Strangers Annie and Steve are caught in a bomb blast that destroys the Oxford Street department store where they were both doing their Christmas shopping. Rescued from the rubble where they had talked to keep one another alive, life gets... Read more
Another lovely weekend of walking, wine and fab food in great company, organised by Steffi (photos by me). Friday: the now-familiar rendezvous with Dave at Newport train station, and home cooked curry bonanza chez Wood, and the final stretch of... Read more
Çetin İkmen and Mehmet Süleyman travel to Detroit for a conference on inner city policing, where they meet racism, community leaders turning ganglands and junkie dens into vegetable gardens, and Zeke Goins, an elderly Melungeon mourning the son murdered 30... Read more
I felt slightly tricked when I read the Author's Note at the end of Diary of an Ordinary Woman, but then turning back to the quotes on the front it does say it's a novel. For all that, from the... Read more
Medical sales rep Chris meets Yugoslavian (Serbian) Roza in a bungled prostitue pick up in Archway. Over the winter of discontent, their relationship develops as Chris starts to make regular visits to Roza's basement flat in a dilapidated-soon-to-be-demolished North London... Read more
We spent the Easter long weekend in Walton on the Naze, making good use of all the available duvets in the Gyford family caravan to build nests to keep the cold at bay. Catching the train out from Liverpool Street,... Read more
Hilary Mantel's sequel to Wolf Hall sees Thomas Cromwell manage the machinations to bring about the downfall of Anne Boylen and positioning of Jane Seymour as Henry VIII's third queen. The style took me a while to adjust to, but,... Read more
I treated myself to the Alpenvereinskarte 0/3c map of the Cordillera Huayhuash (Perú) from Stanfords a couple of weeks ago. I couldn't resist... and the recommended map has to be sent from the US. Also picked up Kathy Jarvis's Top... Read more
Honour killings and radical Islam escalate in Istanbul's Fatih district, home to many conservative migrant families from distant Anatolian villages. Inspectors İkmen and Süleyman investigate, with increasingly essential assistance from Ayşe and İzzet. Publisher's page: A Noble Killing - Barbara... Read more
İstanbullu Inspector İkmen goes undercover in London's Turkish community to infiltrate slave labour factories churning out fake designer labels and radical Islamic jihadis. Publisher's page: Death by Design - Barbara Nadel... Read more
Elizabeth Chadwick's third historical novel, and - even with a re-edit following subsequent successes - refreshingly free from the quirks I find so annoying in later books. Purely fictional, The Leopard Unleashed follows Renard FitzGuyon from the Crusader Kingdoms of... Read more
Giles Milton on the trail of Sir John Mandeville, whose 14th century Travels took him from St Albans to Sumatra and China, via Cyprus, Constantinople, St Catherine's monastery in the Sinai and other former crusader kingdoms. The riddle (or rather... Read more
To make the most of our current phase of early bird waking up, Phil and I decided that Today Was A Day To Get Out and About and to walk some of the East End's Canals. Taking the number 8... Read more
Our KE kit bags and T shirts have arrived, and I've treated myself to two new pairs of trekking trousers - so hopefully there won't be any more photos of me with hems flapping around my ankles. On the long... Read more
Following the trail of escaped drugs baron and murderer Yusuf Kaya, Inspector Mehmet Süleyman travels to south eastern Turkey and the border town of Mardin, where the uplands of Anatolian Turkey descend to the Mesopotamian plain. The borders with Iraq,... Read more
When Inspector Çetin İkmen's cousin persuades him to lend his sleuthing skills to solve a decades old murder mystery in her small Cappadocian village of Muratpaşa, he finds intrigue, magic and danger amidst the famous fairy chimneys. Meanwhile, back in... Read more
A re-read, which is quite rare for me. I'm glad Kate Atkinson moved fully into the crime genre. You can see hints of it here, as we are shown key events in the lives of four generations of Yorkshire women... Read more
The summer's big trek has finally come into focus - we're off to Peru with (new to us) KE Adventure Travel. Despite a lengthy look at Ladakh none of the trips I found felt quite right, so I decided to... Read more
First published in 1982, A Walk Along The Tracks falls into the period when Dr Beeching's pruning of the rail network was clearly still keenly felt and seen as one of the consequences of the nationalisation of the private, albeit... Read more
In a village in the Italian Dolomites a farmer ploughs up a young man's body. When a signet ring suggests he's the kidnapped son of a family of Venetian merchant aristocrats, Commissario Brunetti naturally seeks insights from his father in... Read more