Books Monthly home page

A message from th'editor... this is a bumper edition of Books Monthly, with over fifty new crime and thriller titles, and thirty-something new children's books - next month's issue will be slightly smaller than usual, as I will be spending quite a lot of the month "taking it easy" and "pottering about" as advised by my cardiology consultant and nurse following my angioplasty procedure on 2nd May at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. I'll do my best to get all of May's books listed in the usual way, but I won't be spending as much time in front of the laptop as usual, at least until mid-month, so if I don't get time to write a review about your new book, it's nothing personal, it's simply doctor's orders... Back to normal in June, hopefully! Until then, happy reading, as always... Paul

WHAT A MONTH IT'S BEEN FOR... things going wrong - first it was the car handbrake. I thought, well, probably a simple replacement of the handbrake cable job - unfortunately not. Brian, my Ford garage man, took one look at the back discs and pronounced them kaput - £200 up the Swannee... Two days later our ten-year-old fridge freezer gave up the ghost and we had to hurriedly buy a new one - £280 up the Swannee... then today, both of the bathroom hot taps ceased to function - Heaven knows what that's going to cost... maybe it's just the washers need replacing - who am I kidding? When did we ever have something go wrong that cost the minimum it could possibly cost? We're running out of stuff to sell to pay for these things... Oh well, at least the NHS is still free - isn't it?

Council elections here this May - let's hope the decent people in the local North Norfolk Labour Party have managed to convince the normally intransigent North Norfolk people (who still live in a kind of feudal state and pay lip service to the local landowners) to give the evil Tories and the lying, cheating LibDems a bloody nose, maybe with the help of the dreaded, even more evil UKIP... That's my colours pinned firmly to the mast. I hope Ed Miliband means what he says about rescuing the NHS when he gets elected in two years' time. I hope he renationalises Gas, Electricity, Water, the railways... but that's just my wishful thinking, isn't it?

The new Lacey Flint from S J Bolton... lock all your doors and windows!

The heart-hammering thriller from the queen of the London crime scene. 'Spine-tingling suspense!' LISA GARDNER. A serial killer is being closely watched by one young boy. Barney knows the killer will strike again soon. The victim will be another boy, just like him. He will drain the body of blood, and leave it on a Thames beach. There will be no clues for detectives Dana Tulloch and Mark Joesbury to find. There will be no warning about who will be next. There will be no good reason for young policewoman Lacey Flint to become involved . . . And no chance that she can stay away. *LIKE THIS, FOR EVER is published as LOST in the US*

My book of the month this month is the new thriller from S J Bolton continuing the nail-biting story of DC Lacey Flint and her association with Dana Tulloch and Mark Joesbury. You don't need to read the previous Lacey Flint books to understand what's going on, but my word, you're in for a treat if you do read them! I read them in reverse order and then came back to read LIKE THIS FOR EVER for a second time to make sure I hadn't missed anything. It really is edge-of-the-seat twisty-turny stuff, probably the best thriller (thrillers) I've read since Neil Cross's LUTHER this time last year.

Also in this issue, JERRY DOWLEN takes a find look at Bergerac - hugely popular series, the one that established John Nettles as a TV detective favourite and led to Midsomer Murders, of course.

The TV miniseries of Kate Mosse's Labyrinth...

A brilliant adaptation by Ridley Scott of the Kate Mosse blockbuster LABYRINTH was screened on Channel 4 during the first week of April, and there's a rather attractive TV Tie-in edition from Orion Books. A stellar cast included Lady Sybil from Downton Abbey, Katy McGrath from BBC TV's Merlin, John Hurt and that chap from THE PARADISE, amongst others - it was spectacular, with thousands of extras dressed as knights, and it certainly inspired me to read the book again, so that it ended up as my fantasy book of the month. A huge slice of very enjoyable mediaeval Europe, with plenty of action and very, very good acting. At the same time, the latest three-part series of FOYLE'S WAR came to an end with Michael Kitchen once again trouncing the villains in that cold, calculating, brilliant way of his. Unfortunately, an interview with creator Anthony Horovitz in the overpriced Radio Times a couple of weeks ago suggested that he wouldn't be writing any more adventures for the second best TV detective (after Lewis, of course), which is a great shame. I wonder if he could be persuaded to write a series of adventures about a young Foyle, perhaps as a Detectice Constable in the between-the-way years - which brings me nicely on to the most welcome news that ENDEAVOUR started its first run as a series proper on April 14th - the young Morse series got off to a cracking start with a brilliant pilot last year and this new series is absolutely brilliant. It would be nice to be able to read as well as watch these adventures, though... It is quite posisble, now that FOYLE'S WAR has finished and ENDEAVOUR has started, that the young Morse will take over in second place in my list of favourite TV detectives.

This month's focus is on crime and thrillers...

What is it about murder that fascinates us so much? After the horrors of war, surely murder is the most terrible thing that can happen - we lap up the details of the latest real-life murders, forming our own conclusions as to the perpetrator... I well remember saying to my wife that Ian Huntley looked like a prime candidate for the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, and we're still fascinated, over a hundred years on, by the terrible injuries inflicted on his victims by the Ripper. The first detetive mysteries started to appear during the latter years of the 19th century, with Penny Dreadfuls full to the last page with sensational stories guaranteed to hook the innocent reader. Holmes and Watson continue to enthrall us with their clue-solving powers, and at the other end of the spectrum we have the latest offerings from TV programmes such as WAKING THE DEAD which pull no punches. We're hooked on violence, we're hooked on murder, and we're hooked on the people that solve those murders. April into May is an extremely good month for it - we have the return of Scott and Bailey (although I call them Bott and Scaly, and watching them in HD rather reinforces that...). I don't mean to be unkind, but I suppose I am going to be when I say that, much as I enjoy the stories in Scott and Bailey, the three principal characters leave a lot to be desired. The boss woman should drop her ridiculous accent - we all know she doesn't really talk like that. Suranne Jones, who can't afford a real first name, continues to pull the most unattractive faces, rivalled only by the awful heart surgeon in Holby City, Mo Ofanga, and Janet Bailey looks absolutely ghastly. But the stories are compelling, and on Wednesday nights there isn't anything else worth watching. And now, thankfully, Sunday nights saw the return of ENDEAVOUR, which, like LEWIS, is equally as good as, if not better than, the original MORSE series. I prefer it to Morse as it's set in my era, the 1960s, and the boxed set of Endeavour has gone straight to the top of my Amazon wishlist! It's terrific, brilliant television, and once again ITV are able to demonstrate that there is at least one thing they are better at than the BBC - detective series. The only thing wrong with ITV is the endless advert breaks... This issue of Books Monthly has more than 25 brand new crime and mystery titles listed, with half a dozen more on the Children's Books page. S J Bolton is my new obsession in books, Endeavour is my new obsession on TV. It's all rather sublime!