Madeleine's Book Log 2025

[Madeleine]

The Man in Black and other stories by Elly Griffiths - I finally finished this one, it's a collection of short stories featuring many of her regular characters plus a few new ones as well,some are spooky, some feature a crime, some are only a few pages long, others a bit longer - the longest story, and one of the best ones, is a Ruth Galloway/Harry Nelson tale where the pair find themselves on a Nile cruise, supposedly won by Harry. Two are Christmas themed, with one again featuring Ruth and her cat, which I read last year for Xmas, and I recently decided to finish the book.  The tales are all very readable, with the author's trademark humour, and it's a good collection for dipping into if you don't feel like tackling a single book, and some are very suited to this time of year.  8/10

[Madeleine]

The Bookseller of Inverness by S G MacLean - this is a stand alone novel by the author of the Alexander Seaton and Damian Seeker series, and is set 6 years after the battle of Culloden, one of the defining events in Scottish history, and, having played dead to survive the battle, Iain MacGillivrary is living a quiet life as the titular bookseller, until a stranger comes into his bookshop and starts to search through his old books, so determinedly that Iain has to force him to leave the shop, but next day, when he opens up, he finds the man murdered, by a weapon bearing the Jacobite symbol of a white cockade. Once the man is identified, it turns out that he is looking for the Book of Lost Names, which contains codes for names of various people who may or may not be traitors, and when people on that list start to also be murdered, Iain finds himself being dragged back into recent history, as well as dealing with the return of his absent father, who has to be kept hidden due to the nature of his own mission - to restore the King to the throne.  This took me a while to get into, and I did find it hard to keep up with the historical details, and who was a Jacobite and who wasn't.  I must admit this is a period in history which I know virtually nothing about (apart from watching Outlander!) and I did find it difficult to follow at times.  It was well-written and thrilling at times, with genuine tension as Iain and his father tried to evade the Redcoats, but I have to say I prefer her historical crime novels. Her research must have been phenomenal. 8/10

[Madeleine]

The Whispering Muse by Laura Purcell - this was my Victober read and whilst it's not one of her spookiest or most Gothic books, it certainly caused a few shivers with it's great atmosphere and vivid characters.  It has that favourite Victorian theme of madness or obsession, in this case with a watch supposedly suffused with the essence of Melopemene, the Tragic Muse, which is appropriate given that most of the action (and deaths!) takes place in the Mercury Theatre.  We see the story through the eyes of Jenny, a young woman who's struggling to keep her family (herself and 2 younger siblings) together after their older brother's treachery leaves her without a job.  Until she receives an offer from the seemingly benevolent Mrs Dyer, whose husband owns the Mercury Theatre, and who has a leading actress in need of a dresser.  The pay is excellent and Mrs Dyer offers to help Jenny and her family out in other ways, but Jenny soon finds out that more is asked of her than a simple job.  The main theme of the book is selling your soul to the devil, and it starts and finishes with performances of the play Dr Faustus.  The watch is passed from actor to actor, and whilst the actors may get the role of their dreams, there is an awful price to pay.  Jenny's relationship with her volatile actress, Lilith, is difficult at first but gradually she becomes more protective of the star, as she realised that both are being manipulated, plus strange things happen around Lilith.  But who is controlling who?  At times I wondered if Jenny herself was the unwitting manipulator, and as the book went on it did get more predictable and I did guess how it was going to finish.  I did like Jenny, with her irrepressible attitude and kindness, and even grew to like Lilith eventually.  Well-written and easy to read. 8/10

[Madeleine]

The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths - this is the first in a new series by the author of the popular Ruth Galloway books, and it's another crime series, but the twist here is that our small (and secret) team of detectives can travel back in time.  The main character, Ali Dawson, works with the cold case team, and so far the time travelling has been fairly limited, in one instance going back to London just before Covid started to hit, and the visits have been brief.  However, when Ali is asked to clear the name of someone suspected of being part of a sinister group whose initiation ceremony involved killing a woman, she has to go back to 1850, for the "suspect" is the ancestor of a prominent MP, who also happens to be her son's boss.  Almost the first thing Ali sees when she goes into the suspect's house is a dead woman, so she finds herself investigating a historical murder, and even worse, she realises that she is trapped in 1850, as someone else has taken her place to go to the 21st century - is the time traveller another murderer?  And has he/she gone to the future to commit a murder there?  This was a thoroughly enjoyable read, and the characters in 1850 were just as interesting as those in the present day.  Ali's attempts at staying unsuspected in 1850 were good as well.  A promising start to a new series.  8/10

[Madeleine]

Death at the White Hart by Chris Chibnall - this is the first crime novel in a new series (I assume) by the writer of Broadchurch and later Doctor Who, and it's set in the same area of Dorset as Broadchurch - although some town names are changed, if you know the area, as I do, you'll know which town is renamed Bredy in the book.  DS Nicola Bridge is originally from the area, but was working for the police on Merseyside until she decided to move her family back to Dorset, for reasons which come clear in the book.  She also hoped that pretty West Dorset would be quieter....... but of course this isn't the case at all, when a body is found dumped in the middle of the A35 (the major road in the area) sat on a chair, with antlers attached to his head.  Quite the discovery and though there's no problem identifying the victim - he was the landlord of the White Hart pub - the means, motive and how did they get him there with antlers on his head, prove a real puzzler for the investigating officers.  It turns out that the landlord had a rather chequered past and an even more eventful private life, not to mention a shaky track record as a pub landlord, so there are a lot of suspects and possible motives.  This was an entertaining read, I did occasionally find it over written, but Nicola and her sidekick Harry are a likeable pair, and though I didn't guess who dunnit, I didn't find the reveal totally convincing. 7/10

[France]

I agree with you about it being a bit overwritten.  I enjoyed it but didn't find it totally gripping.

[Madeleine]

Me neither, readable and I know the area where it's set quite well so that helped.

[Madeleine]

Amnesia by L J Ross - this is the 6th book in the series featuring criminal profiler and psychologist Dr Alex Gregory, and follows straight on from the events of the previous book Panic, which needs to be read first.  At the end of this book, 2 women close to Gregory are left critically injured, and as he tries to piece together what happened and why, and deal with the fallout from one of his earlier cases, we get quite a bit of back story, to a brutal murder of a teenager on a grim London estate, which was handled badly by the police.  Someone is out for revenge, but who?  And that's all I can really say without giving away any spoilers.  It was an OK read, but I think this is the weaker of her 2 series (the other series is set mainly in Northumberland and features DCI Ryan, who does appear briefly in the Gregory series too), and whilst I still have a couple of the earlier books in this series to read, I'm not that bothered about reading the next one, which hasn't been published yet.  6.5/10

[Madeleine]

The Curse of La Fontaine by M L Longworth - this is the 6th in the Verlaque and Bonnet series - he's a judge (though it has a different job spec in France) and she's a University professor and they live in Aix-en-Provence - and starts with the couple marrying, then back to work in Aix and soon they are confronted with a local mystery, when a skeleton is unearthed in the grounds of a local restaurant, whose owner had been planning to put some outside seating in the garden of the restaurant, much to the horror of neighbours, for apart from the inevitable noise from al fresco diners, they are convinced it would stop the fountain (hence the title) flowing - and indeed the fountain does stop when the body is discovered.  It's soon identified as a local resident, the son of a wealthy family who have since moved, but the parents and brothers are all still alive, and Verlaque is soon questioning them, and opening the usual can of worms.  This took a while to get going, but at least in this one there weren't endless pages about Verlaque's cigar club, and there are some lovely descriptions of food too, though sometimes these also slowed down the plot.  But once the back story of various residents started to unfold it became more interesting, I wouldn't exactly say gripping but it was an easy read and quite enjoyable.  7/10