What a second novel

Chris Bridges' The Death Bed is highly dependant upon his former job as a nurse, but given my past as a regular patient, I can attest to the level of his accuracy from the point of view of a patient. Chris seems to be comfortable about writing about all things medical and a trainee nurse …

My latest John Grisham

With festival season largely over for the year now, any reading I do will either be related to my podcast, my own novel or purely for pleasure. This book falls in the purely for pleasure category. Ever since my early years of reading audio books, John Grisham has been one of the stalwarts of my …

A definite planner

William Hussey's The Woman Who Wasn't There, released just before Harrogate 2026, was a surprise to me when I rearranged for the podcast around his Jericho series to discover that he'd written this book. I discovered this one day before talking to him. This was an actual advantage during the podcast, as I couldn't give …

Isolated Aldo

DV Bishop's Shadow of Madness is the 6th in the Cesare Aldo series. By this point in a writer's career an isolated location novel often appears in the list of books they have written. But coupled with snow and a personal journey this is a really good example of how a well planned series can …

The Chair’s latest Book

Now that my life seems to have hit its normal stride again, I've been focussing on the books that intrigued me from my trip to the Theakston's Festival. The latest in my library being Lisa Jewell's It could have been Her. After recently reading Let him in preparation for Harrogate, I didn't think Lisa could …

Dancing and Detecting

In the third Miller novel, Mark's background as a comedian has come to the fore once again. This storyline wouldn't work for Thorne as it starts off with several different comedic overtones. When somebody trips over a dog (don't worry the dog wasn't harmed) it is a rather unique opening to a book. But as …

The art of a child

In the ten years I've been reviewing the hardest books I've imagined I'd try to write are those within the wider sub-genre of crime fiction. Frances Crawford's A bad bad Place is a prime example of this with it's narrative split between 12 year old Janey and her grandmother Maggie, this also appeals to the …

Getting back into it

After 2 weeks away when reading was very difficult to concentrate on, surrounded by strangers just as uncomfortable as yourself, the latest in the series of which I've become a great fan of and cannot wait for the next one in September, seemed a perfect way of getting back into the flow of reading and …

A strange week

As I started The Angel of Death I did not know how much my own life would start to reflect the book. With family relations having dementia like the main character in this book who is in the early onset, I was always aware of it but it really hit home this week after I …

Preparing for Harrogate

With Harrogate coming up it is now the 10th year that I have visited the festival. One of the key highlights of the festival program for me has always been the debut panels, these panels have often introduced me to authors that will go on to have a very successful and varied career. But, for …