September reviews

Tightrope by Simon Mawer was my read of September. An engaging tale about a former SOE agent who emerges from a concentration camp to re-enter post-war British society struggles to adjust to her new life.

The Abrupt Physics of Dying by Paul Hardisty ****
Don’t Look Back by Karin Fossum ****.5
Tightrope by Simon Mawer *****
The Three Evangelists by Fred Vargas ***.5
Gravesend by William Boyle ****
The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey ***.5
The Smoke by Tony Broadbent ***

September reviews

A fairly mixed month of reading. The standout book was This Thing of Darkness by Harry Bingham, the fourth book in the excellent Fiona Griffiths series.


The Atrocity Archive by Charles Stross ***.5
Who Killed Palomino Molero? by Mario Vargas Llosa ***
The Alibi Man by Tami Hoag ***
Defectors by Joseph Kanon ***
Fletch by Gregory McDonald ***
The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore ****
The City in Darkness by Michael Russell ****
This Thing of Darkness by Harry Bingham *****
Easy Motion Tourist by Leye Adenle ***.5

September reads

September proved to be quite possibly the slowest reading month of the last eight years of the blog. I managed one book a week. At least they were good reads! My book of the month was Eva Dolan's After You Die.

Prussian Blue by Philip Kerr ****

After You Die by Eva Dolan *****

Love Story, With Murders by Harry Bingham ****.5

Hanns and Rudolf by Thomas Harding ***.5

September reads

September was a mixed month of reading in terms of styles, themes and places.  Difficult to pick a book of the month, but I'm going to go with The Silent Dead by Claire McGowan.


Journey into Fear by Eric Ambler ***
Willnot by James Sallis ***.5
A Man With One of Those Faces by Caimh McDonnell ****
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute ****.5
The Constant Soldier by William Ryan ****.5
The Silent Dead by Claire McGowan ****.5
Dark As My Heart by Antti Tuomainen ***

September reviews

Having failed to summarize the reviews for August until mid-September, I've managed to do the same for my September reviews.  My read of the month for September was William Gibson's The Peripheral, which took a bit of work to read myself into, but was worth the effort.


Natural Causes by James Oswald ****
Rome ’44: The Battle for the Eternal City by Raleigh Trevelyan ***.5
The Peripheral by William Gibson *****
Black Bear by Aly Monroe ***.5
Mangrove Squeeze by Laurence Shames ****
Unholy Ground by John Brady ****.5
The Exterminators by Bill Fitzhugh ****

September reviews

A bumper month of reading, aided by a holiday break at the beginning of the month.  My read of September was Ostland by David Thomas, which proved a thought-provoking tale.

The Riot by Laura Wilson ***.5
Strange Shores by Arnaldur Indridason ***
Dresden by Frederick Taylor ****
Ostland by David Thomas *****
All the Lonely People by Martin Edwards ***.5
Tretjak by Max Landorff ***.5
The Darkling Spy by Edward Wilson ****.5
The Good German by Joseph Kanon ****
Stettin Station by David Downing  ***.5
Echoland by Joe Joyce ***
Love Songs from a Shallow Grave by Colin Cotterill *****

September reviews

My September book of the month was White Sky, Black Ice, the first in the series featuring Nathan Active. I need to get round to ordering the second in the series. Out of the eight books I read during the month, six were police procedurals. And yet they were all quite different in terms of their style, place and characters, and their social and political framing. Nice to get such a mix.

White Sky, Black Ice by Nathan Jones ****.5
The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths ****
The Quarry by Johan Theorin ***.5
The Cleanup by Sean Doolittle ***.5
Frozen Out by Quentin Bates **.5
Bloodland by Alan Glynn ****
The City, The City by China Mieville ***.5
Every Shallow Cut by Tom Piccirilli ***

September reviews

A fairly eclectic month of reading. No one book really stood out as stellar, but it was fun to re-read Terry Pratchett's Guards! Guards!

Love, Sex and War by John Cosgrove ****.5
Smoked by Patrick Quinlan ***.5
The Green Ripper by John D. Macdonald ***.5
The Arms Maker of Berlin by Dan Fesperman ***
Saturday's Child by Ray Banks****
Bangkok Tattoo by John Burdett ***
The Case of the Missing Books by Ian Samson ***
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett ****
Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell ****
Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett****.5

September Reviews

A very good and varied month of reading with three 5 star reviews.

The Collaborator of Bethlehem by Matt Benyon Rees *****
Zoo Station by David Downing ***
The Reapers by John Connolly ***
Go to Helena Handbasket by Donna Moore *****
The Damned Season by Carlo Lucarelli ***
The Price of Darkness by Graham Hurley ****
A Trace of Smoke by Rebecca Cantrell ***
'Rommel?' 'Gunner Who?' by Spike Milligan ****
The Foreign Correspondence by Alan Furst *****
Queenpin by Megan Abbott ****
Disco for the Departed by Colin Cotterill ****
All the Colours of the Town by Liam McIlvanney ***

A difficult choice, but my book of the month is Matt Benyon Rees' The Collaborator of Bethlehem, which I thought was an excellent debut. As I stated in my review, 'As first novels go, they won’t come much better than this for a reader like me who likes a mix of a strong plot, good characterization and memorable characters, informative contextual history, good pacing, a balanced blend of action and dialogue which lacks overly thick description, and a story that stimulates my interest in a place and an issue and stays with me long after I finish reading it.'

The past three months I've been following a steady pattern of reviews every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That's going to change for a while now that some pressures on my reading time have resurfaced, not least getting two of my own contracted books finished and in the post by the end of October, plus having to read student work and prepare lectures.