Books Read 2026

2026

JANUARY 

• Mike Hollow - The Bloomsbury Murder. Crime Fiction. ( Published 2025) 9th in The Blitz Detective series. DI John Jago is called to a terraced house in Bloomsbury, where a woman has been attacked and left to die. She seems to have been a wonderful kind lady who had opened her home to strangers displaced due to the bombing and to refugees. Which of them would have wanted to murder such a lovely lady.
• Anne Perry- A Christmas Return. Crime Fiction Novella. (Published 2017)One of her Christmas stories featuring people from her other series. I've now read them all.
• William Shaw - The Red Shore. Crime Fiction (Published 2025)  The first of a new series set in Teignmouth area of Devon - and features Detective Sergeant  Eden Driscoll, a Met detective who suddenly finds his estranged sister, Apple, is missing and he has a young nephew he knew nothing about. Upon arrival at his sisters home in Teignmouth he begins to suspect that his sister wasn't just washed overboard  from her yacht - she would never have gone to sea at night or locked the boy - Finn- in a cabin. When he starts to investigate it brings back memories of his and Apple's own strange childhood and puts him and Finn in real danger. 
• E.C.R.Lorac  -Still Waters. Crime Fiction (BLCC reprint 2025 . Originally Published 1949). Featuring the Hoggetts and  their friend Chief Inspector MacDonald in the Lunesdale on the edge of the Lake District. Another well written story by this author about smuggling and murder.
• Val McDermid - Winter the Story of a Season.  Non Fiction (Published 2025). Val McDermid writes short pieces about her different memories of winter, from childhood through to recent times.
• Candace Robb- A Lion's Ransom. Crime Fiction. (Published 2025) The 16th book in the Owen Archer series set in York during the C14. A costly gold lion created by the goldsmiths as a gift for the  new King Richard, is stolen. At the same time Owen - the King's man in the North - is hunting spies who are attacking ships and then a body is found in the river and Owen has to work out the connection between all these things.
• Sally Smith - A Case of Life and Limb. Crime Fiction. (Published 2025) Second book in a new series about Sir Gabriel Ward KC, set in 1901 in London's Inner Temple law courts. Topsy Tillotson, a young music hall star is suing a daily paper for damage to her reputation taking Gabriel right out of his comfort zone. At the same time body parts turn up at the doors of various Temple Employees including one that has fatal consequences.
• Val McDermid- Past Lying. Crime Fiction. (Published 2023) Set during the Covid lockdown of 2020 this book is the 7th in the Karen Pirie Historic Cases Unit. In this story a manuscript of a book, left to the Library, after an authors death seems to tell the story of a murder. There is a girl who has been missing for a year - is this the answer?

6 Recently Written Crime Fiction (1 Novella)

1 Older Crime Fiction

1 Non Fiction