Reviews 

Re-read this as a substitute to 650 above, and can’t remember that much about it now, maybe not a recommendation. A series of unrelated...

This is a huge and very challenging book. The basic plot is relatively simple – three brothers with an unpleasant and dissolute father,...

Inspired I think by no. 641 to re-read this as the books are thematically quite similar, in that both have an obscurely motivated murder...

Wanted a detective story/thriller for a change but this was poor, although the author is quite acclaimed. A real old fashioned ‘who...

Ellory is possibly my 2nd favourite thriller writer, unlike Herron which has bits of the best of Dickens and Le Carre, Ellory is an...

The 2nd long library book in 4 days. This one was much better written than the last, although I was disappointed by the ending. A woman...

I didn’t enjoy 'The Trouble with Goats and Sheep' (her first book) but this was much better. A thriller about dementia, which is a clever...

Have read this before and am not entirely sure what to make of it. A bildungsroman (is that what they are called?), about a boy brought...

I have read this before with little memory of it, but would say it is the best of 2018 so far. Really clever plotting, looks like a...

Always a bad idea this, to binge read writers you have discovered and enjoy. This one is quite good but the plot is very monothematic -...

I’d have enjoyed this much more on kindle had I realised that there was a paperback copy of my bookcase! I realised, mid-way through page...

Read this about a year ago with little comprehension. So the plot is: Querry, a successful and celebrity architect turns up in a Catholic...

Bought this years ago, for obvious reasons and have never managed to read it. It is actually very good, about a couple who both disappear...

Quite a good modern female detective novel. Easily televisable I think. Plot clever, although maybe not all that believable in places,...

Struggled to get into this, but it is a cleverly written portrait, not so much of a psychopath but of a disintegrated marriage which...

A BBC book of the week I think not long before we went away. Very good Aussie (although I think JH is English) crime thriller. Set in a...

Wanted to re-read no. 488 to better understand the back-plot to 521. Fly (the adopted son) appears, but the sister and her baby only...

Benjamin Black is the non de plume of John Banville, not that I have heard of him either. This is a slightly picaresque quasi-historical...

Triggered by 509; these Victorian (or maybe post in Hardy’s case) novelists are so prolix; 450 pages. The plot wasn’t that similar to...

Another of P’s from the library. Totally different from 506 - if that was a quasi 18th century novel about society, this was very 20th...