The Outsider (Audiobook) – Stephen King (Author), Will Patton (Narrator) – 15.10.23

I’m really enjoying reading/listening to the Stephen King Holly Gibney books. This one starts with a small town police officer investigating a horrible child murder where the DNA of a local well loved baseball little league coach is all over the crime scene, but he also has a rock solid alibi for the time of the murder.

I was somewhat impatient with the first part of the book because I was waiting for Holly to appear, as she was the reason I wanted to read it, but she did eventually, and since she had been through an experience with a supernatural evil entity, she was able to gently open the minds of the investigating team to the possibility that something spooky was going on.

I know there are lots of people who don’t like magical realism, or supernatural elements in stories, arguing that it’s not real therefore stupid. I actually really like that in the world of fiction we can bend the prosaic rules of what is real and introduce magic. I don’t believe any magical stuff in real life, but I do in stories. After all, fiction is all about ‘what ifs’. I don’t think that introducing supernatural elements to stories belittles the realism – I read books about serial killers knowing that almost certainly (and certainly hopefully!) I will never experience these situations in my real life, but it’s a way of vicariously working through fears and I can wholeheartedly enter into the spirit of things as a reader, and the same is true of supernatural stuff.

Will Patton is a great narrator on the whole, although I don’t love his portrayal of Holly Gibney’s voice as very stilted with unnatural pauses and emphasis. I think females on the autism spectrum are generally good at blending in (hence why autism is much more underdiagnosed in females) and that Holly would be able to talk more naturally, but that is only a small peeve and I do think he is very good other than that.

Notes from the Burning Age – Claire North – 11.10.23

Claire North is one of my favourite writers, but this book was dull. I really wanted to like it, but really didn’t and struggled to get through it.

Set in a distant future where society has rebuilt after an apocalyptic ‘burning age’ presumably caused by climate change the book follows a priest who is an expert in interpreting ancient texts (which is things from our times like WhatsApp threads and other internet type things) who becomes a spy.

There were different factions: ones who wanted to hide events from the past, ones who wanted to learn from the past so they could be better, and ones who wanted to learn techniques from the past for mining and warfare etc to exploit for money and power. These are interesting things, I guess, but I wasn’t engaged by the way they were presented.

There was a lot of the spy running away then getting caught and tortured then running away again then getting caught again etc. I was quite bored by it and didn’t care for any of the characters.

End of Watch – Stephen King (AUDIOBOOK) – 10.10.23

This third and final book in the Bill Hodges (Mr Mercedes) trilogy is the first to delve fully into the supernatural/horror genre.

Holly ended Brady Hartsfield’s killing spree in Mr Mercedes by bashing him over the head with a cosh and causing serious brain damage. Bill always suspected that Brady was hiding how much awareness he still had, which was true, and this, combined with some experimental treatments Brady’s doctor was testing on him gave him some powers of telekinesis and mind control which he employed to wicked ends.

Can Bill and Holly stop this new murder spree even though Bill is suffering from advanced cancer?

This book gets mixed reviews on Amazon, but I enjoyed it very much.

The Running Grave: Cormoran Strike, Book 7 (AUDIOBOOK)- Robert Galbraith (AUTHOR), Robert Glenister, (NARRATOR) – 05.10.23

Loved it!

After being a but meh with the last book in the Strike series (mostly because the pace of the audiobook was excruciatingly slow with all the URL addresses being read out all the time) this one (in my mind at least) was a total return to form and I was completely gripped.

Robin goes undercover in a cult which uses all kinds of unpleasant coercion and mind control tactics and her situation becomes more and more perilous and frightening, while Strike’s new healthy eating kick is pushed to its limits by the stress he feels over Robin being in danger as well as other things in his life.

I love both these characters and I even love their will-they-won’t-they relationship which is masterfully teased out. The mystery elements were also well done and I very much enjoyed listening to this book!

In the Blink of an Eye – Jo Callaghan – 04.10.23

In The Blink of An Eye | Book by Jo Callaghan | Official Publisher Page | Simon & Schuster UK

This was fun!

A police detective returning to work after compassionate leave following the death of her husband is not pleased to be assigned the role of heading up a pilot using an AI program to investigate missing persons cold cases.

The AI presents as a hologram (different avatars are available, but he usually goes as a tall attractive black man) that interacts in real time with the people around it. He reminded me of Mr Spock in Star Trek (or perhaps Data, also from Star Trek) in that he is unerringly logical and not very tactful (at least at the start) and at odds with the police woman’s gut feelings approach.

The programmer who designed him has no love for the police since her gentle and studious brother was jailed for a crime he didn’t commit after being racially profiled and possible had evidence planted on him by police.

I found the book very readable – I liked the race against time element as we saw that some of the missing people were being held captive and I liked the characters all having complex and interesting backstories and going on journeys of personal development. I could see it as a good TV series.

The Inheritance Games: The Inheritance Games, Book 1 – Jennifer Lynn Barnes –01.10.23

Uuugh! I should definitely have a rule that I don’t buy anything that says ‘Tik-Tok made me buy it’ in it’s Amazon heading. I guess I’m not the target audience, (YA) and clearly I’m in the minority in my opinion because the book has thousands of glowing reviews, but I thought it was drivel.

Simpering teen is told she’s inherited billions from a man she’s never met as long as she lives in his house with his four grandsons who she instantly falls in love with (and they her) and solves some very easy and overexplained puzzles.

Oh for goodness sake, spare me.

I will not be buying any more books from this series.

Finders Keepers (AUDIOBOOK) – Stephen King – 26.09.23

This is the second book in the Mr Mercedes trilogy. Retired detective, Bill Hodges, has set up a detective agency with the lovely autistic Holly Gibney and the main plot of this book revolves around Pete, the son of a man who was badly injured in the incident that opened the first book in the series. Pete finds a trunk full of old handwritten notebooks written by a famous writer murdered twenty five years previously, as well as thousands of dollars in cash. Through flashbacks, we learn about the young man who murdered the writer and hid the trunk but was jailed for an unconnected crime before being able to retrieve it. Pete and his family are thrown into horrible danger when the criminal gets out of prison and comes looking for his stash.

Again, I very much enjoyed this book, Stephen King is a great storyteller and the detective crime solving style is one I like. The book ended with a supernatural sting in the tale which made me excited to read the third book!

Treacle Walker – Alan Garner – 24.09.23

When I finished this short book (more of a novella really) my first thought was ‘what the heck was that/!’ It’s a very strange book.

In some ways it felt very nostalgic – I grew up in the north of England in the 1970s and the style of the book felt like that sort of thing they made us read in school – like Stig of the Dump, or The Railway Children. I’ve lived in Belfast now for 35 years, but the northern English dialect words and phrases really took me back and sparked old memories.

It reads like a lucid dream or demented ramblings about childhood fears and hopes and magic and myth. Apparently there are lots of nods to things from Alan Garners previous novels, which I haven’t read, so they were lost on me, but I am familiar with a lot of the English mythology from other books.

It feels like it’s probably a very deep book, and quite possibly a lot of it went over my head, some of the reviews I looked at after finishing reading implied all kinds of cleverness.

I’m kind of tempted to read some of Alan Garner’s old books now.

Fallen: An Alex Verus Novel – Benedict Jacka – 22.09.23

After getting a bit fed up with this series, I’m now back to really liking it, although I am constantly amazed by how Alex Verus can live with all the stress and drama of his life!

I thought this book moved the plot along well, and we’re gearing up to a big showdown, so I’m quite excited to read on (I’m waiting in the hopes that the next book in the series goes on offer at Amazon before I go on though!).

The Last Devil to Die: Thursday Murder Club, Book 4 – Richard Osman (AUDIOBOOK) Narrated by: Fiona Shaw – 21.09.23

I wasn’t sure about the first book in this series, but they are really growing on me, and are now as welcome as a lovely hot bath or a perfect cup of tea!

I don’t know if Richard Osman’s writing is improving, or just my appreciation of it, but I think this is his best book yet.

Elizabeth’s husband Stephen is slipping further into dementia, and when a good friend of his is killed after getting mixed up with drug smuggling gang, the retirement home murder club friends decide they need to investigate.

There is also an interesting side story when a new resident at the home is taken in by a romance fraud scam.

Now that we know the returning protagonists a bit, Osman delves deeper into their characters with some poignant back story details which mean more to us now than they would if we been told in the first book. This book is very sad, with lots of musings about life and death and memory and grief and I did shed several tears while listening. Also, I worked out some but not all of the clues, which is just about right, because I get to feel clever without spoiling all the twists.

Can’t wait for the next one!