Told By A Ghost!

Library Books -  reading or not reading?

Did I want to read a book written from the point of view of a ghost? No. (A Schooling in Murder by Andrew Taylor)

Then there were the two by Alex Pine, I read one of these a few months ago and it was OK so I'd reserved two from earlier in the series, but these seemed so stilted, with  conversations that sounded really artificial, so I didn't bother finishing either.

That wasn't a good start to my reading after the library van collection almost a fortnight ago. So it had to be something guaranteed to be good next, ............... Murder in Berlin by Christina Koning. Set in 1933 Berlin when things were beginning to get very nasty in Germany. It was a good read as I expected. That's two books set at much the same time read in the last few weeks - the other was Evil in High Places by Rory Clements, set during the 1936 Winter Olympics. Both capture the fear as Hitler comes to power, military on the streets and everyone is suddenly afraid of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person and no one quite trusts their friends and neighbours anymore.

Next I read The Skeleton in the Rosebed by Alys Clare. This is the 5th in a series set in 1880's London with Lily Raynor and Felix Wilbraham who run the World's End Investigation Bureau. Three elderly siblings come to the bureau asking for help with a skeleton they've found in a rose bed in their garden. They believe it to be a relative from 300 years earlier. Unfortunately for Lily and Felix, it is something happening nearby that really causes them problems and when Felix is almost beaten to death it takes all of the residents of 3, Hobs Court and other friends to look after him and to find out who attacked him and why.

Then I pulled out The Odd Flamingo by Nina Bawden, This is a British Library Crime Classic originally published in 1954 and just republished this year. Nina Bawden is better know for children's fiction although I've never read any of her books. I just couldn't get into this, so abandoned it after a chapter.

After that I read the short crime stories in the British Library Crime Classic Continental Crimes this was published in 2017 but for some reason I'd not read it. There are some very old and odd stories, I skipped one or two.

Finally, now I'm reading the new to me author Sally Smith and her first book set in the early 1900's , 'A Case of Mice and Murder' in which Barrister Gabriel Ward , working in London's Inner Temple trips over the body of the Lord Chief Justice and is asked to find who, among everyone working there, is the murderer. But his mind would rather be on his latest case defending a publisher of the book 'Millie the Temple Church Mouse'. by an unknown author.

 So far it's a really good read and will definitely be finished, probably before this post is published!

 I'm looking forward to  reading the other two books I collected by Christina Koning but there's still nearly two weeks left before the library van is round again so I'm spreading them out..

It's a complicated business choosing which library books to read in which order!  

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