Recent reading

Mostly crime novels.

24-Apr-2008
Follett, Ken. 2007 [1989] The pillars of the earth.
London: Pan.
The building of a cathedral in 12th-century England, in
a troubled time of famine and civil war.

28-Apr-2008
White, Edmund. 2004. Genet. London: Vintage.
Biography of the French poet, novelist and playwright
Jean Genet (1907-1986): liar, thief, pervert, saint and
martyr.

1-May-2008
Fox, Robin Lane. 2007. The classical world. London:
Penguin.
A general history of ancient Greece and Rome up to the
reign of the Emperor Hadrian.

9-May-2008
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. 2007. One hundred years of
solitude. London: Penguin.
A novel about a dysfunctional family in Columbia,
following their fortunes and misfortunes over a century.

13-May-2008
Indridason, Arnaldur. 2007. The draining lake.
London: Harville Secker.
A lake in Iceland begins to drain, revealing the
skeleton of a man who has apparently been murdered. The
police make enquiries about missing persons from the
1960s, but none seem to fit, except possibly a salesman
who drove a Ford Falcon.

17-May-2008
Larsson, Asa. 2007. The savage altar. London:
Viking.
Murder mystery set in a town in northern Sweden. The
victim is a prominent member of a local Pentecostal
church.

4-Jun-2008
Flynn, Michael. 2003. In the country of the blind.
New York: Tom Doherty Associates.
A small group of American idealists builds Charles
Babbage's Analytical Engine and tries to use it to
change history. As a conspiracy novel it is much better
than "The da Vinci code"

13-Jun-2008
George, Elizabeth. 2008. Careless in red. London:
Hodder & Stoughton.
Three months since the murder of his wife Thomas Lynley
goes walking on the South-West coast path in Cornwall to
distract himself from his loss, when he sees a climber
fallen to his death from a cliff. He breaks in to a
nearby cottage to find a phone to report the death, and
the owner of the cottage, Daidre Trahair, helps him to
buy clothes when the local police ask him not to move
away, and on establishing his identity, ask him to help
with a potential murder investigation.

14-Jun-2008
Weisman, Francesca. 2006. The shape of a stranger.
London: Penguin.
A lawyer, Callum Scott, is attacked one day when he is
going for a walk, and, according to the police, the
attacker has killed someone else. At about the same time
an old childhood friend, Rosie, comes back into his
life.

18-Jun-2008
La Plante, Lynda. 1997. Trial and retribution.
London: Macmillan.
Five-year-old Julie Harris goes missing, and her
mother's lover is one of the suspects, but most in the
neighbourhood suspect Michael Dunn, a dirty semi-vagrant
who frequently has children watching videos in his flat.
The police battle to find evidence to link him to the
crime.

5-Jul-2008
Zola, Emile. 2007 [1890] The beast within. London:
Penguin.
S‚verine Roubaud reveals to her husband the fact that
she had been sexually abused in her youth by someone who
was apparently her guardian and benefactor, and her
husband, enraged, plots revenge, but this sours their
relations. The action takes place along the Paris-Le
Havre railway, where many of the main characters are
employed.