Louise56

I quite liked Notes from a Small Island, but didn't care for Little Dribbling - got tired of all the complaining.

my favourite book by elizabeth Peters is Legend in green velvet,, a romantic suspenser set in Scotland. It is to do with the stone of scone among other things and has some great characters and situations and a lot of humour.

the books are moderately entertaining, but i find Flavia a bit hard to swallow. the Little Girl Who is Cleverer Than All the Grownups is a popular character - quite rightly - in children's fiction, but. I find her presence in an adult novel rather unconvincing. she doesn't talk or act in any way that is childlike.

The books came as a bit of a surprise to me, having seen the Tv version first, Lovejoy being so different than he is in the Tv series. he is a more interesting and less cuddly figure in the books, which can be quite brutal at times. wildly unpc the way he clouts the women in his life, would he get away with writing him like that nowadays? i doubt it. i did find myself wondering though why he is always so poverty stricken - he's supposed to be a divvy and a brilliant forger, so why doesn't he ever make any money at it?

My three favourites are mrs mcaginty's Dead Hercule Poirot's Christmas Murder at the Vicarage

i like the Tv series but haven't tried the books, i must give them a go. i was however struck by the fact that The Killing at badger's Drift has a solution that is strikingly similar to another detective story by a different writer, published some years earlier. Don't know whether it's just a coincidence or not.

i've only read his sergeant cribb books, haven't tried the peter Diamond ones, i must give them a go. My favourite Sergeant cribb book is Swing, Swing Together because it's all about Three Men in A boat, which is my favourite book.

Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome 1066 And All That by W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman The General Danced at Dawn by George macdonald Fraser Recollections of Three Reigns by Frederick Ponsonby Excellent Women by Barbara Pym Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym Queen Victoria Was Amused by Alan Hardy The Talisman Ring by Georgette Heyer The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse An Autobiography by Agatha Christie

I notice, but it doesn't bother me. it is natural that the english language should have diversified in different countries, Bill Bryson's very interesting book Mother Tongue is good on the differences between American and british english.

It was okay, but rather too easy to guess whodunnit and why. The solution bore a rather strong resemblance to an older murder mystery i had read, and i saw it coming,