Catching up on a bunch of Booksellers (which are like buses), I have lost count of the number of books that will be coming out in the UK over the next few months. I will highlight a few here that I think will be good reads. I'll split the posts and because there is a blogger's rant at the end of this one so it has got a bit long.
July hardbacks.
The Adversary by Michael Walters. Second instalment of the Mongolian crime series from Quercus, my favourite publisher (I think). I haven't quite started on the first yet, but am looking forward to it.
Damnation Falls by Edward Wright (see this note by Sarah Weinmann).
Dying to Sin by Stephen Booth. I can never decide whether to go back to this series after reading the first three or four and then stopping. I just wish Fry and Cooper would get on with it.
The Past is a Foreign Country by Gianrico Carofiglio, from Bitter Lemon press. According to the Bookseller, the author is visiting the UK in the summer to promote this book and Reasonable Doubts, being published in paperback in July. Based on the first two books by Carofiglio that have been translated from Italian into English, these will be wonderful.
Up in Honey's Room by Elmore Leonard. Another author I did read avidly but have given up on for his past few. On the basis of Frank Wilson's Philadelphia Inquirer review of this one, I should return to him.
Kennedy's Brain by Henning Mankell. Not a Wallender (father or daughter) one, but a thriller set in Mozambique about an archaeologist who refuses to believe her son committed suicide.
A bit off-topic, but another July hardback is Snapshots from my Life by Helen Mirren. I recall that she was the second actress in my life whom I adored from the moment I discovered her at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre many years ago (the first was Julie Christie).
There's also a new Nigella Lawson, Nigella Express (inevitably for her these days, a TV tie-in), which according to the Bookseller blurb is the "answer to every working mother's dream, supplying quick-to-prepare recipes, tips on keeping the store cupboard stocked, and the freezer and fridge stacked, thereby leaving time for a bath, a drink or to help the children with their homework." Blood-pressure alert: what are the working fathers doing during all of this domestic squirrelling? At business meetings or down the pub I presume. Much as I like Nigella, will she please shoot her publicists? They seem to come from a land where a "working mother" is envisaged as a person who helps out at the local playgroup for a couple of hours in the morning. And, by the way, if you want to save yourself £25, the answer is to live off pasta, fruit and salad, and/or do your shopping via the internet's large store cupboards, fridges and freezers. You can also get your drinks, bath oils and homework guides there too, by the way.
Yes, I thought the first few of that Stephen Booth series were astonishingly good, I read them in a couple days, and then it seemed the series just lost momentum--you can't keep harking back to one episode of long-ago trauma for all your dramatic tension, or to an ultimately comical rather than moving series of misunderstandings between the two main detective characters! It's a pity, because the writing's excellent, settings very good and those characters really are compelling, but I quite agree, he's got to get a move on...
I like your Nigella summing-up!
Posted by: Jenny | 26 June 2007 at 13:32