bottle, tries to reach Jack and promptly turns up dead. Jack starts looking and what he finds isn't pretty: corruption all the way up into the state government.

Jack isn't stupid, but he is naïve and out of his depth for much of the book. Temple combines the Australian backdrop, social commentary, a decent plot, and interesting characters to make a good book.

Title: Dracula in London

Editor: P.N. Elrod

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Publisher: Ace

Copyright: 2001

ISBN: 0441012132

Pages: 248

Keywords: horror

Reading period: 2–6 September, 2009

In Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula relocates from Transylvania to London. Asking themselves, what would Dracula have done in London before he was killed by Van Helsing, 18 authors wrote unconnected short stories. Dracula meets the Prince of Wales, he is observed by the servants, he terrorizes Aleister Crowley and Charles Fort and Ellen Terry, he even takes the lead in the Pirates of Penzance.

The stories are uneven. None is outstanding.

Title: Hermit's Peak

Author: Michael McGarrity

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Pocket Books

Copyright: 1999

ISBN: 0671021478

Pages: 351

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 31 August–1 September, 2009

Kevin Kerney, deputy chief of the New Mexico State Police, has just inherited a high-country ranch, where he finds a dismembered skeleton.

An old-school police procedural (by a real cop) with believable characters and a not implausible plot. The prose is a little clumsy, but the story pulled me along.

Title: Wolfnight

Author: Nicolas Freeling

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Vintage

Copyright: 1982

ISBN: 0394713818

Pages: 200

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 24–30 August, 2009

Inspector Henri Castang of the Police Judiciare investigates the apparent kidnapping of a politician's mistress and discovers a far-right conspiracy.

Written in Freeling's characteristic idiosyncratic style, this is as much a meditation on corruption and compromise as it is a police procedural.

Title: The Letter of Marque

Author: Patrick O'Brian

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: W.W. Norton

Copyright: 1988

ISBN: 0393309053

Pages: 336

Keywords: historical fiction

Reading period: 22–23 August, 2009

Jack Aubrey was disgraced in The Reverse of the Medal. He is now a civilian privateer, bitter at having been framed. Two extraordinary actions do much to recommend him to the general public and make him wealthy, and by the end of this book, it seems certain that he will soon be restored to the Navy List. Stephen Maturin's own fortunes improve as he effects a reconciliation with his wife.

The Letter of Marque is the twelfth novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series. O'Brian once again writes a convincing seafaring Jane Austen novel. The naval lingo is dense and impenetrable, but no matter: it adds texture and color. The naval engagements are exciting, the voyages, richly described. Jack Aubrey, heartstruck, is at his lowest ebb. Stephen Maturin is much concerned for his friend. The humor is subtle, coming to the fore when each man is out of his element, Jack on land, Stephen at sea.

Recommended.

Title: Goosefoot

Author: Patrick McGinley

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Publisher: Penguin

Copyright: 1982

ISBN: 0140068155

Pages: 251

Keywords: fiction

Reading period: 21–22 August, 2009

Patricia Teeling wants to experience more of life than farming and university, and moves to Dublin to be a science teacher. She quickly finds herself adrift, belonging no more in her country home yet not of the city. She is soon drawn to the married Englishman who lives downstairs. His wife is murdered after she receives obscene telephone calls. Then an attractive man with a limp—dubbed the Goosefoot—appears.

While the author has an enviable command of English, I found his characters to be tiresome and inscrutable yet unaccountably eloquent. Patricia is improbably untouched by the brutal murder of her downstairs neighbor.

Later filmed as The Fantasist, which I dimly remember seeing when it came out and not liking much.

Not recommended.

Title: A Coffin for Two

Author: Quintin Jardine

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Headline

Copyright: 1997

ISBN: 0747217785

Pages: 310

Keywords: crime

Reading period: 16–20 August, 2009

When we were in Spain in July, we visited the Dalí museum in Figueres. The museum is Salvador Dalí's monument to himself; he spent his latter years building it. The guided tour was well worth the money. I came away believing that Dalí was both enormously talented and full of shit.

The next day, purely by chance, we passed a sign for Gala's castle at Pubol while driving around in the countryside. We spent half the morning looking around the castle that Dalí had bought for Gala, his wife and muse. It's a small castle in a village that they renovated. The deal was that Gala lived there and Salvador could only visit when she invited him.

Several years ago, I had read A Coffin for Two whose climactic scene takes place in Gala's castle. I re-read it, now that I've seen many of the locations of the book.

Osbert Blackstone and his girlfriend Primavera Phillips are Scottish investigators who are flush with cash after an earlier case. They buy themselves an apartment on the Costa Brava and settle in. To stop themselves going to seed, Oz and Prim take on a few enquiries, and are asked to authenticate a previously undiscovered Dalí painting that was dubiously acquired.

The plot relies too much on coincidence and the denouement is ludicrous but inspired. That aside, I thought it was well-written and entertaining and I found Oz and Prim both likeable and believable.

Title: You Suck: A Love Story

Author: Christopher Moore

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Harper Collins

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0060590297

Pages: 328

Keywords: humor

Reading period: 15–16 August, 2009

Tommy Flood is another of Chris Moore's Beta Males. He's also a brand-new 19-year-old vampire, newly turned by his girlfriend Jody—herself only a vampire for a few months. He's not too keen about his new state, but he's trying to cope. It doesn't help that his former crew of shelf stockers at Safeway are trying to hunt his vampire ass. And he has a 16-year-old Goth chick for a minion who thinks the Lord Flood is like OMG totally hot.

Funny but not mean-spirited.

Title: Layer Cake

Author: J.J. Connolly

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Black Cat

Copyright: 2000

ISBN: 0802141684

Pages: 309

Keywords: fiction

Reading period: 11–14 August, 2009

The unnamed narrator—My name? If I told you that you'd be as clever as me—is an up-and-coming London drug dealer who wants to retire by his thirtieth birthday. He's professional, low-key, and a little bit cocky, and he has every chance of pulling it off. He reluctantly does a favor for the crime boss Jimmy Price and suddenly his plans are derailed. Double-crosses, snitches, betrayals, murders, hold ups, and stings ensue. There's little honor among thieves, save for our hero's immediate circle.

It's easy to see why Layer Cake was made into a movie. It's very funny and quite serious—our hero learns some hard lessons. Connolly has an excellent ear for dialog, particularly Cockney dialog, and perhaps a soft spot for London villains.

Recommended.

Title: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Author: Stieg Larsson

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Vintage Crime

Copyright: 2005

ISBN: 0307454541

Pages: 590

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 8–9 August, 2009

After crusading financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist is convicted of libel, he reluctantly agrees to investigate the 40-year-old disappearance of the teenaged Harriet Vanger for her great-uncle Henrik, a rich industrialist. He is aided by the antisocial hacker Lisabeth Salander, the eponymous tattooed girl.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was published shortly before Larsson's untimely death, and later became an international bestseller. It's a classic locked-room mystery—Harriet disappeared from a sealed-off island full of the extended, ugly Vanger clan. It's an indictment of the Nazism buried not so deeply in Sweden's past, of sexual violence and misogyny, and of the ethical failings and complicity of financial journalists. It's a dark thriller where Blomkvist and Sanger are hunted by a sadistic killer. It's a Ludlumesque technothriller where Sanger “stings” a rich crook. It's a character study of a disturbed and brilliant young woman.

It's a bit too much really: there are too many things going on. But it is quite entertaining.

Title: Shadowfall

Author: James Clemens

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Publisher: Roc

Copyright: 2005

ISBN: 0451460502

Pages: 507

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 4–8 August, 2009

For four thousand years, the gods have dwelt in human form amongst the people of Myrillia, rooted to the very land. When the goddess Meeryn is found murdered and the disgraced Shadowknight Tylar de Noche is found at her side, miraculously healed of his maiming, he is accused of being the godslayer. He escapes and uncovers a dark conspiracy of corruption and evil.

As an exercise in world building, this book succeeds. For example, the gods' humors—blood, seed, menses, sweat, tears, saliva, phlegm, and yellow bile and black bile (“piss and shite”)—are collected by their acolytes, since they contain the much-treasured Grace, the blessings of the gods. The writing, however, is clumsy and the plot, pedestrian.

Mildly enjoyable.

Title: Winterbirth

Author: Brian Ruckley

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Orbit

Copyright: 2006

ISBN: 0316068063

Pages: 654

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 3–4 August, 2009

A century and a half ago, the believers in the Black Road were forced into exile. Now, in some bloody surprise attacks, they've conquered the Glas Valley. The story is largely told from the viewpoints of three brother-sister pairs: the young leaders of the Black Road attackers; the adolescent nephew and niece of the thane of the Lannis-Haig Blood; and a warrior of the Kyrinin race and his sister. Each side believes that it is in the right: the clash between two human cultures was inevitable, as is the war between the Kyrinin tribes.

A strong debut. Lots of swords, a little sorcery.

Title: Thunderer

Author: Felix Gilman

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Bantam Spectra

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 055359110X

Pages: 527

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 27 July–2 August, 2009

Ararat is vast, unknowable, unmappable, home to many living gods who make their presence felt. Arjun comes from his far-distant home, seeking the Voice, the god that abandoned his people. He arrives as the Bird sweeps through the great city, transforming it by its passage, only to be captured in the warship Thunderer. A boy, Jack, also captures part of the Bird's power as he flees the workhouse.

Gilman has created a city reminiscent of China Miéville's New Crubuzon, a vast baroque tapestry of neighborhoods, ruled by heavy-handed oligarchs squabbling to enlarge their fiefdoms. Miéville is a better writer, but this is a fine debut novel from Felix Gilman.

Title: Careless in Red

Author: Elizabeth George

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Harper

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 0061160903

Pages: 725

Keywords: fiction, mystery

Reading period: 26–27 July, 2009

Out of his mind with grief after the senseless murder of his wife Helen in What Came Before He Shot Her, Detective Superintendent Tommy Lynley has been walking along the Cornish coastline for weeks when he stumbles across a dead body. Reluctantly, he becomes part of the police investigation. Half the village seems to have a motive for killing the victim. Old slights and recent fights have festered, pitting family members against each other.

Elizabeth George is noted for the depth of her characterization. Even the supporting characters are well-drawn, complex individuals. But they're almost uniformly grim and unpleasant people who make bad choices. Aside from the late Helen Lynley, there are few light-hearted cheerful people in George's books, which can make her books heavy going.

Recommended.

Title: Ink and Steel

Author: Elizabeth Bear

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Roc

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 0451462793

Pages: 441

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 20–25 July, 2009

The Prometheans are a secret society sworn to protect England and Elizabeth I. Kit Marley (Christopher Marlowe), playmaker, poet, and intelligencer, has been killed by a dagger in the eye, at the behest of a rogue faction in the Prometheans. Another talented polemicist is required and Will Shakespeare is recruited. But Kit is not dead. He has been spirited to Faerie, where now he must serve their two queens. He becomes the lover of one, Morgan le Fay, and her son, Murchaud. Kit can return to the land of the living, but only briefly. Meanwhile, Will is drawn ever deeper into a web of intrigue.

Bear brings the Elizabethan era to life and builds plausible personalities for two great dramatists about whom we know little. And it's a rare pleasure to read a novel where the protagonist is a male bisexual. The complex plot is confusing at times and the Elizabethan dialog is betimes tiresome.

For a' that, 'tis well done.

Title: Barcelona the Great Enchantress

Author: Robert Hughes

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: National Geographic Directions

Copyright: 2004

ISBN: 1426201311

Pages: 169

Keywords: history, autobiography

Reading period: 15–24 July, 2009

Robert Hughes has been in love with Barcelona and its people for four decades. This book—part selective history, part memoir—is adapted from a much larger, earlier book about Barcelona. Hughes is a partisan of Catalan culture and food. He brings us from its Roman origins as Barcino, Catalunya's founding as an independent nation a thousand years ago by the Visigoth Wilfred the Hairy, up through the Olympics in 1992. This is no comprehensive survey: he spends more time on submarine inventor Monturiol than on the Spanish Civil War.

Well-written and opinionated, if overly selective.

Title: The Name of the Wind

Author: Patrick Rothfuss

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Daw

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0756404746

Pages: 722

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 15–19 July, 2009

Kvothe—the infamous, legendary Kvothe—has been living under an assumed name when the Chronicler tracks him down and asks him for his life story. Kvothe relates the story of his early years: his precocious talents for music and arcanism (magic); the happy childhood that ends when his parents and their troupe are murdered by an ancient evil; his years as a feral street child; and his early entrance into the University to study the Arcanum, where his brilliance makes him a star and his recklessness brings him much grief.

Discursive and entertaining. Despite the superficial similarities to Harry Potter, this is an adult tale, full of depth and complexity.

Title: A Murder of Quality

Author: John le Carré

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Scribner

Copyright: 1962

ISBN: 0802714420

Pages: 152

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 4–6 July, 2009

George Smiley has retired after the events of Call for the Dead. He is asked to look into the murder of the wife of a teacher at the exclusive Carne public school, as he can mix socially with the staff while the police cannot. She had sent a letter predicting that her husband would murder her. The couple were from a lower-class, Nonconformist background. He had tried to assimilate, she had not, and it had rankled the snobs.

Smiley finds class prejudice and moral ambiguity as he observes and questions. Some classic le Carré stylistic tics are already present: The over-the-top, aristocratic Fielding is a precursor to Jerry Westerby and Larry Pettifer.

Enjoyable.

Title: Call for the Dead

Author: John le Carré

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Scribner

Copyright: 1961

ISBN: 0743431677

Pages: 160

Keywords: thriller, mystery

Reading period: 1–3 July, 2009

Le Carré's very first novel, Call for the Dead introduces his most famous character, George Smiley. After a harmonious meeting with Smiley to review his security clearance, Samuel Fennan goes home, writes a letter complaining of harrassment, and commits suicide. But little things don't add up and Smiley starts investigating, only to be nearly murdered himself.

A strong debut, and amazingly short at 160 pages. Call provides some background about Smiley's very bad war, undercover in Nazi territories, and his rocky marriage.

Title: Good Night, Mr Holmes

Author: Carole Nelson Douglas

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Tor

Copyright: 1990

ISBN: 0812514300

Pages: 416

Keywords: mystery, historical

Reading period: 28–30 June, 2009

The first Irene Adler novel by Douglas, immediately preceding Good Morning, Irene, which retells Conan Doyle's A Scandal in Bohemia from Irene and Nell's perspective.

We learn how the narrator Nell Huxleigh met Irene; of Irene's early years in London when she struggles with her singing career and develops a sideline as an investigator; how she meets Godfrey Norton, her future husband; how they despise each other at first, in the best rom-com tradition; her operatic triumphs in Warsaw that draw her to the attention of the future King of Bohemia; their falling out; and, finally, the events of “A Scandal in Bohemia”.

These books are a lot of fun. Douglas uses the prim Nell and the independent Irene to explore women's roles in society, while also playing homage to Sherlock Holmes.

Title: The Reapers

Author: John Connolly

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Pocket Star Books

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 1416569537

Pages: 515

Keywords: crime, thriller

Reading period: 24–26 June, 2009

Charlie Parker, the hero of John Connolly's books, has always been able to rely on his friends, the former assassin Louis and his life-partner Angel, for backup when events turn bloody—most recently in The Unquiet.

Louis' past is catching up with him, leading to a bloody climax. As we explore that past, we learn how a gay, black teenager in a sundown town was recruited to be a “reaper”. When Louis and Angel are set up, Parker and other friends must go in after them.

Partly an exploration of the different ways that the act of killing can affect people, partly a thriller, generally satisfying.

Title: The Wandering Soul Murders

Author: Gail Bowen

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart

Copyright: 1992

ISBN: 0771014945

Pages: 216

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 23–24 June, 2009

Sequel to Murder at the Mendel. Teenage prostitutes are being mutilated and murdered in Regina. Joanne Kilbourn and her family become entangled with some of these “disposable” girls, in a case that touches too closely to home.

In the previous novels, her children were important secondary characters. Here they become central to the story, each in their own way.

Title: Murder at the Mendel

Author: Gail Bowen

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart

Copyright: 1991

ISBN: 0771014929

Pages: 216

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 21 June, 2009

Joanne Kilbourn has moved to Saskatoon after the events of Deadly Appearances, and renewed her childhood friendship with Sally Love. Sally is now a famous artist and the focus of controversy: a huge fresco that she painted for the Mendel museum of the penises and vaginas of her former lovers is being picketed. As events turn ugly, Joanne will learn more than she ever wanted to know about Sally's and her own history.

Bowen writes knowledgeably about art and artists and frustrated ambitions. Joanne's long, entangled history with the Love family adds texture to the story—and blind her to some of their failings.

Title: Deadly Appearances

Author: Gail Bowen

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart

Copyright: 1990

ISBN: 0771014910

Pages: 280

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 16–18 June, 2009

Andy Boychuk has just become the leader of the opposition party in Saskatchewan when he is murdered. His advisor, Joanne Kilbourn, sees him drink the poison. Her own husband was senselessly murdered a few years earlier, and Andy was not only her boss but an old friend, so it's difficult for her. When she decides to write a biography of Andy and learns unexpected things about him, her health mysteriously begins to fail.

Joanne is a middle-aged widow with children, who has spent her life working behind the scenes in Saskatchewan politics. She is a shrewd judge of character and a perceptive observer, albeit with human frailties and blind spots. This is the first of a series of novels.

Title: Old Boys

Author: Charles McCarry

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Orion Books

Copyright: 2004

ISBN: 0753819813

Pages: 484

Keywords: thriller

Reading period: 11–15 June, 2009

Paul Christopher, septuagenarian and former superspy, was last seen in a remote Chinese province. His ashes are delivered to his cousin Horace, also a retired spy, who is not convinced that the ashes belong to Paul. Then he learns that Paul is on the trail of Ibn Awad, a mad sultan with nukes who covets a first-century manuscript (a Roman spymaster's report on Jesus) that is thought to be in the possession of Paul's 94-year-old mother, who hasn't seen since 1940, when she was abducted by the Nazi Reinhard Heydrich. So Horace recruits a handful of creaky-kneed retired spies and goes after Paul.

Anyway.

If you can get over the wild improbability of the plot, it's actually well-written, coherent, and plausible on its own terms.

Title: Shadowplay

Author: Tad Williams

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Daw

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0756405440

Pages: 737

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 3–10 June, 2009

Sequel to Shadowmarch. Southmarch is under siege by the fairy army and the teenaged regent, Briony, has been deposed by an ambitious noble. Briony is on the run, fleeing for her life. Her twin, Barrick, is lost, mentally and physically, behind the fairy lines. Far to the south, Qinnitan has successfully fled from the autarch, but now the autarch is besieging the city of Hierosol where she is hiding.

The second book in a trilogy often suffers from Middle Book Syndrome: the first book establishes the characters and the plot, the final book resolves everything, but the middle book has to somehow keep things going, and the author's energy often flags. Williams moves the plot along nicely, from one cliffhanger to the next, and we see the main protagonists mature as they are tested.

Title: Planet of Twilight

Author: Barbara Hambly

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Bantam Spectra

Copyright: 1997

ISBN: 0553575171

Pages: 389

Keywords: science fiction

Reading period: 31 May–2 June, 2009

The Chief of State of the New Republic, Leia Solo, is kidnapped and taken to the remote, barren planet of Nam Chorios, whence the lethal Death Seed plague has been released across the sector. Luke made his own way there, seeking his lost girlfriend, Callista. Han and Chewie, Threepio and Artoo are separately trying to rescue Leia.

Your first reaction on seeing a Star Wars novel might be to sneer, as mine was. But I knew Barbara Hambly to be a competent writer of fantasies, science fiction, and mysteries, and she does good work here in the Star Wars universe. Leia and Luke have their own separate moral struggles with the Force. She fears studying to become a Jedi Knight, knowing the seductive temptations that brought Darth Vader low. Luke is an adept, but every time he uses the Force on Nam Chorios, huge storms run amok, killing innocents.

Title: Dance with Death

Author: Barbara Nadel

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Headline Review

Copyright: 2006

ISBN: 0755321308

Pages: 366

Keywords: mystery, Turkey

Reading period: 29–30 May, 2009

Inspector Çetin İkmen is called to a remote village in Cappadocia when a 20-year-old mummified body is found. The case is tearing the village apart. Back in İstanbul, Inspector Mehmet Süleyman investigates an increasingly violent series of male-on-male rapes.

Nadel clearly knows Turkey well, bringing to life characters from different social classes without patronizing them, showing Turkey in its complexity. The story was well crafted, weaving the two strands together to highlight tension. Pace a pet peeve of mine, the two cases did not suddenly, magically become related by the end of the book. The Agatha Christiesque denouement of İkmen's case was a bit much, though.

Title: Old Man's War

Author: John Scalzi

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Tor

Copyright: 2005

ISBN: 0765348276

Pages: 314

Keywords: science fiction

Reading period: 28 May, 2009

For his seventy-fifth birthday, John Perry visits his wife's grave and enlists in the Colonial Defense Forces. The CDF remake him and his peers into supersoldiers with decades of experience in enhanced bodies. Their mission is to protect the human colonies and to take new worlds. It's an alien-eat-alien multiverse (sometimes literally) and the habitable planets are much contested.

Scalzi owes a debt to Robert A. Heinlein (acknowledged at the end of the book). The wise old man, the citizen soldier, enduring love, youth regained—some of RAH's favorite topics. Too, it owes not a little to Joe Haldeman's The Forever War: disillusionment, soldiers as pawns.

Recommended.

Title: Good Morning, Irene

Author: Carole Nelson Douglas

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Tor

Copyright: 1990

ISBN: 0812509498

Pages: 374

Keywords: mystery, historical

Reading period: 26–28 May, 2009

An Irene Adler book; earlier than Spider Dance.

Suicidal sailors with ornate tattoos, an odd sealing wax, and lost treasure. All these lead Irene, her husband Godfrey Norton, and Nell Huxleigh to Monte Carlo. Irene, with a little help from Sarah Bernhardt and the Crown Prince's betrothed, takes Monaco by storm. Sherlock Holmes finds part of the trail, but completely misses the bigger case.

Fluff, but entertaining fluff.

Title: The Treatment

Author: Mo Hayder

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Dell

Copyright: 2001

ISBN: 0440236177

Pages: 405

Keywords: crime

Reading period: 24–25 May, 2009

A paedophile chained up an eight-year-old boy's parents, then took the boy and killed him. DI Jack Caffery finds the case particularly stressful: his brother was abducted and never found when they were boys. His girlfriend is falling apart too.

Part thriller, part psychological study, part police procedural. Hayder ratchets up the tension as the internal and external pressures on Caffery grow.

Recommended.

Title: The Last Light of the Sun

Author: Guy Gavriel Kay

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Copyright: 2004

ISBN: 0451459857

Pages: 499

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 18–22 May, 2009

The Last Light of the Sun takes place in the Dark Ages of a parallel world. The Erlings (Vikings) raid the Cyngael (Welsh) and Anglcyn (Anglo-Saxon). A young Erling flees indentured servitude and becomes a raider, following in the footsteps of his estranged father. A Cyngael prince dies in an Erling raid and is taken by the Queen of the Fairies; his brother is drawn to another fairy; he will enter into a reluctant compact with the Anglcyn when they are raided by the Erling.

Kay is an elegant and subtle writer. The principal characters are well-drawn and complex, struggling with their intersecting destinies.

Highly recommended.

Title: The Circle

Author: Peter Lovesey

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Soho Crime

Copyright: 2005

ISBN: 156947432X

Pages: 358

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 17–18 May, 2009

A conman publisher visits a writing circle in Chichester and gets their hopes up. Soon, he is burned to death in his cottage. Other arson-murders follow.

In the first half of the book, the story is primarily told from the viewpoint of the newest member of the writers' circle, Bob Naylor, who starts investigating, egged on by some of the others. In the second half, it becomes a police procedural, as seen by Detective Chief Inspector Henrietta Mallin, who takes over the case.

The Circle is a whodunnit in the classic vein, with interfering amateur detectives and a large cast of suspects. The characters are well-drawn, often quirky, and quite distinct. It's more real than, say, Agatha Christie's mysteries: people do get hurt; it's not just a game.

Title: Scapegoat

Author: Poul Ørum

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Pantheon

Copyright: 1975

ISBN: 039449055X

Pages: 256

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 12–15 May, 2009

The district nurse is murdered in a Danish seaside resort. The police arrest the local peeping tom, a dimwitted young man. Detective-Inspector Jonas Morck has his doubts. Morck and his partner, Einarsen, are locked in a permanent good cop–bad cop routine. Eventually, Morck in his quiet, methodical, yet insightful way, will find the real killer.

Title: The Steep Approach to Garbadale

Author: Iain Banks

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Abacus

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0349119287

Pages: 390

Keywords: fiction

Reading period: 10–11 May, 2009

Alban McGill has a strained relationship with his extended family, the Wopulds, maker of Empire, one of the world's bestselling games for more than a century. They are being drawn together at their remote Scottish estate, Garbadale, to decide whether to sell the company to a large American company. His cousin Sophie will be there, the one he's loved from afar for twenty years, since their affair was forcibly broken up.

Banks weaves together multiple strands of Alban's life, the torrid adolescent love affair, his mother's early death, the renunciation of his career as a globetrotting family executive, the odd relationship with his current girlfriend, and the strain of the big reunion. Alban is a likeable if confused protagonist.

Enjoyable.

Title: The Revolution Business

Author: Charles Stross

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Tor

Copyright: 2009

ISBN: 0765316722

Pages: 320

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 6–9 May, 2009

Book #5 in the Merchant Princes series, sequel to The Merchants' War.

The U.S. Government have become really pissed off with the world-walking Clan, and send a small nuke into the Gruinmarkt. It misses the clan but takes care of the new king who was waging war on them. Miriam is pregnant with a royal child and manages to parlay that into being crowned queen-widow. The conservative faction in the Clan view the nuke as a deadly insult and want revenge.

This is another heady mixture of feudal intrigue, U.S. spycraft, politics and economics. Stross is very good at taking ideas and extrapolating them in interesting ways. Most of the Clan were only slightly more forward-thinking than the rest of their feudal world. Miriam's arrival and the discovery of new worlds they can walk to has overturned many long-held assumptions about their unique way of life. Matters are coming to a boil and will be resolved in the sixth book of the series.

Title: Wyatt's Hurricane

Author: Desmond Bagley

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Fontana

Copyright: 1966

ISBN: 0006128300

Pages: 254

Keywords: thriller

Reading period: 5–8 May, 2009

Wyatt is a meteorologist working with the U.S. Navy on the small Caribbean island of San Fernandez. He's convinced that Hurricane Mabel will change course and hit San Fernandez. Trouble is, he can't convince the local dictator, Serrurier, to evacuate the low-lying capital because the rebels have risen.

This is a fine early modern thriller by Bagley. Aside from the improbability of an insurrection and a major hurricane happening simultaneously, it's quite believable. The tension mounts as the weather worsens, people act in character, and no one has improbable talents. Wyatt is naive and idealistic and finds himself shocked by the realpolitik of the rebel leader, Favel.

Recommended.

Title: Nightingale's Lament

Author: Simon R. Green

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Ace

Copyright: 2004

ISBN: 0441011632

Pages: 216

Keywords: fantasy, noir, humor

Reading period: 4–5 May, 2009

Sequel to Agents of Light and Darkness.

A mysterious chanteuse's songs are to die for at an exclusive club in the Nightside: her fans are committing suicide. John Taylor investigates.

Entertaining, though the writing style is clumsy.

Title: The Merchants' War

Author: Charles Stross

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Tor

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0765355892

Pages: 374

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 2–4 May, 2009

Book #4 in the Merchant Princes series, sequel to The Clan Corporate.

The Clan share a mutation that allows them to walk between worlds, including theirs and ours. It's made them fabulously wealthy in their feudal world, though much despised by the old nobility. The crown prince has just seized the throne and is on a witch-hunt. In our world, the US government considers them narco-terrorists and is hunting them too. Miriam, the main protagonist, is trapped in a recently discovered third world, a Victorian police state. And a fourth world is found in this book, bereft of people.

The Clan are besieged from all sides and are desperately fighting back. They're smart, well-armed, and well-prepared, but their numbers are low.

Another very entertaining book from Charlie Stross, best read in sequence.

Title: The Big Sleep

Author: Raymond Chandler

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Vintage

Copyright: 1939

ISBN: 0394758285

Pages: 234

Keywords: crime

Reading period: 2 May, 2009

General Sternwood is old, rich, and crippled, with two wanton daughters. Philip Marlowe is brought in to deal with a blackmailer. Within hours, he is tripping over dead bodies, live dames, tough guys, and skeletons in closets.

Chandler's famously convoluted story holds up well seventy years later. His style and his stories are much imitated, but retain their freshness. Marlowe lives by his own code of honor, which keeps him going in his dirty, no-good world. He cracks wise and rarely carries a gun while he does what needs doing.

Recommended.

Title: The Grounds

Author: Cormac Millar

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Penguin

Copyright: 2006

ISBN: 1844880281

Pages: 367

Keywords: crime

Reading period: 26–30 April, 2009

Séamus Joyce, a former senior civil servant, returns to Dublin from self-imposed exile in Germany. He has been engaged as a consultant by Finer Small Campuses to evaluate his alma mater, King's College Dublin, a third-rate, third-level institution.

Millar, himself an Irish academic, satirizes both Irish higher-level education and the brave new world wrought by the Celtic Tiger economy. It's a different world from the depressed, inward-looking Dublin that Joyce moved to as a student. The plot moves efficiently and some of the characters are, well, characters. Not Joyce though: he's insecure and introverted, still recovering from the events that led to the breakup of his marriage and losing his old position.

Amusingly, King's College Dublin was invented by Millar's mother, the novelist Eilís Dillon in her 1956 novel, Death in the Quadrangle.

Title: The Star Fraction

Author: Ken MacLeod

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Tor

Copyright: 1995

ISBN: 0765301563

Pages: 320

Keywords: speculative fiction

Reading period: 19–26 April, 2009

A few decades hence, Britain has devolved into balkanized ministates. A Trotskyite, space-loving mercenary inadvertently awakens an AI and sparks the revolution. The plot is unsummarizable, but it's entertaining and complex, mixing action, political theory, cyberpunk, and romance.

Title: Deadly Decision

Author: Kathy Reichs

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Pocket

Copyright: 1999

ISBN: 0671028367

Pages: 368

Keywords: crime

Reading period: 15–18 April, 2009

There are two Dr. Temperance Brennan's. Both are forensic anthropologists. One is the heroine of Kathy Reichs' novels, who, like Reichs herself, is a professor in North Carolina and works with the Montreal police. The other is the star of the TV show, Bones, is brilliant but devoid of social skills, works with the FBI in Washington DC, and has a state-of-the-art lab and a crack team of geeks.

A war has erupted between biker gangs in Montreal. Old bones have been found in the ground, including the skull of a teenaged girl, whose other bones were found years ago in North Carolina. Brennan works hard to find evidence that will convict some of the bikers.

The plot moves along briskly, the characters act like real humans, and the medical detail is interesting. Too many threads are implausibly tied together for my liking, but otherwise I enjoyed it.

Title: Nameless Night

Author: G.M. Ford

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Harper

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 0060874430

Pages: 340

Keywords: suspense

Reading period: 14 April, 2009

Seven years ago, “Paul Hardy” was found with his head smashed in. He recovered physically, but not mentally. After another accident, his wits come back and a few memories. Googling for the one name he remembers brings the NSA to his door. He goes on the run, causing the unravelling of a coverup.

Efficient, well-plotted thriller in the paranoid vein. The plot is as risible as most such books, but no matter. Enjoy it for a few hours.

Title: Anathem

Author: Neal Stephenson

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: William Morrow

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 0061474096

Pages: 937

Keywords: science fiction

Reading period: 29 March–12 April, 2009

Anathem takes place on Arbre, a world where those of an intellectual bent sequester themselves in monasteries apart from the Sæcular world. When an alien ship is noticed orbiting the planet, avout from concents all over Arbre are drawn together for a Convox to determine how to respond to the threat of the Geometers.

Stephenson's Anathem is an ambitious project, pulling together physics, metaphysics, world-building, anthropology, and an adventure tale. It's an alien world as he keeps reminding us by the huge vocabulary he's invented. Said vocabulary alternates between exasperating and entertaining, but one becomes accustomed to it. The plot mostly meanders along, with long philosophical detours, accelerating in the final third of the book. The ideas and the explanations come thick and fast. The characters are enjoyable, if improbably talented and versatile nerds.

Vintage Stephenson.

Title: Black Dossier: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 3

Author: Alan Moore, Kevin O'Neill

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: America's Best Comics

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 1401203078

Keywords: graphic novel

Reading period: 28 March, 2009

England, 1958: an alternate universe where famous fictional characters really lived and the regime of Big Brother has just come to an end. Sixty years ago, the British Crown gathered together the Murray Group, extraordinary adventurers charged with sensitive missions. The remnants of the group fled England in World War II. Now they've come back to steal their dossier from MI-5, a dossier that could lead the Government back to them, a dossier that details the exploits of earlier groups over the last 300 years.

LXG3 pulls in everything, from Gulliver's Travels to James Bond, Orlando to Fanny Hill, Prospero to Toyland, Dan Dare to Billy Bunter, and Bertie Wooster and Jeeves battling Cthulhu. It's way over the top. Mostly it's fun.

Title: By Myself

Author: Lauren Bacall

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Knopf

Copyright: 1978

ISBN: 0394413083

Pages: 378

Keywords: autobiography, movies

Reading period: 10–28 March, 2009

Betty Bacal is an only child, abandoned by her father, raised by her Rumanian Jewish mother in New York. Stagestruck from an early age, she takes acting classes for years but gets little stage work. Modeling work is a fallback. A cover shot for Harper's Bazaar leads Howard Hawks to bring her out to Hollywood. Within months, Hawks' protogée, now Lauren Bacall, is the lead in “To Have or Have Not” and falling in love with her costar, Humphrey Bogart. Bogie is 45 to her 20, but it doesn't matter. He's married too; that doesn't matter either. They marry, of course, and have a dozen great years together until Bogie's death of cancer in ’57. She's devastated but she has two young children. On the rebound, she takes up with Frank Sinatra. It's not right for either of them and Sinatra dumps her. She spends the Sixties married to Jason Robards. Like Bogie, he's a drinker and that marriage falls apart, leaving her with a son. Her movie and theatre career has been hit or miss for years, but revives in the Seventies with a long-running stage hit in Applause (the musical version of All About Eve).

Bacall writes frankly about her life and shortcomings, looking back with hard-earned wisdom from middle age. She spends half of her girlhood at a high emotional pitch. When she plunges into something, it's total commitment; no holding back, for better or worse. Her early screen persona was as a knowing sexpot; in reality, she was unsure and inexperienced. The “Look”, her trademark upward tilting look with her chin pressed against her chest, was born of the need to still her nervous shaking.

She tells a good story, pulling the reader along. She drops many big names, having moved in high-powered circles all her adult life. The Hollywood elite of the 40s and 50s are there. Katie Hepburn becomes a close friend after The African Queen. She was close to Adlai Stevenson when he ran for President in 1952. Bobby Kennedy was a friend. The book becomes most affecting when she writes of the death of Bogie and of her beloved mother in 1969, of those last, lingering months of denial and her wrenching pain afterwards.

Highly recommended.

Title: No Country for Old Men

Author: Cormac McCarthy

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Picador

Copyright: 2005

ISBN: 033044011X

Pages: 309

Keywords: fiction

Reading period: 20–22 March, 2009

Rural Texas, 1980. Llewelyn Moss, out hunting in the middle of nowhere, finds the remains of a drug buy that went wrong: dead bodies, shot-up cars, black tar heroin. And a satchel with two million dollars in cash. Moss takes the money and runs. He knows it's stupid, he knows that people will come after him, and he does it anyway.

Anton Chigurh is the worst of the killers on his trail. Relentless, remorseless, untroubled by conscience, and offended by the wrongness of Moss's act. He and Moss will be locked in a dance of death.

The bodies were found in Sheriff Bell's patch. Ed Tom Bell is near retirement, an old-school lawman at odds with modern life. Bell is slow, deliberate, and perceptive. He wants to catch Moss before Chigurh does.

McCarthy's prose is spare and evocative, as dry as the harsh landscape. These men are laconic, not given to frivolous chitchat.

Highly recommended. I'll have to get around to the Coen Brothers' movie soon.

Title: The Choirboys

Author: Joseph Wambaugh

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Dell

Copyright: 1975

ISBN: 0385341601

Pages: 387

Keywords: crime, fiction

Reading period: 17–19 March, 2009

Ten LAPD patrolmen congregate regularly in MacArthur Park for “choir practice”: late-night bitchfests, marathon boozing, and group sex with a couple of cocktail waitresses.

LA's finest are not exactly fine specimens of humanity, but then neither are the people they serve, whom they consider little better than the ones they arrest. The choirboys include an idealist, a psychopath, a prankster, and a world-class mooch. They fight and they drink and they argue: everything but discuss the things that really bother them. Wambaugh lampoons the choirboys, but he reserves his full contempt for their supervisors, martinets concerned more with coverups than justice.

There isn't much of a plot. It's more of a series of anecdotes about his characters, sometimes grim, often hilarious, frequently profane.

Title: Fleshmarket Close

Author: Ian Rankin

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Orion

Copyright: 2004

ISBN: 0752865633

Pages: 484

Keywords: crime, fiction

Reading period: 14–16 March, 2009

DI John Rebus investigates the murder of an illegal immigrant, who had ties to asylum seekers in Edinburgh. DS Siobhan Clarke looks into the disappearance of a teenaged girl; soon, the rapist of the girl's sister is murdered.

Rebus and Siobhan struggle with the uglier side of life in Edinburgh, notably, racism, latter-day slavery, and the increasing numbers of asylum seekers. As usual, their personal lives are in a mess: Rebus drinks too much; Siobhan falls asleep with a tub of ice cream.

As in other Rebus books, the two investigations end up being linked somewhat too neatly for my liking.

Title: Perdition House

Author: Kathryn R. Wall

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur

Copyright: 2003

ISBN: 0312998244

Pages: 295

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 8–9 March, 2009

Bay Tanner is a young widow and aspiring private investigator from wealthy South Carolina stock. When a hitherto unknown shirt-tail cousin (fifth half cousin, specifically) bursts into Bay's life, she brings havoc in her train.

As one of the characters says, the plot sounds like a made-for-TV movie. Still, Bay is a feisty heroine and the background is not one that has been mined deeply.

Title: Programming Sudoku

Author: Wei-Ming Lee

Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Apress

Copyright: 2006

ISBN: 1590596625

Pages: 214

Keywords: programming, introductory

Reading period: 22 February, 2009

I was Toastmaster of the Day at this evening's meeting of Freely Speaking Toastmasters. My theme was software development and I wanted to give the non-developer audience a taste for what it's like to write a program. I talked about writing a simple Sudoku game.

Yesterday, I read Programming Sudoku for background. I bought this book for Emma after reading about it on Scott Hanselman's blog. It's targeted at beginning programmers and walks them through building a Sudoku game and solver. I was hoping to get Emma more interested in programming–unsuccessfully. She found it repetitious and a little confusing, and she found some typos in the code.

Pedagogically, the book is good. It starts by creating a simple WinForms application in Visual Basic to play a Sudoku game. Then it builds a solver for simple games and refines the solver to handle harder games. Next, it adds a puzzle generator. It concludes with a brief chapter on a similar game, Kakuro. The explanation of gameplay is clear; the approach seems reasonable.

The code, however, is horrible. It's ugly, it's verbose, and it's repetitive. Consider that the code for doing some operation to a row is almost identical to doing the same operation to a column, but no attempt is made to abstract such operations into helper functions.

Or how about this unexplained fragment to see if a column is complete, which is repeated often, with minor variations:

pattern = "123456789"
For r = 1 To 9
    pattern = pattern.Replace(actual(c,r).ToString(), String.Empty)
Next
If pattern.Length > 0 Then
    Return False
End If

To me, it's obvious that this is a poor man's set difference operation. To a novice programmer, I doubt it.

Examples should be exemplary and held to a higher standard than code that is not intended for public view. All too often, sample code ends up in production. When I wrote samples for classic ASP, I took care to make them good code.

The book is short. The author could have shown some ugly code as an initial solution, then cleaned it up and explained why the new code was better. That would have done his readers a greater service.

I cannot recommend this book to novices: they won't learn good habits from it.

Title: Watchmen (book)

Author: Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: DC Comics

Copyright: 1987

ISBN: 0930289234

Pages: 416

Keywords: graphic novel, superheroes

Reading period: 14–22 February, 2009

Set in an alternate 1985 where costumed heroes are real—and outlawed—Watchmen follows six adventurers. Rorschach, half-mad, continues his vigilante activities. Nite Owl is retired and a worrywart. The former Ozymandias—the world's smartest man—is now one of the richest. The Comedian is murdered at the very beginning; after the Keene Act passed, he was allowed to continue operating as a government enforcer. Dr. Manhattan was transformed into a superbeing in a nuclear accident in 1959; he is America's strategic weapon in the arms race with the Soviets. And the former Silk Spectre is his girlfriend.

These people are not boy scouts, fighting for truth, justice, and the American Way. They are flawed individuals with motivations that are often murky, even to themselves.

Who watches the watchmen? Who indeed?

The very presence of masked adventurers over the last fifty years has transformed society. Dr. Manhattan is both responsible for many technological advances, such as flying cars, and the locus of much of the world's tension. When he disappears off the face of the earth, destabilizing the balance of power, the Soviets immediately invade Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Rorschach meanwhile is convinced that someone is going after masked adventurers, and investigates. He's right. There is something going on—something unspeakable.

Watchmen tells a complex story, weaving together many different strands into a tapestry that is a triumph of the comic book. The narrative moves back and forth across fifty years, collecting many viewpoints. And the comic within the comic–the Tale of the Black Freighter—accentuates the main storyline. The artwork too repays careful study. There's often two or three things going on in a single panel. Truly, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Originally published in twelve issues, Watchmen was promptly republished as a book. It is one of the titles that gave rise to the category of graphic novel, deserving the Hugo that it won. The film adaptation will be released in March.

Highly recommended.

Title: Bleeding Kansas

Author: Sara Paretsky

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Signet

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 0451224485

Pages: 593

Keywords: fiction

Reading period: 4–13 February, 2009

In the 1850s, three anti-slavery families settled next to each other in rural Kansas: the Grelliers, the Schapens, and the rich Fremantles. Seven generations later, the last of the Fremantles is gone, the Grelliers are progressive farmers, and the Schapens are belligerent fundamentalists. Gina Haring, a Wiccan lesbian from New York, housesits the Fremantle mansion, while she tries to pick up the pieces of her life. Inadvertently, she triggers a cascade of changes. Most notably, the Grellier son, at odds with his anti-war mother, enlists and is killed in Iraq, sending her into a deep depression.

Paretsky has moved her focus from her series of novels about V.I. Warshawski, a female PI in Chicago, to rural Kansas, where she grew up. It's her take on What's the Matter With Kansas?, the transformation of a populist anti-slavery state into a deep-red locus of reactionaries.

It's a mostly sympathetic portrait of beleagured farmers. The main characters, Jim Grellier; his 14-year-old daughter, Lara; and Robbie Schapen, the 14-year-old misfit, are well-drawn and believable. The romance that develops between Lara and Robbie is tender and touching. The rest of the Schapens, though, are something of a caricature.

Title: The Outlaw Demon Wails

Author: Kim Harrison

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Eos Books

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 0061149829

Pages: 496

Keywords: urban fantasy

Reading period: 28 January–3 February, 2009

Sequel to For a Few Demons More. Best read in sequence.

Rachel Morgan: witch and private investigator. An unknown enemy is summoning a demon every night to kill her. She learns some surprising things about her past and her place in the world.

Previous books were heavy on the action; here it kicks in very late and the book is very talky.

Moderately entertaining but weaker than earlier books in the series.

Title: Paul of Dune

Author: Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Tor

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 0765312948

Pages: 512

Keywords: science fiction

Reading period: 14–27 January, 2009

Another novel in the Dune franchise. Paul of Dune is an interquel, largely taking place in the decade between the events of Dune and of Dune Messiah.

Paul Atreides has become the Emperor of the known galaxy. A vicious jihad has burst across the empire in his name. His prescience tells him that it's absolutely necessary so that mankind can break out of the course that leads to stagnation and destruction. But billions have died and many more are yet to die. He is feared and hated. A rebellion has broken out and must be suppressed. Attempts are made upon his life.

The main story is woven with extended flashbacks to Paul's first formative, experience of war, a few years before Dune. The War of Assassins took a toll on Paul's father, Duke Leto, but showed Paul what it is to lead.

The last book written by BH & KJA, Sandworms of Dune, was a sequel to the entire series. It was greatly weakened by multiple deus ex machina endings. Here, they are constrained by having to fit in between two previous books. This book works better.

Title: The Sun Over Breda

Author: Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: G.P. Putnam

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0399153837

Pages: 273

Keywords: historical fiction

Reading period: 9–12 January, 2009

Sequel to The Purity of Blood.

Captain Alatriste has rejoined the Spanish army in Flanders, besieging Breda in 1625. Íñigo, his follower and later biographer, is still too young to bear arms, and serves as a forager for Alatriste's squad.

There's no glory in this war—Pérez-Reverte is a former war correspondent. The Spanish empire is on the decline. Spain has been fighting in the Spanish Netherlands for sixty years to suppress the Protestant heretics. The Spanish troops are mutinous and close to starving; they haven't been paid in a long time. All they have is their honor and that, they guard zealously.

A grim tale of privation and battle, well told.

Title: An Unpardonable Crime

Author: Andrew Taylor

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Hyperion

Copyright: 2004

ISBN: 1401329632

Pages: 485

Keywords: historical, mystery

Reading period: 8–9 January, 2009

Thomas Shield is a schoolmaster in Regency England who becomes entangled in the affairs of the Frant and Carswell families, as tutor to the Frant boy and his friend Edgar Allan. Old Mr. Carswell is a domestic tyrant and the former business partner of Mr. Frant. Frant swindles his own bank and is found murdered; the beautiful Mrs. Frant becomes indebted to Carswell.

Shield slowly, almost unwittingly untangles what really happened while he is drawn to both Mrs. Frant and Carswell's illegitimate daughter. Edgar Allan, who will one day be known as Edgar Allan Poe, plays a small but crucial role.

Andrew Taylor does a fine job of building a period mystery, in the very different social mores that obtained in the time of Jane Austen.

Title: Making Money

Author: Terry Pratchett

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Harper

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0061161659

Pages: 404

Keywords: humor, fantasy

Reading period: 4–8 January, 2009

Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's in 2007. Fortunately, it's not evident in this Discworld book.

Moist von Lipwig, con man extraordinaire, finds himself in charge of the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork and the Royal Mint. The people don't trust the banks much. In an effort to get money flowing, he introduces paper money to Ankh-Morpork. Lipwig, like his creator, is an acute observer of people, and pulls it off against the odds.

Pratchett does his usual trick of holding a fun-house mirror up to some aspect of human society. This time, it's money and economics.

Title: Absent Friends

Author: S.J. Rozan

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Dell

Copyright: 2004

ISBN: 0440241855

Pages: 541

Keywords: fiction, mystery

Reading period: 3 January, 2009

Rozan weaves together two stories here, past and present.

Seven children, four boys and three girls, grow up together on Staten Island in the 1960s and 70s. In early adulthood, one of the young men accidentally kills another, then is killed in prison. A third boy, Jimmy McCaffrey, becomes estranged from the others and moves to Manhattan where he rises in the Fire Department.

Jimmy dies in the Twin Towers on 9/11, doing what he did best: saving people. A month later, a washed-up newspaper reporter writes a story insinuating that there was something unsavory in Jimmy's past. Then the reporter leaps from a bridge, an apparent suicide. His lover doesn't believe it's a suicide and wants to dig deeper.

Rozan cuts back and forth between the two stories. Each story informs the other. Some characters want to find the truth; others would rather conceal it. What is that truth? And are the costs of revealing that truth too high, especially for a community reeling from the losses of 9/11?

Title: The Sunrise Lands

Author: S.M. Stirling

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Roc

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0451462254

Pages: 512

Keywords: speculative fiction

Reading period: 3 January, 2009

This book takes place about ten years after A Meeting at Corvallis. The focus has switched to a younger set of characters, the first generation to grow up after the “Change”, the event that knocked the world back into the Dark Ages.

A traveler arrives in Oregon from the East, bearing a compelling prophecy that requires Rudi Mackenzie to travel to Nantucket, the apparent source of the Change. A group of nine (the number is traditional) head eastwards. But the fanatical Church Universal and Triumphant wants to stop them.

Plenty of action keeps the story moving as Stirling continues to explore the ramifications of his post-apocalyptic scenario.

Title: Sovereign

Author: C.J. Sansom

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Macmillan

Copyright: 2006

ISBN: 1405088575

Pages: 583

Keywords: historical mystery

Reading period: 25–28 December, 2008

Sequel to Dark Fire. The hunchbacked lawyer Matthew Shardlake has been sent to York by Archbishop Cranmer to meet the Royal Progress, where Henry VIII is to accept formal surrender from those who had earlier rebelled. Shardlake is to hear petitions on the king's behalf, but really he is there to ensure that a high-ranking conspirator is brought safely back to the Tower of London. He stumbles upon a cache of secret papers, which leads to a series of attempts upon his life.

Shardlake, once an ardent support of the reform of the Church of England, has grown disillusioned and cynical. His exposure to the king and the Court only increase his disillusionment. The king has become an unabashed tyrant and Shardlake grows sympathetic to the rebels.

Title: Resurrection Men

Author: Ian Rankin

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Little, Brown

Copyright: 2002

ISBN: 0316608491

Pages: 510

Keywords: crime, fiction

Reading period: 22–24 December, 2008

Troublemaking cops–the Resurrection Men–from all over Scotland have been sent to the Police Training College to make them into team players. DI John Rebus is one of them, though his real job is to get the dirt on three bent cops. The senior officers who sent Rebus in seem to mistrust him too, since the Resurrection Men have reopened an old case where Rebus's behavior was questionable.

Back in Edinburgh, DS Siobhan Clarke is investigating the murder of an art dealer, where Rebus's old nemesis, the crime boss Big Ger Cafferty figures prominently. This seems to be the first book where Clarke comes in to her own as a character. Rebus and Clarke traffic in gray areas and moral ambiguity. The world they must work in is neither clean nor simple, and their actions cannot always bear close scrutiny.

As in other Rebus books, the two investigations end up being linked far too neatly for my liking.

Title: Captain's Fury

Author: Jim Butcher

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Ace

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0441016553

Pages: 508

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 20–21 December, 2008

Captain's Fury is the fourth book in Jim Butcher's fantasy series, Codex Alera, and the sequel to Cursor's Fury.

Tavi is still undercover as the captain of a legion fighting the Canim invaders; an ambitious senator arrives from the capital to take over. Tavi finally comes into his own, learning that he is Gaius Octavian, the hitherto unsuspected son of the First Lord's long-dead heir. Far to the south, Amara and Bernard accompany the First Lord, Gaius Sixtus, on a secret mission, walking into the rebellious Kalare. Their journey bears not a little resemblance to Frodo and Sam's epic walk into Mordor.

The intrigue and the action come thick and fast, holding our attention to the end.

Title: The Vivero Letter

Author: Desmond Bagley

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Fontana

Copyright: 1968

ISBN: 184232019X

Pages: 253

Keywords: thriller

Reading period: 13–14 December, 2008

Jeremy Wheale is ‘a grey little man in a grey little job’ who doesn't fit in well in swinging London. His brother is murdered and he finds himself embroiled in the search for a lost Mayan city in the Yucutan peninsula. His companions are a rich old archaeologist, a paranoid young archaeologist, and his attractive wife. Somewhere out in the jungle is a Mafia don who's convinced that there's a hoard of gold in Uaxuanoc.

Wheale is an ordinary man who rises to the occasion. As the tension grows, he finds unsuspected reserves within himself, leading to a daring standoff with the don.

This is a classic adventure story, well told, written by one of the great British thriller writers of the Sixties and Seventies. More modern books would have strung the action out over five hundred pages; Bagley told his story in 250.

Title: Accelerando

Author: Charles Stross

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Ace

Copyright: 2005

ISBN: 0441014151

Pages: 432

Keywords: science fiction

Reading period: September–12 December, 2008

(As I mentioned last night, I read Accelerando (Wikipedia) in Stanza on my iPhone on the bus.)

Accelerando is a set of connected short stories following three generations of the Macx family around the Singularity. The ideas fly thick and fast (and somewhat confusingly): minds uploaded into virtual machines, nanotechnology, posthumans, lobsters brainscans uplifted into space, an independent-minded AI in a cat's body, economics, …

Thought-provoking and entertaining.

Title: Dead to Me

Author: Anton Strout

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Publisher: Ace

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 0441015786

Pages: 356

Keywords: urban fantasy, comedy

Reading period: 1–4 December, 2008

Simon Canderous, dorky newbie at the underfunded, secretive Department of Extraordinary Affairs in New York City, investigates the death of a beautiful ghost and the apparently respectable cultists at the Sectarian Defense League. He has the gift (or curse) of psychometry: when he touches something, he can divine its history.

This book wobbles between not very black comedy and straight urban fantasy, and doesn't really succeed as either.

Title: Cryptonomicon

Author: Neal Stephenson

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Avon

Copyright: 1999

ISBN: 0060512806

Pages: 1168

Keywords: science fiction

Reading period: 22–30 November, 2008

The Baroque Cycle books were a prequel, of sorts, to Cryptonomicon. In World War II, Lawrence Waterhouse is an American cryptographer, a peer of Alan Turing, and someone who will be the father of the digital computer; while Bobby Shaftoe is a US Marine who works on black ops. Now, Randy Waterhouse, computer nerd and Lawrence's grandson, is setting up a data haven in the Pacific. Amy Shaftoe, Bobby's granddaughter, and her father, Doug, are marine salvage experts working for Randy, who find a gold-filled Nazi submarine off the Philippines. Somehow, the events of the past and the present will come together, as the narrative bounces back and forth.

Randy, Lawrence, and Bobby all hold our interest as the viewpoint moves between them. Lawrence and his peers break the secret codes of the Germans and the Japanese; Randy's data haven uses cryptography to safeguard data from modern governments. Bobby ultimately just wants to rejoin his girlfriend and son in Manila.

Cryptonomicon is an effective combination of nerdiness and thriller, and a definitive portrayal of geeks in fiction.

Title: Field of Blood

Author: Denise Mina

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Copyright: 2005

ISBN: 031615458X

Pages: 424

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 15–21 November, 2008

A new series from the author of Garnethill. 1981: Paddy Meehan is an 18-year-old Catholic, living at home in working-class Glasgow. She works as a copy boy at a newspaper and aspires to be a journalist. In what seems to be an open-and-shut case, a three-year-old boy is murdered by two unnamed ten-year-olds. One of them is her fiancé's cousin. She blurts that out in shock; the newspaper publishes it, causing her tight-knit community to shun her.

Paddy is forced to do a lot of growing up, while she investigates who led the ten-year-olds on. The shunning changes her. She realizes that she's not cut out to be the good little housewife expected by her family and fiancé, that she'd really rather be a journalist. Quick witted, she learns to give as good as she gets in the overwhelmingly male newsroom. Her duplicity causes one death and causes other havoc; the realizations will hit her hard.

Title: Quicksilver: The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1

Author: Neal Stephenson

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: William Morrow

Copyright: 2003

ISBN: 0380977427

Pages: 927

Keywords: historical fiction

Reading period: 20 October–15 November, 2008

Almost two years ago, I read Quicksilver, the first volume of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. It wasn't until two months ago, that I read The Confusion and The System of the World, the second and third volumes. By then it was clear that I had forgotten much of the first book, so I re-read it.

The books are sufficiently intertwined that it would have been better had I read all three in quick succession, rather than leaving such a long interval.

Quicksilver stands up well to re-reading. Plot points that had escaped my notice earlier stood out to me now. He foreshadows certain themes, such as economics and coinage, that will become important in later volumes. Daniel and Eliza's anachronistic attitudes bothered me less this time around.

Overall, I recommend the Baroque Cycle, though you'll need to set aside a good deal of time to read three such huge volumes. It's an ambitious work, well told. Stephenson sheds light on a remarkable few decades when the world opened up, going from an age of Kings to the Age of Enlightenment, when alchemy crumbled and the foundations of modern science were laid, when the basis of economys went from land to thoroughly modern-sounding financial instruments.

Title: The Bloomsday Dead

Author: Adrian McKinty

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Pocket Star Books

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0743499492

Pages: 373

Keywords: crime

Reading period: 19 October, 2008

A sequel to Dead I Well May Be.

June 16, 2004: the Bloomsday centenary. Michael Forsythe's archnemesis Bridget Callaghan needs him. Her eleven-year-old daughter has gone missing in Belfast, and Forsythe may be only one who can find her.

In the course of one very long day that loosely recapitulates the events of Joyce's Ulysses, Forsythe cuts a bloody swathe through the criminal underworld of Belfast.

Gripping, if over the top.

Title: The System of the World: The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 3

Author: Neal Stephenson

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: William Morrow

Copyright: 2004

ISBN: 0060523875

Pages: 892

Keywords: historical fiction

Reading period: 5–19 October, 2008

Neal Stephenson's massive, sprawling Baroque Cycle began with Quicksilver, continued in The Confusion, and concludes with The System of the World.

1714: Daniel Waterhouse has been recalled from Boston by Princess Caroline of Ansbach, soon to be Princess of Wales, after the last Stuart monarch dies, so that he can intervene in the rancorous dispute between Newton and Leibniz over who invented calculus. The plot is too complex to summarize, but it's a glorious farrago of counterfeiting gold coins, alchemy, Solomonic gold, the squalor of Eighteenth century London, the emergence of modern science, the Age of Enlightenment, œconomics, the Hanoverian succession, intrigue, jailbreaks, slavery, and love.

The series finally clicked for me with this book: the plot and the characters pulled me through.

Title: The Confusion: The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 2

Author: Neal Stephenson

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: William Morrow

Copyright: 2004

ISBN: 0060523867

Pages: 832

Keywords: historical fiction

Reading period: 13 September–5 October, 2008

Neal Stephenson's massive, sprawling Baroque Cycle began with Quicksilver and continues in the aptly named Confusion. The book interweaves two novels, Bonanza and The Juncto, taking place between 1689 and 1702. Bonanza follows Jack Shaftoe, as he and other galley slaves in Algiers capture Spanish gold of particular significance to some highly placed alchemists, and make their way ever eastward, through Cairo, India, Manila, and Mexico. The Juncto deals primarily with Eliza, now a French duchess, and her remarkable financial derring-do.

The previous book concerned itself with the intellectual ferment around the Royal Society and European savants, such as Leibniz. Major themes of this book include œconomics, alchemy, and the dawn of the Enlightenment.

Entertaining, but also far too long.

Title: Oblivion

Author: Peter Abrahams

Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Harper Torch

Copyright: 2005

ISBN: 0060832835

Pages: 362

Keywords: suspense

Reading period: 11–13 September, 2008

Two days into his investigation of a missing teenage girl, PI Nick Petrov has a seizure that wipes out his recent memories. As he tries to rediscover what it was he was doing, he comes to realize that this case is somehow connected to his most famous case, ten years before.

The brain-damaged detective struggling through a once-easy investigation made for an interesting story. The plot moves briskly, but by the end has devolved into total improbability with gaping holes.

Consider my credulity—and charity—strained.

Title: Mortal Causes

Author: Ian Rankin

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Orion

Copyright: 1994

ISBN: 1407208187

Pages: 320

Keywords: crime, fiction

Reading period: 9–11 September, 2008

(An earlier Rebus book than The Hanging Garden or The Naming of the Dead.)

A brutally murdered man has ties to Protestant loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. He also happens to be the unacknowledged son of Rebus’s old nemesis, Big Ger Cafferty, who wants revenge. Never a team player, Rebus goes his own way, solving the case against the backdrop of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and a socially deprived housing scheme.

Title: Bleed Out

Author: Joan Brady

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Pocket Star Books

Copyright: 2005

ISBN: 1416524843

Pages: 523

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 7–8 September, 2008

Twenty years ago, David Marion, then a near-illiterate teenager, was sent to prison for life for the murder of two grown men. Hugh Freyl, a rich, blind lawyer, spots something extraordinary in him, and spends years educating him behind bars, then securing his release. Now, Freyl has been brutally murdered and David tracks down the killer.

Brady weaves together two stories, Hugh's narrative of the last twenty years and David's investigation, dovetailing them neatly. David is intense and paranoid, alternately charming and terrifying those he comes in contact with.

The book is part mystery, part an indictment of prison brutality and the foster system. Entertaining, but the plot veers off into implausibility, even before the dénouement: Freyl's childhood friends include both a Supreme Court Justice and a presidential candidate.

Title: Blind to the Bones

Author: Stephen Booth

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Bantam

Copyright: 2003

ISBN: 0440242908

Pages: 581

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 27 August–6 September, 2008

Later in the series of Cooper-Fry books than Dancing with the Virgins. Detective Constable Ben Cooper's working relationship with Det. Sgt. Diane Fry has improved somewhat, with Fry now according Cooper a modicum of wary respect.

They find themselves separately investigating two crimes in the remote Derbyshire village of Withens: the disappearance of a teenage girl two years ago and the recent murder of a young man. At the heart of local matters are the extended Oxley family—suspicious, clannish, and looked down upon—and Ben must find out what they know. Meanwhile, Diane is distracted by her own private investigation of the long ago disappearance of her own older sister.

Two strong characters and a fairly good plot, marred by an overly neat ending.

Title: JavaScript: The Good Parts

Author: Douglas Crockford

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: O'Reilly

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 0596517742

Pages: 153

Keywords: programming, javascript

Reading period: 27 May–15 June, 2008

Crockford is one of the world's leading JavaScript experts. In this slim volume, he explores the features of the core language, both the good parts and the warts.

JavaScript has been redeemed since 2005 with the explosive proliferation of Ajax websites. Long regarded as a toy language, suitable for little more than generating popups, we have come to learn that in the hands of experts like John Resig (of jQuery fame), JavaScript can be a powerful, expressive language. Anonymous functions, duck typing, and dynamic objects are all good stuff.

Crockford gives a particularly good explanation of the confusing topic of prototypical inheritance and how objects and functions are intertwined in the language. He also discusses the parts that should be avoided in the language, which are mostly due to JavaScript's premature birth, when Netscape rushed it to market. He avoids discussion of the barely standardized mess that is the DOM.

I would have liked some longer examples, tying his themes together.

Recommended.

Title: Somebody Else

Author: Reggie Nadelson

Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Faber and Faber

Copyright: 2003

ISBN: 0571217524

Pages: 274

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 16–28 August, 2008

Betsy Thornhill had a face lift. It worked so well that she now passes for her mid-thirties, instead of 51. After decades in London, she moves back to Manhattan a few months after 9/11. Within days, a man who came on to her is dead, and she's the main suspect.

I didn't like this book or Betsy. I couldn't believe that all the male characters would throw themselves at her—she looks great, but her personality and confidence are lacking. Implausibly, Betsy fails to think about her estranged daughter, Franny, for 160 pages, despite the strain of being a murder suspect and despite the importance of Franny for the rest of the book.

Don't bother.

Title: Thirteenth Night

Author: Alan Gordon

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur

Copyright: 1999

ISBN: 0312976844

Pages: 259

Keywords: mystery, historical

Reading period: 16–17 August, 2008

We saw Shakespeare in the Park's production of Twelfth Night at Seward Park last week, which prompted me to re-read this book.

Fifteen years ago, Theophilos, an agent of the Fool's Guild, then working in his guise as Feste the Jester, initiated the events roughly described in Shakespeare's play, and foiled Saladin's agent, Malvolio. Now the duke of Orsino is dead under suspicious circumstances, and Theo goes back, disguised as a German merchant.

Theo is witty, quick-witted, and politically astute, making for an engaging narrator of this medieval mystery.

Title: Black Arrow

Author: I.J. Parker

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Penguin

Copyright: 2006

ISBN: 0143035614

Pages: 368

Keywords: mystery, historical

Reading period: 9–16 August, 2008

Sugawara Akitada has been appointed as the governor of a remote northern province in feudal Japan. Aided only by a handful of retainers, he is beset by his own doubts and hostile locals. Winter is closing in and he must exert his fragile authority to rein in a mutinous baron, while also investigating some mysterious deaths and righting old wrongs.

Parker evokes the spare, stark beauty of Japan, in a well-written historical mystery.

Title: The Daughter of Time

Author: Josephine Tey

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Scribner

Copyright: 1951

ISBN: 0684803860

Pages: 207

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 6–9 August, 2008

King Richard III, hunchback, last of the Plantegenets, one of Shakespeare's blackest villains, and long decried as the murderer of Princes in the Tower. But did he really murder his nephews to cement his hold on his throne?

Inspector Grant, confined to a hospital bed, is given a portrait of Richard III, and finds that he cannot believe that this was the face of a cold-blooded villain. Aided by a young historial researcher, he conducts an inquiry from his bed, and makes a convincing case that another was the murderer.

More at the Wikipedia article on The Daughter of Time.

Title: Dead to the World

Author: Charlaine Harris

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Ace

Copyright: 2004

ISBN: 0441012183

Pages: 291

Keywords: mystery, vampire, romance

Reading period: 5-6 August, 2008

Sequel to Club Dead.

A coven of evil, powerful witches has moved into the area, and are causing havoc amongst the local supernaturals. The local vampire boss has been bespelled and lost his memory, and Sookie has to look after him. He's very attractive and she's on the rebound. And her brother has gone missing.

Sookie is a nice gal, struggling with a disability -- telepathy causes more trouble than it solves -- and trying to survive on the edges of the dangerous world of the Supes.

Title: Brandenburg

Author: Henry Porter

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Orion

Copyright: 2005

ISBN: 0752864947

Pages: 564

Keywords: spy, thriller

Reading period: 25 July-3 August, 2008

Rudi Rosenharte is an East German academic, reluctantly working for the Stasi, in the months before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Stasi are holding his twin brother, Konrad, hostage. Rudi's desperate to get Konrad and his family out, and he's recruited by British Intelligence.

Rudi ends up keeping four intelligence services at bay, as he walks along an ever more precarious tightrope. The plot is, of course, implausible. The book brings the sheer nastiness of a police state to life, and shows the East German state collapsing as it celebrates its fortieth anniversary.

Title: A Crown of Lights

Author: Phil Rickman

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Pan

Copyright: 2001

ISBN: 0330484508

Pages: 566

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 21-25 July, 2008

The Rev. Merrily Watkins is the "deliverance consultant" -- a euphemism for exorcist -- for a diocese on the Welsh border. A Wiccan couple move into a long-deconsecrated church in a remote village, and the local fundamentalist-style Anglican priest leads a witchhunt.

The viewpoint characters are all entertaining: level-headed Merrily; her smart-alec teenager, Jane; their old codger neighbor, Gomer; and the two Wiccans, Betty and Robin. The plot is both page-turning and unhurriedly developed: the first body takes 250 pages to appear. We learn something about contemporary village life, Wales, Anglicanism, Wicca, and religious intolerance.

Recommended.

Title: The Hanging Garden

Author: Ian Rankin

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur

Copyright: 1998

ISBN: 0312969139

Pages: 349

Keywords: crime, fiction

Reading period: 20-21 July, 2008

DI John Rebus is struggling with an incipient gang war in Edinburgh. He's investigating an elderly academic who might be a Nazi war criminal. A Bosnian prostitute has brought out the white knight in him. His personal life is a mess: He's off the booze, but work is the only thing keeping him going. And his daughter has been run down in the street, perhaps as a warning to him.

Rebus somehow struggles with all of this, coming out more or less victorious, but at a cost to his integrity and his loved ones.

Recommended.

Title: Listen to the Shadows

Author: Danuta Reah

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Publisher: Harper Torch

Copyright: 2001

ISBN: 0061031348

Pages: 340

Keywords: thriller

Reading period: 16-20 July, 2008

Suzanne Milner is a graduate student researching young offenders in Sheffield. She finds the body of a young woman. Soon another young woman's body is found. There seems to be an unexplained connection between several young people.

Listen to the Shadows works fairly well as a psychological thriller: there are enough twists and misdirection to keep us off-balance and guessing until the end. The protagonist, though, is an exasperating mess. Beset by deep-seated feelings of inadequacy and festered guilt, she spends most of the book being buffeted by events, reacting helplessly, unable to cope.

Title: Spider Dance

Author: Carole Nelson Douglas

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Forge

Copyright: 2004

ISBN: 0765345951

Pages: 512

Keywords: mystery, historical

Reading period: 6-16 July, 2008

As Dr. Watson famously said of Irene Adler, "To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman." Carole Nelson Douglas has parlayed Irene Adler into a series of books.

In Spider Dance, Irene and her friend, Nell Huxleigh, are in New York City, trying to find out who Irene's long-lost mother was. The infamous Lola Montez is the most likely contender. Holmes is also in town, investigating a grotesque murder at the Vanderbilt mansion. Inevitably, the two cases become tangled up.

Even by the standards of Sherlockiana, the plot is improbable: rogue Ultramontanes, lost fortunes, mausoleums at midnight. It's entertaining though, and well-told. Irene is a pistol. Lola, whose story is woven through the book, even more so. Nell, the primary narrator, is a parson's daughter and a former governess. Her priggishness is fraying under the assaults of the unconventional lifestyle she now leads with Irene.

Title: Heart of Stone

Author: C.E. Murphy

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Luna Books

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0373802927

Pages: 438

Keywords: urban fantasy

Reading period: 5 July, 2008

The Old Races--gargoyles, dragons, vampires, and more--are still around, though few ordinary humans are aware of them, since they can all assume human form.

Margrit Knight, a feisty Legal Aid lawyer in New York City, defends Alban, a gargoyle falsely accused of murdering women in Central Park. She finds herself drawn into murky struggles between different factions and she becomes increasingly attracted to the statuesque Alban, who has long been in self-imposed exile.

Gargoyles are a novel twist in the increasingly popular urban fantasy genre. Entertaining and fast-paced.

Title: The New Centurions

Author: Joseph Wambaugh

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Grand Central

Copyright: 1970

ISBN: 0446509221

Pages: 528

Keywords: crime

Reading period: 29 June–4 July, 2008

Three very different young men graduate from the Los Angeles Police Academy in 1960. Wambaugh's classic first novel follows them for five years until they meet again under fire in the Watts Riots.

In a series of vignettes, Wambaugh shows how they become hardened and cynical on the streets. Some will absorb the racist attitudes of their fellow officers. All will see horrifying things as they serve as patrol officers, vice cops, or juvenile officers.

Grim but enthralling.

Title: Our Game

Author: John le Carré

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Ballantine

Copyright: 1995

ISBN: 034541831X

Pages: 338

Keywords: spy, thriller

Reading period: 22–29 June, 2008

Timothy Cranmer is a former spy handler, put out to pasture at the end of the Cold War. Larry Pettifer, left-wing academic and Byronic espouser of lost causes, was not only Cranmer's best double agent but a friend and rival since childhood.

Now Larry has gone missing, as has 37 million pounds and Cranmer's young mistress, Emma. Cranmer is thought to be an accomplice. Cranmer must find Larry. The trail will take him deep in the Caucasus.

The book moves slowly through the first half, until Cranmer finally decides to take action and leads British Intelligence on a merry chase. Cranmer, our narrator, reveals himself to be emotionally paralysed until his middle-aged affair with Emma. Larry, never seen directly, is shown to be just as immature in his own quixotic, impulsive way.

Not le Carré's best work, but insightful about his characters and post-Cold War politics.

Title: Judge

Author: Karen Traviss

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Eos

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 0060882409

Pages: 391

Keywords: SF

Reading period: 18-21 June, 2008

Judge is the sixth and final book in the Wess'har Series, and the sequel to Ally.

For the first time, focus shifts to 25th-century Earth, as the ecologically radical Eqbas arrive to clean up the mess. Once again, the central themes are ethics and environmentalism, and the moral quandaries posed by the existence of c'naatat, a parasite that confers immortality upon its host. The series draws to a close, resolving the fates of the central characters: the ruthlessly principled former cop, Shan Frankland; her two husbands, the gentle marine, Ade Bennett, and the alien war criminal, Aras; and Eddie Michallat, the journalist.

It's an impressive series of novels: strong characters, an interesting plot, aliens with fundamentally non-human ethics, moral dilemmas, and conflict galore.

Title: In Dublin's Fair City

Author: Rhys Bowen

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0312997027

Pages: 282

Keywords: mystery, historical

Reading period: 15-18 June, 2008

Molly Murphy, an early twentieth-century private detective, returns from New York to her native Ireland, in order to track down her client's long-lost sister. Along the way, she encounters a dead body in her cabin, revolutionaries in Dublin, and (briefly) James Joyce.

Molly is engaging and quick-witted, with a contrarian streak that gets her into trouble. Bowen evokes the early 20th century from bustling New York to the social stratifications of a liner, to British-occupied Dublin.

The book is marred by some elementary geographical errors: the River Liffey, not Liffy; Dublin is on the Irish Sea; the North Sea is on Britain's eastern coast.

Title: Passage

Author: Connie Willis

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Bantam

Copyright: 2001

ISBN: 0553580515

Pages: 780

Keywords: science fiction

Reading period: 8-15 June, 2008

Two scientists are researching Near-Death Experiences, to learn what causes them and what happens during them. This is partly a detective story, partly a story about doing science. The two main characters are likeable and there's a memorable cast of supporting characters: the garrulous WWII veteran; the manipulative but charming nine-year-old girl; the horrible psychic fraud; the hardboiled ER nurse; the former English teacher with Alzheimer's; and his caretaker niece.

Entertaining, but too long.

Title: Iron Kissed

Author: Patricia Briggs

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Ace

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 0441015662

Pages: 287

Keywords: urban fantasy

Reading period: 6-8 June, 2008

Mercy Thompson, coyote shape shifter, mechanic, and heroine of Blood Bound and Moon Called, is asked to investigate the murder of some fae. The fae (faery) are creatures from the old tales, barely assimilated into modern society, and far more dangerous than Disney tales suggest. One of their own, Mercy's mentor, is falsely accused of the murder. Most of the fae would rather see him go down so that the whole thing will blow over quickly. Mercy is determined to get him off, and that doesn't sit well with the fae. Not to mention, she's juggling two suitors, both alpha werewolves.

An entertaining, fast-paced read.

Title: Blood and Honey

Author: Graham Hurley

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Orion

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0752878018

Pages: 512

Keywords: fiction, police procedural

Reading period: 2-5 June, 2008

Two separate police investigations take place in Portsmouth at the same time. DI Joe Faraday is called over to the Isle of Wight to investigate the headless body found washed up at the base of a cliff. Suspicion falls on an ex-soldier who runs a nursing home, a man with a dangerous reputation.

DC Paul Winter becomes involved with a callgirl who has ties to a prominent businessman, who won't take no for an answer. Winter's poor judgement may be due to the crippling headaches he's developed of late.

Hurley has written a police procedural that is both well-plotted and character-driven. Joe Faraday is believably solid and competent with interesting quirks. Paul Winter has sailed too close to the wind for years and is coming apart.

Title: Nine Layers of Sky

Author: Liz Williams

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Bantam Spectra

Copyright: 2003

ISBN: 0553584995

Pages: 427

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 29 May–1 June, 2008

Ilya Muromyets, a figure of Russian legend for 800 years, still lives, albeit mostly in a haze of narcotic self-pity. He is recruited to track down a mysterious artifact found by a former cosmologist, Elena Irinonova, in Kazahkstan. Others also seek the artifact, which can open a gate to a parallel world where humans and other races live.

That world, Byelovodye, quite literally is the sum of human dreams and fears, and the disillusionment in the post-Soviet republics is destabilizing it.

A very unusual, well-written take on the fantasy quest.

Title: Agents of Light and Darkness

Author: Simon R. Green

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Ace

Copyright: 2003

ISBN: 0441011136

Pages: 233

Keywords: fantasy, noir

Reading period: 26–28 May, 2008

Next book after Something From the Nightside.

The Unholy Grail has come to the Nightside, and the angels of both Heaven and Hell want it. The Fallen and the Elect are deadly and implacable and wholly careless of casualties.

John Taylor, the man who can find anything, must lay hands on it first and keep it from either side.

A fantasy noir with a heavy dose of black humor. Moderately entertaining.

Title: A Princess of Roumania

Author: Paul Park

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Tor

Copyright: 2005

ISBN: 0765349507

Pages: 460

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 21–26 May, 2008

In a parallel world, Roumania is a great European power and America is a barely settled wilderness. Miranda was sent to our world by her aunt, Princess Aegypta, when she was a small child, for her own safety. Now Aegypta and the Baroness each want to retrieve her, for their own reasons.

The book revolves around Miranda and her two friends, lost and confused in the primeval forests of New England, and the Baroness in Bucharest, The latter is the more interesting character: an impulsive former actress who climbed into high society and is now falling downwards, struggling as her plans go awry.

Title: Un Lun Dun

Author: China Miéville

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Del Rey

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0345458443

Pages: 471

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 18-21 May, 2008

Deeba and Zanna, both twelve-year-old London girls, find their way into Un Lun Dun (UnLondon). Magic works in the abcity: there's feral rubbish, the ghosts of Wraithtown, words made flesh. Most of all, there's the Smog, an enormous cloud of pollution that's become sentient and wants to consume everything.

This book is aimed at a younger audience than his Bas-Lag novels, such as Iron Council. Supporting characters do die and Deeba must undergo trials, but this book is not grim. Indeed, in places, it's positively whimsical, and Miéville owes a clear debt to earlier English fantasists, like Mervyn Peake and Lewis Carroll.

Recommended.

Title: The Wee Free Men

Author: Terry Pratchett

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: HarperTeen

Copyright: 2003

ISBN: 0060012382

Pages: 272

Keywords: humor, fantasy

Reading period: 13-18 May, 2008

Tiffany Aching is a nine-year-old dairymaid with the First Sight and the Second Thoughts. She sees more than others do. She sees the tiny Nac Mac Feegle, the little thieving fighting pictsies, who speak with a Scottish brogue and have nae time for laird nor queen.

When the Queen of the Fairies attempts to invade the Discworld by stealing children and their dreams, it is up to Tiffany to stop them.

Ostensibly aimed at children, any adult fan of Pratchett's Discworld novels should enjoy this book too.

Title: Garnethill

Author: Denise Mina

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Back Bay Books

Copyright: 1998

ISBN: 0316016780

Pages: 402

Keywords: mystery, tartan noir

Reading period: 10-13 May, 2008

Maureen O'Donnell wakes up in her Glasgow flat after passing out drunk and finds her lover tied to a chair, his throat cut. Douglas was a therapist, married to another woman. The police think she's guilty but can't prove it: she has a history of mental illness, her mother's an alcoholic, and her twin brother's a drug dealer.

Mauri is feisty but flawed, coping fairly realistically. She manages to find the real murderer and uncover a nasty case of sexual abuse, against a backdrop of domestic violence, alcoholism, and poverty. Her friend Leslie is a treat; her mother is a horror.

The notes at the back of the book say that Denise Mina got sidetracked from writing her PhD thesis on mental illness and female offenders. This novel is far more readable than the thesis would have been.

 Title: What the Dead Know
 Author: Laura Lippman
 Rating: 4 stars out of 5
 Publisher: Harper
 Copyright: 2007
 ISBN: 0061128864
 Pages: 369
 Keywords: mystery
 Reading period: 4-9 May, 2008

Thirty years ago, Heather and Sunny Bethany, 12 and 15, disappeared without trace from a Baltimore mall. A cold case, long forgotten by almost everyone. Now a woman, arrested after fleeing from the scene of an accident, blurts out that she's Heather Bethany.

Is she Heather? Or someone else? She knows so much about the case, yet there's something off about her and the police don't trust her. Where's she been? Where's Sunny? And why did she never come forward before?

We learn the truth by the end of the novel, of course. The game of cat and mouse between Heather and the police draws to a satisfying resolution, which makes psychological sense.