I read six books in June, a bit less than usual as one of the books, Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens is a long book. Three are books from my backlog of to-be-read books, two are historical fiction and one was a re-read. All but one are crime fiction!

• A Fearful Madness by Julius Falconer – after the violent death of a part-time cathedral verger the dead man’s sister, anxious to see justice done, and two of the police suspects, both released without charge carry out their own investigations into his death. A complex mystery that kept me guessing right to the end.
• The Third Pig Detective Agency by Bob Burke – a fairytale detective story in which Harry, the third little pig is employed by Aladdin to find his stolen lamp, aided or hindered by numerous characters, and finding himself in all sorts of tricky and dangerous situations.
• The Owl Killers by Karen Maitland – a tale of witchcraft and pagan superstition set in 1321, mystical and mysterious and tragic as it explores the struggle to survive and the battleground between the old pagan beliefs and Christianity.
• Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter by Ruth Rendell – this begins with the shooting of Sergeant Martin of Kingsmarkham CID whilst he was standing in a queue at the local bank. Then DCI Wexford is faced with more murders a few months later, when author Davina Flory, her husband and daughter, are shot dead at Tancred House.
• Raven Black by Ann Cleeves – a re-read. This is the first of the Inspector Perez books set on Shetland, in which Perez investigates the death of a schoolgirl. I had forgotten who the culprit was and as on my first reading I failed to identify the murderer.
• Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens – historical murder mystery set in England in the 1770s and the Gordon Riots of 1780. This  is now one of my favourite of Dickens’s books.

My Crime Fiction Pick of the Month is: Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter by Ruth Rendell, a book I just did not want to put down.

For more Crime Fiction Picks of the Month see Kerrie’s blog, Mysteries in Paradise.