Series watch: Telly suddenly got good again – I’ve had a splendid April’s viewing – largely thanks to Prime offering a cheap deal on Paramount+ TV (£3.50 pcm for 3 months) which meant subscribing to see the superb adaptation of Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow was affordable. AGinM stars Ewan McGregor as the Russian aristocrat under house arrest in the Metropole hotel in Moscow, where he is witness to the highs and lows of life under Stalin, becomes guardian of a young girl and lover of a film star Anna Urbanova, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, his wife in real life. They sizzle! It is a ..read more

Translated by Quentin Bates It’s my turn on the blogtour for the second Blómkvist novel to be translated by Quentin Bates for Corylus Books, who continue their quest to bring us translated crime fiction with a sense of social justice. Murder Under the Midnight Sun was published in 2010, and the series has a huge following in Iceland, where the identity of the author has remained a mystery since 1997! This novel can happily be read as a standalone from the previous one Murder at the Residence; what little back story is needed is filtered in as needed. This novel also follows the same format as ..read more

I love thrillers that will standalone, and Helen Fields’ latest took me by surprise slightly. I was expecting a sequel to The Institution which introduced us to Connie Woolwine, an American profiler and her British sidekick Brodie Baarda, who went undercover in the world’s most secure prison hospital for the criminally insane. Instead, after a particularly gruesome opening chapter in which we meet the man who develops a taste for murder to satisfy his urges with poor Chloe Martin as his first victim, we head to leading biotech company Necto’s UK HQ, where Midnight Jones is late for work, somet ..read more

It’s been a busy week, mentally and physically. I picked up several extra playground duties due to staff absence on trips etc, I’ve had a skip outside my house into which I and our local builder/handyman have been clearing one end of my garden – the shed was so rotten I put my foot through the floor when I went for a flowerpot the other week. He did a great job, it’s up to me to finish the pruning of the ivy that broke the pergola too etc. The skip is nearly full of rubble, rubbish and garden waste now – I just have a mattress to top it off. I have managed to read some great books, some of my ..read more

I did intend to read Eric Ambler’s Uncommon Danger for the 1937 Club, but it’s been so busy I’ve not managed to get started really, so instead I offer you a revamped review of a novel from that year that I read pre-blog and not previously featured. Azerbaijan in the early 20th century was at the crossroads of civilisations, cultures and religions. Set against this backdrop at the start of WWI is this love story of Ali, a desert loving-Muslim, and Nino, a Christian Georgian princess who yearns to be more European. Theirs is a childhood romance that eventually blossoms fully and they marry despi ..read more

I am delighted to have been able to read this amazing book and review it for the blogtour. Whereas I’m by no means a Beatles completist, I am a huge fan having grown up with them. And yes, I watched all 8 hrs of Peter Jackson’s documentary, Get Back, which compiled the hours and hours of documentary footage filmed during the making of Let It Be, and included the legendary rooftop concert at Apple Corps HQ in 1970. It really caught the tensions in the band, with George threatening to walk, Paul being the peacemaker, but also sergeant major to actually get things done, and Yoko just being there ..read more

You know me, I never say no to a spy novel, and this one, the second to feature spyrunner Eli Amiram. I’ve not read the first, but didn’t feel I missed out on much, so was able to get into Honour Among Spies without worrying about Eli’s backstory. Given that in this novel, Eli is Israeli intelligence agency Mossad’s London Head of Station, I was glad to see an author’s note at the front of the book acknowledging the current political situation. The novel was written and set before the events of October 2023. In order to keep his job as Head of London operations, Eli needs to put the past behin ..read more

The Antelope Wife by Louise Erdrich – book group report. Our ‘A is for… flora/fauna’ book via our new book picking theme was my suggestion and our whole group’s first encounter with Louise Erdrich, who is of half German-American and half Chippewa descent. Most of her many novels, including The Antelope Wife, concern Native American life. She has written children’s books and poetry also and owns a bookshop in Minnesota. The Antelope Wife was first published in 1998, but we later found out that Erdrich published a totally revised and extended version as The Antelope Woman in 2016, after wanting ..read more

I’d started seeing a lot of love for this novel on X. It looked a little cosy with the crow picking at the milk-bottle tops on the cover. But on opening the book, I was convinced I had to read it; Godfrey has based her debut novel on her own childhood in Yorkshire in the 1970s during which the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, waged his murderous campaign. It looms large in the novel, for the story opens with an author’s note in which Jennie Godfrey says: One of my most vivid early memories is of the day that he [Sutcliffe] was captured, when it became clear my dad knew him. I can still feel ..read more

First Saturday of the month and new year too, time for the super monthly tag Six Degrees of Separation, which is hosted by Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest, Six Degrees of Separation #6degrees picks a starting book for participants to go wherever it takes them in six more steps. Links to my reviews are in the titles of the books chosen. This month our starting book is… a travel book and for me that is: Frommer’s Italy Day by Day I haven’t been to Italy for too long! The Frommer’s guides are American so prices are all in $, however, this one from 2010 is excellent, if too heavy ..read more