Having just read Exit Music, I jumped right back to the start of the Rebus saga, to a now-distant 1987 and pre-PC (computer, not constable or correctness) police investigations.
A relatively quick read, as this first novel is shorter than the later ones, but I liked the snappier pace and Ian Rankin has/had not yet developed the seven day story arc format.
In Knots and crosses the focus is very much on DS John Rebus and his failed family life. You learn about his childhood, his time in the regular army and the SAS, and his return to civvy street and the scars he still carries. Fifteen years into his career as a copper, several strands of his past combine and return to haunt him.
It's always interesting to meet younger versions of characters you've got to know in their later years... The public and private faces of Edinburgh are more explicitly drawn than in later novels too.
Amazon.co.uk link: Knots and crosses - Ian Rankin
A rare encounter with Marshal Guarnaccia, largely due to there not being many of Magdalen Nabb's novels on the shelves of the Barbican library. That's a sorry state of affairs, as when I do find one of her books they are always thoroughly enjoyable. Set in Florence and similar in other ways to Donna Leon's Brunetti series, as a member of the carabinieri Guarnaccia works for the other branch of Italian law and order and he is decidedly less sure of his powers of detection - but charmingly so.
In Some Bitter Taste, Marshal Guarnaccia's natural copper's instinct leads him to work out the connectin between the murder of a lonely spinster, a robbery at the palazzo of a wealthy English gent and dodgy dealings in Jewish-owned art during the Second World War.
Time to delve into the Barbican stack to find some more books by Magdalen Nabb....
Amazon.co.uk link: Some Bitter Taste - Magdalen Nabb
A London lawyer moves himself and his beautiful family out to Shanghai, in search of partnership and ex pat package (ie wealth). His wife doesn't settle, his child's asthma is made worse by the Shanghai smog, and he spends all his waking life at work, with clients or decompressing with new and still single colleagues.
Husband and wife realise that their des res apartment block doubles up as a "golden cage" of Shanghai's "canaries", ie the second wives (21st century concubines/mistresses).
Husband falls for one of them and starts an affair. Ignorant of this, first wife decides to return to London with child to look after her ailing father. Husband gets more involved with second wife, and eventually colleagues and first wife find out. The inevitable shit hits the inevitable fan, but they stay together for the sake of the child.
It's all a bit predictable, but the Shanghai setting is spot on, as is the world of the international corporate lawyer.
Amazon.co.uk link: My Favourite Wife - Tony Parsons
i was persuaded to read this by the recommendation from Philippa Gregory on the cover, and the PG-esque illustration, and it wasn't bad - it just wasn't as good as Philippa Gregory and unparalleled Dorothy Dunnett (I must reread the Lymond and Niccolo series in case I find that I now disagree with my university self's assessment of her historical novels).
Set in the early 17th century, master of fire - originally military but now firework displays and pageants - Francis Quoynt is persuaded to travel to the eastern fringes of Christendom to spy for Robert Cecil in the (fictitious) princely state of La Spada.
There he (and we) meet Sofia, the Principessa of the title, her evil half brother and despotic, dying father, the Prince of La Spada.... the rest is a bodice-ripping race to discover if Francis will manage to deliver on the promise he is forced to make the Prince, and which of the Prince's children will succeed him as ruler of La Spada, and so control the lucrative trade and information routes between Europe and the Orient.
Amazon.co.uk link: The Principessa - Christie Dickason
A tale of relationships built on the ties of blood, marriage, business and friendship, of infidelity, secrets and depression.
You learn early on that Kath, the central character, is dead, although the photograph of the title only surfaces many years later, causing family and friends to reassess their views, memories and ultimately the truths of their own lives as well as hers.
It's time to read more Penelope Lively I think.
Amazon.co.uk link: The Photograph - Penelope Lively