Anyone Read Any Decent Books Lately?

I'm glad to hear that The Burning Girl is good, purr - I love Mark Billingham, he's very good. I've been reading Rosalind Mile's Guenevere series lately, it's quite disappointing really as it is pretty twee - you know, Camelot & it's white towers, blah blah as opposed to what is more likely to be true of Arthur. Bernard Cornwell wrote a very good trilogy about Arthur, putting it in the more likely setting of Arthur being a tribal king during the dark ages.

I'm now reading The Sinner by Tess Gerritsen - it seems pretty good so far, an enjoyable, easy read.
 
Thought I'd pull this one up rather than start a new one & worryingly discovered that I agree with Jejquade on something.... :blink: :blink:

Anyhow, moving swiftly on....:lol:

I finished a very good book last night in Caedmon's Song by Peter Robinson. It was so good that I had only started it the day before & couldn't put it down! It is a very thought provoking psychological thriller, those who like authors such as Nicci French or Minette Walters will enjoy it I'm sure. The beauty of it (I feel) is that it is set in the late 80s/early 90s in a life without mobile phones, the internet and so on, yet it doesn't sound that old fashioned, more timeless.

Other decent books I have read very recently are John Connolly's The Dark Angel [brilliance as usual from John Connolly, has a touch of the supernatural - with a fantastic macabre theme set around the ossuary at Sedlec], James Twining's The Double Eagle [better than I thought it would be - lots of twists & turns, thought I knew whodunnit until the last few chapters!], Jack Kerley's The Hundredth Man [very good but I knew whodunnit after less than 100 pages...] and Ian Rankin's Fleshmarket Close [another very good Rebus book - they're still not getting tiresome after something like 17 books now]. I am currently reading Peter Robinson's Aftermath, one of his decent Inspector Banks novels, and it seems good so far - the beginning is certainly very gripping!
 
Star of the Sea....................Joseph O'Connor, very well written account of the journey of one of the coffin ships from Ireland to America and the stories of some of the passengers.

A writer's skill always amazes me.
 
Originally posted by Shadow Leader@Jan 5 2006, 02:40 PM
The beauty of it (I feel) is that it is set in the late 80s/early 90s in a life without mobile phones, the internet and so on, yet it doesn't sound that old fashioned, more timeless.
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:lol: :lol: :lol:

in fact


:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
 
Joseph O Connor is excellent strongly recommend his earlier books Desperadoes, Inishowen and a collection of short stories too .

I enjoyed the Salesman and Cowboys and Indianns but the others were better
 
Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks novels are very good but are best read in sequence as they sometimes refer back to previous books.
Andrew Taylor's Lydmouth novels are similar.
 
On re-reading it I can see that does read as quite amusing Simmo! :shy: What I meant was that it worked very well - it would be easy for someone to criticise it as being unrealistic but it actually works quite well. It reads a as mix of present time and even as far back as the 60s or 70s [but is set in the early 90s] but works quite well - it seemingly ignores a lot of factors of the modern world.
 
Originally posted by Shadow Leader@Jan 5 2006, 02:40 PM
The beauty of it (I feel) is that it is set in the late 80s/early 90s in a life without mobile phones, the internet and so on, yet it doesn't sound that old fashioned, more timeless.
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You like historical novels, don't you?
 
Oh, fuck off the lot of you! :lol: Why don't you read the book & you might know what I mean?! It's hard to put into words, alright?!
 
Originally posted by Gareth Flynn@Jan 5 2006, 03:23 PM
No, seriously, there was life before the internet?!?!?!??!?
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Yes, but it was dark and dank. Children were employed as runners between people wishing to engage in conversation about whether or not Arkle was Golden Miller reincarnated and everyone drove Ford Anglias.
 
Oh, ffs ye bastards! :lol: In the context of a crime book set in the 90s, a lot of it is very old-fashioned & it assumes there were very little, if any, forensic techniques, and little form of communication between different parts of the country - ie local crimes not being publicised anywhere other than in local papers [where the lack of internet comes in]. However, it is set in the early 90s & a lot of other parts of the book seem very modern. Stop taking the piss you bastards!
 
Originally posted by Shadow Leader@Jan 5 2006, 03:32 PM
It assumes there were very little, if any, forensic techniques, and little form of communication between different parts of the country - ie local crimes not being publicised anywhere other than in local papers [where the lack of internet comes in].
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Then it assumes wrongly.

The three most famous (and possibly most successful) police forensic scientists were:

(i) Sir Bernard Spilsbury (1877 - 1947)

(ii) Professor Francis Camps (1905 - 1972)

(iii) Professor Keith Simpson, who is still with us and published his autobiography "forty Years of Murder" in 1980.

Oh yes, and the National Police Computer was set up in 1974.
 
I know it does - that's why I said assumes! As in pretends...

That's why it's hard to pinpoint a time for the book really, it pulls things like policing techniques from far earlier yet retains a modernness about it - and is set inthe late 80s/early 90s according to the author. Yet despite this, the book works very well, strangely. It's probably because the actual policing very much takes a back seat in the story.
 
I had and loved all three books by/about those chaps, Brian. In fact, I was very interested in a variety of crime-related themes until I took an evening course at Keele on something to do with the subject. I can't remember what it was now, but after a couple of sessions I thought, 'I'm not wasting my time on this rubbish' and gave up, and ended my life-long fascination with crime. I wanted desperately to be a detective when I was a kid, but didn't fancy having to do the beat-bashing bit first. Victim Support showed the other side of people's fascination with crime, too, and that probably also helped to ease me off finding really serious crimes 'interesting' - the long-term effects on the victims, or the bereaved, being far from it.

I do enjoy the two CSIs, though. I really like to get some idea (even though it's wildly compressed and shot in rather glamorous labs) of the strides being made in forensics. Spilsbugs would be amazed!
 
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