Recently Read

 With nothing much to do in the garden as it's so dry, and it's been too hot for doing anything adventurous so I've already read five books from the July library book photo. 

Puzzles of the Parish; Short Tales of Ministers, Murder and Mystery is a collection of short crime stories featuring members of the clergy collected together by Martin Edwards and published by British Library Crime Classics.  Written between 1911 and 2006. Authors include G.K. Chesterton through to Robert Barnard. Sometimes there are a few very odd old stories in these collections but I found all very readable.

Joel Hames - The Boatyard. This popped up somewhere recommended for me and said it was the first in a new series by an author I didn't know. When I started reading there were so many different members of the Cumbrian Police force mentioned that I got very confused and nearly gave up. It turns out that this author already has a long series of Cumbrian Crime but this book was an off shoot and mainly about the Professional Standards Division, who get called in to investigate police corruption. I persevered through the names and it turned into a good story. Although there was a murder of a young police officer which seemed a bit drastic for a new series. As seems to be the norm for many crime stories all the police officers involved have problems with their home or personal life.

Jim Eldridge - Murder at Canterbury Cathedral. This is the second Cathedral mystery and the 9th featuring DCI Coberg and Sergeant Lampson and Coburg's wife Rosa Weeks, a popular pianist and singer. Set during WWII and usually based in London, this time the very well connected Coberg is called out of London to Canterbury when Canon Walter de la Coeur is found murdered in the Cathedral at the exact spot that Thomas Becket met his death centuries earlier. Coburg has to sift through the Canons duties at the Cathedral and his private life, while back in London a near tragedy affects his Sergeant. The stories are always good by this author but he does tend to use the books as a way to teach people about WWII and sometimes some of the information he gives is news that wouldn't have been known to the public until well after the war. He also uses terms that I'm sure date from modern times - it was his use of 'Custody Suite ' that grated this time. Surely back in the 1940's people were just put in the cells. The use of the term Custody Suite has only been around since the 1980's!

Louise Penny - Still Life. This is the first of a well known and well written series set in Canada and featuring Chief Inspector Gamache of the Surete du Quebec. A well loved artist has been killed in the previously crime free village of Three Pines. It seems odd that she has been killed just before one of her paintings was to go on show and before she'd invited villagers into her home where they hadn't been before.

I've known about this series for ages and it's been recommended before but I'm sure I tried one and couldn't get into it so I thought I would try again from the beginning and found it very readable - now I have 20 more to read!

Shelley Smith - The Missing School Girl and Other Stories. Several of the stories in this small book are rather odd and ghostly rather than crime. I reserved it because British Library Crime Classics are publishing one of her books this month (The Party at Number 5 ) and I found the library had this book of her short stories in stock. I don't think I'll be bothering with her full length story after reading the above.