July 2010 Archives

Kinsey Millhone encounters evil in the shape of Solana Rojas, a nurse hired to care for crochety elderly neighbour Gus. It's 1987/1988, and Kinsey also meets her first computer enthusiast....

U is for Undertow was published in December 2009.... and although there are only a few more letters of the alphabet left to go, with Sue Grafton's one novel a year production rate and 1940 birth day, I'm really really hoping she makes it to Z, 2014 ... and age 74! Well, Henry Pitts is 80 odd now, so that should be a cinch.

Amazon.co.uk link: T is for Trespass - Sue Grafton

Amazon tells me that this is the third Inspector Rebus novel, and it's certainly not the familiar John Rebus of later books.... With the London setting, both reader and Rebus are in unfamiliar territory, tracking a serial killer nicknamed the Wolfman.

I've not read the immediate precursor to Tooth And Nail, and I suspect that it covers some of the key background events mentioned in this third novel. Not that my ignorance of the detail spoilt this book for me. In fact, meeting a younger, less bolshy, more vulnerable Rebus was quite a surprise, and a pleasant and intriguing one at that.

Amazon.co.uk link: Tooth And Nail - Ian Rankin

Third and final instalment of Conn Iggulden's telling of the tale of Genghis Khan, and the Mongol horde turns west.....

Amazon.co.uk link: Bones of the Hills - Conn Iggulden

Travels along the length of the not-so-Blue Danube, crossing borders from Germany to Romania, traversing cultures, economies and the old iron curtain, and culminating in a dip in the Black Sea.

Like the river, long but vastly varied.

Amazon.co.uk link: Blue River, Black Sea - Andrew Eames