Category: Crime Fiction

Spell the Month in Books – February 2026

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!

The theme this month is a Freebie and I’m featuring books I’ve recently acquired and books I read before I started my blog, so I haven’t reviewed any of them and have linked the titles to the descriptions on Amazon.

F is for Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak, fiction.

Enlightening, enthralling. An affecting paean to faith and love (Metro), fiction.

E is for Every Body Should Know This: The Science of Eating for a Lifetime of Health by Dr. Federica Amati, Medical Scientist and Head Nutritionist at ZOE, nonfiction.

‘Dr Federica is a human encyclopaedia when it comes to the science of food and health. This book contains the most critical answers to nutrition that we’ve all been searching for. A must read’– Steven Bartlett

B is for The Bull of Mithros by Anne Zouroudi, crime fiction.

‘A cracking plot, colourful local characters and descriptions of the hot, dry countryside so strong that you can almost see the heat haze and hear the cicadas – the perfect read to curl up with’― Guardian

R is for Road Rage by Ruth Rendell, crime fiction.

‘With immaculate control, Ruth Rendell builds a menacing crescendo of tension and horror that keeps you guessing right up to the brilliantly paced finale’― Good Housekeeping

U is for Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy, fiction.

Set in the small village of Mellstock in Thomas Hardy’s fictional Wessex, this is both a love story and a nostalgic study into the disappearance of old traditions and a move towards a more modern way of life. (Amazon)

A is for As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us by Sarah Hurwitz, nonfiction.

‘This book explains antisemitism and the danger it poses—not just to Jews, but to all of us. It also reveals the breathtaking history and resilience of the Jewish people and the beauty of Jewish tradition’ – Van Jones, CNN Host and New York Times bestselling author

R is for The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West, fiction.

Returning to his stately English home from the chaos of World War I, a shell-shocked officer finds that he has left much of his memory in the front’s muddy trenches. (Amazon)

Y is for The Years by Virginia Woolf, fiction.

Published in 1937, this was Virginia Woolf’s most popular novel during her lifetime. It’s about one large upper-class London family, spanning three generations of the Pargiter family from the 1880s to the 1930s. (Amazon)

The next link up will be on March 7, 2026 take your pick from Pi Day, March Madness, or Green Covers.

The Bull of Mithros: Book Beginnings on Friday & The Friday 56

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

The Bull of Mithros by Anne Zouroudi is the 6th book in her Mysteries of the Greek Detective a series I’ve been reading out of order.

Chapter One:

In Mithros’ s harbour, no boat ever came or went unnoticed.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, but she is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. You grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Page 56:

‘Why are we coming this way, Captain?’ asked Skafidis. ‘What would he be doing over here?’

‘He isn’t in his bed at the camp,’ said the captain, ‘and he left without saying goodbye. That’s not polite, is it Skafldis? He’s a man in a hurry to leave us, and I’d like to know why.

Description from Goodreads

It is summer, and as tourists, drawn by the legend of a priceless missing artifact, disembark on the sun-drenched quay of Mithros, the languid calm of the island is broken by the unorthodox arrival of a stranger who has been thrown overboard in the bay. Lacking money or identification, he is forced for a while to remain on Mithros. But is he truly a stranger? To some, his face seems familiar. The arrival of the investigator Hermes Diaktoros, intrigued himself by the island’s fabled bull, coincides with a violent and mysterious death. This violence has an echo in Mithros’s recent past: in a brutal unsolved crime committed several years before, which, although apparently forgotten may not yet have been forgiven. As Hermes sets about solving the complex puzzle of who is guilty and who is innocent, he discovers a web of secrets and unspoken loyalties, and it soon becomes clear that the bull of Mithros may only be the least of the island’s shadowy mysteries.

If you have read this book, what did you think?

Top Ten Tuesday:Love in Crime Fiction

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

This week’s topic is a Love Freebie and I’m featuring Love in Crime Fiction. Some detectives are loners, some are happily married and here are eight of them.

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford who first appeared in Agatha Christie’s The Secret Adversary in 1922, are, by the end of the book in love and get married. My favourite book of theirs is By the Pricking of My Thumbs, which is about the mystery of what had happened in the house by the canal, whose child had died and how, and where was Mrs Lancaster? They also appear in a collection of short stories in Partners in Crime, N or M? , By the Pricking of My Thumbs, and Postern of Fate .

Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane first appear in Dorothy L Sayers Strong Poison, in which Lord Peter Wimsey, the aristocratic amateur detective, and Harriet Vane, a crime fiction writer, first met. Harriet is on trial for the murder of her former lover, Philip Boyes, who died from arsenic poisoning. Wimsey, attending the trial, is convinced she is innocent and sets out to prove it … and falls in love with her. In Gaudy Night she agrees to marry him and they get married in Busman’s Honeymoon.

Another happily married couple is Commissario Guido Brunetti and his beautiful wife Paola. He often goes home for lunch with Paola, who is a wonderful cook. One of my favourite books from the series is A Sea of Troubles, in which she treats him to a delicious apple cake made with lemon and apple juice and ‘enough Grand Marnier to permeate the whole thing and linger on the tongue for ever.’

Georges Simenon’s Inspector Jules Maigret also has a happy marriage and is another policeman who likes to go home for his lunch with Madam Maigret whenever he can. Is it the food or the wife, I wonder? They also like to take walks after dinner and go to the movies. In A Maigret Christmas Maigret has the day off and had planned to spend a quiet morning cocooned in their apartment and are feeling sad at being childless, particularly so at Christmas.

Dr Watson and Mary Morstan in Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books are also happily married. They met and fell in love in The Sign of Four when she visits Baker Street to ask Sherlock Holmes to investigate a bizarre case involving the disappearance of her father and the sending of a single pearl to her every year for the past six years.

Cold case Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie in Val McDermid’s DCI Karen Pirie books is not married, but she was deeply in love with Phil Parhatka, a fellow officer who was killed. McDermid does not write specifically about his death. It occurs in between two books The Skeleton Road and Out of Bounds, in which Karen is grieving for Phil. He was the love of her life, having fallen for him the first week they worked together.

Then there is forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway and her lover DCI Harry Nelson in the Ruth Galloway Mysteries by Elly Griffiths. They have one child and an on/off relationship throughout the series. In the last book, The Last Remains they finally confront their feelings for each other.

And finally Detective Superintendent Roy Grace and Cleo, a mortuary technician in the Roy Grace series by Peter James. Before the series started Roy’s wife, Sandy disappeared and despite all his efforts he was unable to find out why and what happened to her. When he met Cleo they fell in love and after Sandy was declared to be dead they married. Throughout the series more information about Sandy is revealed and her story is finally told in They Thought I was Dead.

The Living and the Dead by Christoffer Carlsson

Published on by Margaret1 Comment

Penguin| 8 January 2026| 428 pages| e-book| Review copy| 4*

Description

On a cold, snowy winter’s night in 1999, Sander and Killian leave a house party together, in a small town in rural Sweden. The very best of friends, they imagine they will remain so forever.

The next morning, each is a key suspect in a murder. Each has something they want to conceal from the police. And from the other.

The hunt for Mikael Söderström’s killer will take over twenty years. It will see a detective leave the force forever. And it won’t end until a second body is found, and the tight-knit community’s secrets are finally brought to light . . .

My thoughts

The Living and the Dead by Christoffer Carlsson, is translated from the Swedish by Rachel Willson Broyles.

This has a slow start. It has a tense atmosphere and a great sense of place, set in Skavböke, a small town in rural Sweden. .There are many characters and it took me quite some time to sort them out – who were related, who were friends and who were police, although the list of characters at the beginning of the book does help. The narrative is told from the different characters’ perspectives, which was also confusing until I had them sorted in my mind and I had to re-read several passages for a while. It’s not a book to read quickly!

By the time I got to the second half of the book and the action picked up pace it was much more satisfying to read. It kept me guessing what was going on and who the culprit was all the way through. I enjoyed all the twists and turns, which took me by surprise. It’s a dark, bleak thriller with plenty of suspense as secret relationships, rumours and rivalries abound in the small town. I particularly enjoyed Carlsson’s description of the Swedish landscape and characterisation.

I didn’t know until after I’d read this book that it is the third book in Carlsson’s Hallandssviten Series. I’ll certainly be looking out for more of his books.

Christoffer Carlsson was born in 1986 on the west coast of Sweden. He holds a PhD in criminology from the University of Stockholm and is one of Sweden’s leading crime experts. Carlsson is the youngest winner of the Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year, voted by the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy, and has won the prestigious Glass Key award for The Living and the Dead, given to the best Scandinavian crime novel of the year. He’s also won the Best Swedish Crime Novel twice.

My thanks to the publishers, Penguin and NetGalley for a review copy.

WWW Wednesday 28 January 2026

Published on by Margaret13 Comments

WWW Wednesday is run by Taking on a World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently I’m reading The Inheritance of loss by Kiran Desai, the winner of several prizes including the 2006 Booker Prize. It’s a book I bought in 2007 and meant to read long before now. I’m reading this slowly and so far it’s looking good.

This is set in the Himalayas where a judge and his granddaughter live in a dilapidated mansion. The judge, broken by a world too messy for justice, is haunted by his past. His orphan granddaughter has fallen in love with her handsome tutor, despite their different backgrounds and ideals. The cook’s heart is with his son, who is working in a New York restaurant, mingling with an underclass from all over the globe as he seeks somewhere to call home.

I’m also reading The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch, another book I’ve had and left on the shelves for far too long. I’ve read just a few opening chapters and think I’m going to enjoy this book. It’s set in Ireland, where a young woman goes to work as a governess in the remote Gaze Castle only to find there are no children. She is confronted with a number of weird mysteries and involved in a drama she only partly understands.

The last book I read Quite Ugly One Evening by Chris Bookmyre which will be published in May, so I’ll write about it later. It’s crime fiction set on the Atlantic.

Description from Amazon:

An Atlantic voyage. A family at war. A secret worth killing over.

Reporter Jack Parlabane thrives on chasing stories in unlikely places, and where could be less likely than a fan convention on a cruise liner celebrating a contentious Sixties TV series? But unlike the media family exploiting their show’s renewed relevance, he’s not there to stoke controversy: he’s there to solve a murder.

Already in deep water with his employer, Jack desperately needs a win, and solving this decades-old mystery could be it. Problem is, he’s in the middle of the Atlantic, and someone onboard has already killed once to keep their secret.

And that’s not even the tricky part. No, the tricky part is definitely the dead body locked in a stateroom with him, covered in his blood. Now Jack has to solve two murders, otherwise the only way he’s getting off this ship is in handcuffs – or in a body bag.recalling the unforgettable experience he cannot take to his grave.

What will I read next? It could be Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

Like her previous novel The Luminaries, which I loved, this book is set in a fictionalised New Zealand, primarily in and around a national park in the South Canterbury region. The title is taken from a line in Macbeth. It follows members of a guerilla gardening collective, Birnam Wood as, with the help of a charismatic tech billionaire, they undertake a new project on abandoned farmland.

But when the time comes to start another book it could be something completely different.

Top Ten Tuesday: New-To-Me Authors I Read in 2025

Published on by Margaret20 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to Jana in your own Top Ten Tuesday post. Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists. Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

The topic this week is Bookish Discoveries I Made in 2025 (New-to-you authors you discovered, new genres you learned you like, new bookish resources you found, friends you made, local bookshops you found, a book club you joined, etc.)

I decided to list 10 of the 24 New-to me- authors I read last year. I’ll be looking out for more books by these authors.

Gordon Corera – The Spy in the Archive, nonfiction about Vasili Mitrokhin, a KGB archivist who defected to Britain in 1992. Mitrokhin, a quiet, introverted and determined man, was a reluctant defector, because whilst he loved Russia he came to hate the KGB and the Soviet system.

Sarah Freethy – The Seeker of Lost Paintings, historical fiction set in two timelines, one in the 1940s in Italy and the other in 1997 in London and Italy, about the mystery surrounding a lost painting by Carravagio. 

William Horwood – The Boy With No Shoes: a Memoir, (the author of the Duncton Chronicles, which I haven’t read). This is a long and detailed book. It is beautifully written and as he tells the story of his very early life there are many times when it moved me to tears. His writing is so clear that the places and people he describes spring to life as you read. I loved it, one of the best books I read last year!

Alex Howard – The Ghost Cat, a novella and historical fantasy fiction about Grimalkin’s nine lives from 1887 to 2022. As well as the main story there are Grimalkin’s observations and notes explaining various events and technological changes that had taken place in each period.

Ruth Jones – By Your Side, an emotionally charged book as Linda Standish takes on her last case for the Council’s Unclaimed Heirs Unit, tracking down Levi Norman’s next of kin.

Jess Kidd – Murder at Gull’s Nest, crime fiction set in the 1950s in a seaside town. At times it feels like a cosy crime mystery, but it’s also rather dark and foreboding, whereas at other times there’s some humour and also a hint of a romance.

Rhiannon Lewis – My Beautiful Imperial, historical fiction set in the 19th century in both Wales and Chile. It begins in Wales in March 1865 with Davy Davies, a young teenager who is at the age when he must decide whether to work at the mill or to be a sailor like father. It’s based on the actual events of the Civil War in Chile and the experiences of the author’s ancestor, Captain David Jefferson Davies. 

Hannah Richell – One Dark Night, crime fiction, with a spooky, tense atmosphere about the police investigation into the body of a young woman is discovered in the woods the morning after Halloween. I loved it, one of the best books I read last year.

Lynda Rutledge – West With Giraffes, historical fiction with a colourful cast of characters, about the twelve-day road trip in a custom truck to deliver Southern California’s first giraffes to the San Diego Zoo. It conjures up a vivid picture of America in 1938 during the Great Depression and the Great Hurricane of 1938, the most destructive storm to strike New England in recorded history until 2012’s Hurricane Sandy.

Owen Sheers – Resistance. I love historical fiction, but this is different – it is alternate history. Sheers speculates upon how the course of history might have been altered if Germany had won the Second World War and invaded and occupied Great Britain, an alarming prospect. The plot centres on the inhabitants of the isolated Olchon valley in the Black Mountains of south-east Wales close to Hereford and the border between Wales and England.