We sell it in caplets
Oct. 3rd, 2018 05:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisySeptember books read
* Leviathan: or, The Whale - Philip Hoare (2008) ★ ★ ★
This isn't a book about whales as much as it is a book about whaling and/or Moby-Dick. Not what I was expecting, then, but beautifully written and often unbearably sad.
* Swiss Vendetta - Tracee de Hahn (2017) ★ ★ ★
Inspector Agnes Lüthi is a recently widowed single mother in Lausanne. When a young woman's body is found in the grounds of a grand chateau, a snow storm traps Agnes and her team on site for four days. What follows is a very busy and slightly confused story: busy because there are an awful lot of plots happening (given that it's the first in a series, I felt the personal stuff about Agnes' late husband could have waited until the next one, to give the all the characters time to be established); confused because I'm not sure the ages of the characters really work given the World War II plot. Apart from those quibbles, this was a perfectly serviceable cosy mystery.
* The Rúin - Dervla McTiernan (2018) ★ ★ ★ ★
In 1993, a rookie policeman finds two neglected children in a house with their dead mother; twenty years later, he returns home and has to solve the mysterious death of one of them. This is apparently the first in a planned series about Detective Cormac Reilly, and it's a really good beginning: a story that cracks along at a fair old pace, plus just enough hints of about Reilly's home and office life to set up future instalments. The action hinges on one massive coincidence (or two, if you count Reilly's first case on his return to Galway as being related to his first case ever), but overall I enjoyed this as a well done police procedural.
* Dark Pines - Will Dean (2018) ★ ★ ★
I wanted to like this more than I did. I was willing it to be better, but, alas, I found it repetitive and overlong — although not long enough to tie up all the loose ends, which was irritating. (Also irritating: the first person present tense.)
Tuva Moodyson is a journalist at a small Swedish newspaper, who finds herself reporting on a murder in the forest that is eerily similar to a series of murders that happened twenty years earlier. The most interesting thing about Tuva is that she's deaf, and the book goes to great lengths to demonstrate what that means. The book also goes to great lengths to tell us what a super journalist she is, but based on the interviews we see her do, her articles must be very vague. Anyway, Tuva investigates. She gets the culprit wrong, as do the police, but the astute reader will guess the culprit reasonably early.
* Jill's Riding Club - Ruby Ferguson (1956) ★ ★ ★ ★
Mooching around a second-hand book shop this month, I found a couple of Jill books I hadn't read as a child. Even by Jill's sedate standards, this isn't the most exciting book, but it was fun and Jill is always an appealing character: sensible, bright and funny. In this one, it's the holidays so Jill's best friend suggests that they start a riding club, and some mild, horse-related adventures ensue.
* Leviathan: or, The Whale - Philip Hoare (2008) ★ ★ ★
This isn't a book about whales as much as it is a book about whaling and/or Moby-Dick. Not what I was expecting, then, but beautifully written and often unbearably sad.
* Swiss Vendetta - Tracee de Hahn (2017) ★ ★ ★
Inspector Agnes Lüthi is a recently widowed single mother in Lausanne. When a young woman's body is found in the grounds of a grand chateau, a snow storm traps Agnes and her team on site for four days. What follows is a very busy and slightly confused story: busy because there are an awful lot of plots happening (given that it's the first in a series, I felt the personal stuff about Agnes' late husband could have waited until the next one, to give the all the characters time to be established); confused because I'm not sure the ages of the characters really work given the World War II plot. Apart from those quibbles, this was a perfectly serviceable cosy mystery.
* The Rúin - Dervla McTiernan (2018) ★ ★ ★ ★
In 1993, a rookie policeman finds two neglected children in a house with their dead mother; twenty years later, he returns home and has to solve the mysterious death of one of them. This is apparently the first in a planned series about Detective Cormac Reilly, and it's a really good beginning: a story that cracks along at a fair old pace, plus just enough hints of about Reilly's home and office life to set up future instalments. The action hinges on one massive coincidence (or two, if you count Reilly's first case on his return to Galway as being related to his first case ever), but overall I enjoyed this as a well done police procedural.
* Dark Pines - Will Dean (2018) ★ ★ ★
I wanted to like this more than I did. I was willing it to be better, but, alas, I found it repetitive and overlong — although not long enough to tie up all the loose ends, which was irritating. (Also irritating: the first person present tense.)
Tuva Moodyson is a journalist at a small Swedish newspaper, who finds herself reporting on a murder in the forest that is eerily similar to a series of murders that happened twenty years earlier. The most interesting thing about Tuva is that she's deaf, and the book goes to great lengths to demonstrate what that means. The book also goes to great lengths to tell us what a super journalist she is, but based on the interviews we see her do, her articles must be very vague. Anyway, Tuva investigates. She gets the culprit wrong, as do the police, but the astute reader will guess the culprit reasonably early.
* Jill's Riding Club - Ruby Ferguson (1956) ★ ★ ★ ★
Mooching around a second-hand book shop this month, I found a couple of Jill books I hadn't read as a child. Even by Jill's sedate standards, this isn't the most exciting book, but it was fun and Jill is always an appealing character: sensible, bright and funny. In this one, it's the holidays so Jill's best friend suggests that they start a riding club, and some mild, horse-related adventures ensue.