Books read in 2024

1. Number 10, Sue Townsend (Book Club Secret Santa)

This was published in 2003 so I was afraid it would seem very dated. It wasn't. It tells the story of an out of touch Prime Minister who gives a car crash interview and, as a result, goes on a journey of discovery around the country. He's accompanied by the policeman, Jack Spratt, who is normally on door duty at Number 10 and who was the blacksheep of his criminal family (Jack is straight). To add farce, the PM disguises himself by wearing his (neurotic) wife's clothes so that Edward Clare becomes Edwina. It's supposed to be funny and, well, it ain't serious, but I didn't find it hilarious. I wasn't able to suspend disbelief as much as is necessary for tale of this kind. Townsend makes a succession of serious points, however. For example: people have disused white goods in their gardens because of the land fill tax (I'm not sure that's true but it was one of the lessons). I was able to read almost all of this on the way back from Edinburgh where we'd been to see Wicked as a New Year treat. And treat it was!

2. Dead Sweet, Katrín Júlíusdóttir

I saw this advertised in a tweet from the Victoria Bookshop in Haverfordwest who had a few signed copies with sprayed edges. I had to order it by phone and they were, of course, somewhat suprised to be sending to a customer so far away. A very satisfying slice of Icelandic Noir. It has many of the familiar tropes of a detective novel: going against the consensus, getting it wrong at first but clinging on to a hunch - but it's none the less enjoyable for all that. It's interesting, I think, that politicians, like Katrín Júlíusdóttir and Alan Johnson are able to turn their hand to thriller writing so effectively.

3. Machine Vendetta, Alastair Reynolds

Dreyfus continues his battle against Aurora and The Clockmaker while Valery continues to be looked after at Hospice Idlewild. This series of Prefect novels, all within the Revelation Space universe, will definitely bear re-reading when opportunity allows. They're all terrific and I whip through them like a hound but I know I'm missing a lot of the nuance because of the gap between reading each novel. There are references to previous events and characters that I can't recall in sufficient detail. This one has a very good ending.

4. The Future, Naomi Alderman

I wasn't going to buy this. We read The Power in book club a few years back and, although I enjoyed that, I wasn't immediately minded to buy Naomi Alderman's next noevl. But there was a signed first edition with sprayed edges on sale when I made my first visit to the new Waterstones in Sudbury. I'm glad I didn't resist. It has thinly-disguised parts for Bezos, Musk and Zuckerberg as they strip-mine the planet of its decency. What they reckoned without was those closest to them were all-too aware of what they were doing and had the means to stop them. Part eco-thriller, part commentary on the world as it has become. A terrific read.

5. The Death of Sir Martin Malprelate, Adam Roberts

Adam Roberts having fun writing something like an SF novel but very much within the bounds of his day job as a professor of 19th century literature. So we see multiple references to other literary characters (from Dickens especially) and the main protagonst is Sherlock Holmes' father. He also places two of H G Wells' most famous characters at the centre of the story. Not a page-turner, but a very clever 'gothic novel' that's actually rather splendid.

6. Stranger on a Train, Jenny Diksi (Book club, Kate)

I'm guessing it's the subtitle: Daydreaming and smoking around America with interruptions that caught Kate's attention.

This wasn't a page-turner but it kept me engaged to the end. Like others in the group, I found the constant talk of smoking to be tiresome after a while. But the people she meets and the experiences she has are certainly engaging and clearly authentic. The book starts with her as a passenger on a cargo ship. Trains only come in later. But it's all about the people she meets and how everyone, Diski herself included, is a stranger.

7. Time Shelter, Georgi Gospodinov

I bought this on a visit to an independent bookshop in Woodbridge. I told the staff some of the books I'd really enjoyed recently and asked if they had any reccomendations and this was their response. An International Booker Prize winner (2023), it's translated from Bulgarian. It's a fascinating idea. The recreation of times past - usually the time when you were young - and living in that time, albeit an idealised version. It starts out as therapy for those suffering from dementia but then becomes more torutous as EU Member States all hold referenda on which decade the entire country should now re-live. And reenactments turn into, well, more faithful than is ideal for the likes of the person playing Archduke Ferdinand, for example. I found the whole section on the referenda very thought-provoking as it seemed entirely plausible given the UK's real-life referendum based on the entirely bogus notion of going back to a bygone age.

8. Day One, Abigail Dean

I have been looking forward to reading whatever Abigail Dean wrote next since the minute I finished Girl A. The danger, of course, is that she might have been a one-idea writer. Nope. This is really good. It didn't quite have the same impact as Girl A did but that's unfair - this is a good and intriguing novel in its own right, irrespective of what has gone before it. The narrative centres on a school shooting in a small Lake District town. Picking up on the kind of activity exposed so well by Marianna Spring where people set out to 'prove' that such disasters never happened and that all the victims are actors, Dean has such a character, Trent, effectively pitted against the lived experience of one of the people deeply affected by it, Marty. Once I got over the irritation of Marty being short for Martha, not Martin, I was able to follow along easily (I read this in a few days while in Newport). I'm not sure why but Marty is written in the first person but all other authorial voices are written in the third. I'm due to go to an author event with Abigail Dean in less than a week from the time of writing this - that'll be my question.

Coda - it was the editor's suggestion. Marty was originally written in the third person but the editor suggested it be changed to make it more inimate. Which worked. So then the question was why the others weren't also re-cast in the first person? It seems that, no, the intimacy of being the first person really only works for one character. Book three is already written. I'll definitely be in the queue for that one too.

9. The Last Murder at the End of the World, Stuart Turton

Another terrific reality-bending mystery from Stu Turton. This one has a mad scientist, a remote island, a world-endlng plague (almost certainly man-made), analogues of Eloi and Morlocks and plenty of intrigue. Good stuff.

10. Anna O, Matthew Blake

One I picked upon a visit to the Victoria Bookshop. I'd not heard of this before but am glad I saw it. An excellent thriller with a solid, twisty plot line. The Patient X story line, which turns out to be central to the whole thing, lost me a few times. As is befitting of a thriller, I was convinced I knew their true identity at multiple times (and ws proved entirely wrong in the end). I looked up several assertions in the book and was pleased at how many turned out to be true. Freud's first patient really was known as Anna O, for example. Wouldn't be at all surprised to see this as a TV drama one Sunday night.

11. Medea, Rosie Hewlett

The story of another powerful woman of Ancient Greece. This one carries the gift/curse of being able to weild magic (that she learned from her aunt, Circe). She uses it to help Jason when he and the Argonauts turn up to steal the Golden Fleece. It doesn't end well of course. I read this more or less to get me back into this particular genre in time for Claire North's imminent final installment of the Songs of Penelope. Enjoyable throughout.

12. The Men Who Stare At Goats, Jon Ronson (book club, Nickie)

I managed to read more than half of this but it was a struggle. This is the true account of a bunch of very stupid men being enabled by even more stupid men, all in scarily responsible jobs within the US military. I know others in the group found it funny. I wish I could have done so. I just saw the stupidity but not the comedy, sorry. Nothing wrong with Jon Ronson's writing and journalism, it's the subject matter that killed this for me.

13. The Mars House, Natasha Pulley

At the time of writing this, I'm about 40 pages away from finishing this good read. I had to put it aside to avoid carrying multiple hardback books on an extended work trip where space in my bag is at a preimium. It's set on a terra-formed Mars but really it's about discrimination against 'the other'. The Mars natives have done away with gender altogether so that everyone is they/them whereas immgrants from climate-wrecked Earth are gendered. Try as I might I still trip up on they/them being used as a singular pronoun. But I guess that's part of the thought provocation the book seeks to achieve. Really impressive world-building and richness of writing. The development of the relationship between the main characters who are very much on opposite sides of the divide is the major narrative theme. I'll definiely look out for more by Natasha Pulley.

14. Invasion, Frank Gardner

This is a work of fiction but for the most part it is a very plausible telling of the Chinese invasion of Taiwan. This is Gardner's third novel, I learn, so I should go back and read the previous two. All three feature the MI6 operative Luke Carlton. It's a typical thriller with short chapters and plenty of pace. We follow the activities of multiple people in multiple parts of the world including the men and women on board naval ships and in various political command centres. Good fun from start to finish. Only disappointment for me was the way that one of the characters was handled at the end after she'd been, literally, left to the dogs. I think it was meant to be a plot twist but actually it just struck me as a bit silly.

15. Ma Petite Rosette, Tom Williams

My copy of this book is personally dedicated to Donnie and Rebecca, signed in 2014. I only have the vaguest of memories of the occasion when we met. I think we were visiting Waterstones in Ipswich and Tom Williams was there. Needless to say, D&R have even less memory. Ah well, … you can but try.

It begins with a rural French idyll that is disturbed by an RAF bomber being shot down and two crew being rescued from the mudflats before the tide overcame them. This leads to the French family being arrested, including Rose who, at 16, spendt months in jail under the occupation force. For many chapters I thought this would be her motivation to become active in the resistence and we'd learn of her later derring do but actually, no, it's the story of the appaling treatment she suffered. In some ways it was reminiscent of The Incredible Events in Women's Cell Number 3. Don't expect any moments of levity in this slightly fictionalized version of a true story.

16. Maame, Jessica George (book club, Elaine)

Wasn't sure I'd enjoy this but the whole point of being in a book group is to read things you wouldn't pick up yourself. I'm glad Elaine chose this - it was jolly good. It's in the genre of someone being born into a role and then escaping to become themselves. Not a new narrative but non the worse for that. Strong hints of autobiography with the protagonist submitting a raw draft of a novel about someone with her name to someone with the same name as her agent. Her young adult life is spent caring for her sick father while her mother and brother are absent without leave. Well worth the read.

17. Boys Who Hurt, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir

Another good 'un from the Icelandic Noir series featuring Elma and the usual supporting characters. I was slightly uncomfortable with the idea that Saevar and Elma are living in a house that used to be the home of one of the victims and happen to find usful information when clearing out the attic - that seemed unusually and unnecessarily coincidental. But the way the plot lines weave together and the story unfolds is still highly satisfying.

18. Floating Hotel, Grace Curtis

I was expecting this to be much more similar to her first book than it turned out to be. This one has a luxury hotel in space that travels around the inhabited galaxy with guests coming and going. Most of the intrigue though is focused on the staff who themselves all have colourful back stories. The empire itself is evil and oppressive of course so several plot lines are about subverting it. I had slight difficulty keeping all the different characters in my head but that's my problem. They were all interesting and it's nice to get to know more than just the protagonist and a couple of others. Really good resolution to the problem of how to escape the empire's goons.

I bought this from Toppings who offered me either a first edition first printing or a signed second printing. I went for the latter and immediatelt regretted it. You can convert an unsigned first edition into a signed one a lot more easily than a signed seconf printing into a signed first printing.

19. My Darling Daughter, JP Delaney

I bought this on a visit to the Victoria Bookshop and read it from start to finish in two days. It covers the behaviours of adopted children very, very well. For the sake of good story-telling, the adults are all extreme in their own way (pop stars, drug lords etc.) but the way that Sky/Anna behaves and reacts resonates exactly with my lived experience and that of fellow adoptive families. Don't read this if you're thinking of adopting - it's not all that bad, honestly. But if you have adopted, or know others who have, this will help you understand the differnce between normal teenage rebellion and how some adopted children behave. It also shows how little help is available from social services and how hard some adopted parents have to fight on behalf of their children.

Absolutely superb. Thank you JP Delaney (a nom-de-plume for an author who writes under several different names).

20. The Last Song of Penelope, Claire North

At the end of House of Odysseus, the hero has returned to Ithaca inconspicuously. The final instalment of the Song of Penelope tells of how he assesses what has happned in his absence and what he must do if he is to regain his throne. Inevitably, it ends in an enormous battle. Enjoyable stuff from the start and a very engaging read. But, I admit, I'm kinda looking forward to the spaceships and lasers one she said she was working on last time I saw her at an author event in Norwich.

21. Death on the Thames, Alan Johnson

Picked this up from the Victoria Bookshop earlier this year and it finally got to the top of the TBR pile. Johnson has developed his 'tec, Louise Mangan well. In this one, we meet her as a young police officer, still married, daughters still very young. This is all tied in to a case she works on that we then pick up 20 years later. It's always a joy to read this kind of thing and Johson does it very well.

22. Lake of Darkness, Adam Roberts

I can't help thinking of the Sean Bean meme "one does not simply read Adam Roberts". In this one he's contemplating life inside black holes which, through mind-warping infinities it turns out are all actually one. Humanity has become much less intelligent. Few people can read because they can ask the AI to do it for them. Wrap all that into a thriller, with a dose of the "direction of gravity-bending" that we saw on his much earlier novel "ON" and you have Lake of Darkness.

23. Late Train to Gipsy Hill, Alan Johnson (book club, me)

I read this last year and enjoyed it greatly. So I suggested it as my pick for the current round of book club reads. I picked it up intending to skim-read it again so I could be ready for our next meeting but find myself re-reading the whole thing.

24. The Cracked Mirror, Chris Brookmyre

The publicity for this made it irresistable for me and I ordered it from Waterstones. A character recognisable as Agatha Christie's Jane Marple meets a stereotypical LA cop who breaks the law to catch the bad guys and they work on a series of related cases. They're under pressure to dismiss the deaths as suicide but there are too many parallels and coincidences. This is a terrific page turner but it goes all weird at the end as we discover more about the computer games and the elusive tech bro at the centre of everything. There's a mixture of satisfying resolution to the whodunnit aspect and the, for me, less satisfying computer gaming aspects. But a good yarn for sure.

25. Saltblood, Francesca de Torres

One from my visit to the Victoria Bookshop in June. I'm glad I picked it up. It's a richly-told story of a woman whose entire identity must be hidden from birth in order to survive in a variety fo contexts. After a period in service in a big house she enters the navy, then the army, then the infantry - all while pretending to be her dead brother. A marriage and a brief spell running a pub with her Dutch husband and a miscarriage later, she joins a merchant ship and ends up as a pirate alongside another womaan. They're not the same in their upbringing and outlook but mutual support in each other. Terrific stuff.

26. Goodbye to Russia, Sarah Rainsford

I picked this up on a visit to the Aldeburgh Bookshop. I was keen to hear directly from Sarah Rainsford who knows more than most about the reality of Putin's Russia. She talks about her own journey to Leningrad as a student with her friend Mishal (Husain) and later living in Moscow as first a news producer and then reporter. Her expulsion in August 2021 followed her questioning Lukashenko during a press conference he was giving in Minsk. She details how Putin's twisted mind justifies the invasion of Ukraine; how so many Ukrainians couldn't believe that their close cousins would do such a thing; the unspeakable cruelty of the war crimes committed in the name of 'liberation'; and how gradually, inexorably, Putin has restrained and repressed to build the criminal Mafia state that Russia is today. The work of Bill Browder (and Alan Johnson's fictional account) are all there. The only suprise for me was that her close colleague, BBC Russia Editor Steve Rosenberg, doesn't get a single mention. One can only speculate why.

As Sarah Rainsford says: Putin is Bucha. Putin is Mariupol.

27. The End of Summer, Charlotte Philby

This is Charlotte Philby's fifth book and, I think, her best yet. This is a very readable mystery that kept me turning the pages throughout. You know the principal protagonist is lying all the time: it's the way she does it, the people she fools and the others who lie with her that makes this intriguing. Excellent stuff.

28. The Catch, T M Logan (book club, Nickie)

With apologies to Nickie, this is the most turgid, dull book I've read for a while. Not a single twist or surprise; 100% predictability delivered with leaden prose.

29. Precipice, Robert Harris

I was excited to go and see Robert Harris in Ely at the end of August. I've read all his novels except two of the Roman ones and have first editions of all of them except Enigma. This one concerns the affair between the Prime Minister H H Asquith (61) and Venetia Stanley (27) in the run up to and first years of WWI. Theirs was the extremely limited world of huge privilege with servants all around their multiple grand houses. The families were inter-married and all knew each other (the Churchils were very much part of this set). Venetia Stanley was intelligent and resentful of the box that women of her time were put in. Asquith was a ridiculous old man with a school-boy infatuation. His letters to Venetia - typically three a day - were full of highly sensitive info from the cabinet room. He included decrypts of secret messages sent between potential enemies and, from his own side, detailed military deployments. Some of the secret info he would toss out of the window of the car in which he took her for drives on a Friday afternoon. That is, papers that only 5 people in the country were allowed to see, thrown out of the window for anyone to pick up. Harris uses this material and his own imagination to create an excellent novel that I enjoyed during a Newport visit.

When I went up to get my copy personally signed by Robert Harris, I also took my copy of Fatherland that he had originally dedicated to someone else. So my copy now has two dedications from the author. I couldn't take all my copies of his books but I did also get him to sign the first one of his I bought (Archangel). Definitely a good evening.

30. Now What? Carol Vorderman

I picked this up at the Victoria Bookshop and was able to read it within a couple of days in Newport. The book is aimed at people who aren't engaged in following politics by showing why it matters. That's fhe first section. Then she chronicles the most egregious actions of the Tories over the last 14 years. I recall all these as they're very recent history but it's helpful and, I think, important, to write it all down. Example after example of Tory corruption. Vorderman goes in particularly hard on the repeated lies told by Michelle Mone and her husband as they tried desperately to cover up their blatantly corrupt PPE contracts. May their fines be heavy.

The book ends with a ten-point plan for improving things, any one of which would be a definite step forwards. So, an easy, quick read. I very much like the way that Carol Vorderman uses her platform to highlight just how awful the Tories have been. Think of it as a lightweight version of James O'Brien's excellent How They Broke Britain.

31. Exodus, Peter F Hamilton

As ever, Peter F Hamilton creates an entire universe with a deep history and lays a thrilling story on top. Absolutely first class stuff. There are a lot of characters to keep in mind - I found it difficult to keep track of some of them. I know I'll struggle when the second book arrives, probably in about a year's time. It's taken me 5 weeks to read all 900 pages but I enjoyed every page. Terrific.

32. Mr Mac and Me, Esther Freud (book club, Fiona)

I had difficulty getting through this. It describes the life of a teenage boy growing up in Walberswick who befriends Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife who spent some years living there before and in the early years of WWI. It's descriptive and evocative, sure, but it's also very slow.

33. Fortress Sol, Stephen Baxter

Very typical of Stephen Baxter's work. Lots of physics, enormous spans of time and what may or may not be an intelligence that definitely isn't represented by costume-wearing Americans. This one sees a life form that somehow lives off matter-anti-matter reactions. At first humanity sees them as a threat (well, they did destroy Neptune) but it's used as justification for the imposition of a totalitarian regime across the solar system. The sun is wrapped in a material that makes it seem like a dead black hole, while the whole solar system is encased in a vast mask. The return home of an ark ship is the catalyst for a change. That aspect maps directly to Peter F Hamilton's Exodus. Having read that so recently, I did have a minor problem differentiating the two storylines.

34. The Siege, Ben Macintyre

Another triumph for Ben Macintyre. I went to an author event of his in Ely and heard him give his short talk on the topic - which was highly engaging and amusing. I only have a vague memory of the Iranian Embassy Siege. I thought that was the Balcombe Street siege but that was the IRA in 1975 when I was only 12. I was 17 when the Iranian Embassy siege took place in 1980 - a time when I barely paid any attenton to what was going on outside the charts of the time (Dexy's Midnight Runners, Geno was number one, Johnny Logan had won Eurovision with What's Another Year). I digress. Macintyre is brilliant at this kind of history. He gathers the facts and then tells the story in the style of a thriller. PC Trevor Lock was exactly the right policeman to be on duty that day. Integrity, bravery, service - a man who represented the best of the Police. There were others in the embassy who were able to keep theselves together and do what was needed to keep the atmosphere as calm as possible and thereby save lives. Only two hostages died in the whole of the siege. Only one of the gunmen survived the raid that made the SAS famous. I read this in less than a week.

35. The Alaska Sanders Affair, Joël Dicker

One I picked up when browsing the signed first editions at the Victoria Bookshop. An excellent crime novel, not a police procedural as such but a set up and investigation set in multiple sites across New England. Diversions and red herrings a-plenty. I confidently predicted the real killer on several occasions, never accurately. Very enjoyable.

36. Alien Clay, Adrian Tchaikovsky

Tchaikovsky is the absolute master of this kind of story based on alternative evolutionary paths. The setting is a penal colony run by a totalitarian, multi-world regime in which science must bend to the racist dogma. Since humans are the pinacle, all evolution must tend towards the human form. Scientists who point out the nonsense of the dogma are, of course, seen as heretics and consigned to penal colony planets like Kiln. Surely this is a cry against the post-truth, Trumpian/Faragian world of alternative facts. The biochemistry of Kiln is different from Earth's but, well life adapts …

37. The Christmas Jigsaw Murders, Alexandra Benedict

I generally try and squeeze in a festive murder story before Christmas. This one has various clues, anagrams and more woven into the story itself - only some of which I noticed of course. A cantakerous and eccentric 80 year old woman, who makes a living as a crossword compiler, has lost friends and family over her life and, of course, by the end, regrets it all. It's a retelling of A Christmas Carol although without the ghosts (there are multiple Dickens references throughout). I wonder what Alexandra Benedict made of the recent hit BBC TV series Ludwig in which a cantankerous crossword compiler solves crimes.

38. Time's Legacy, Barbara Erskine (book club, Helen)

Bit of a slog to be honest. The protagonist is a young, good looking woman who is also a priest. The baddie is her boss, the vicar, and we enter a world of bishops and middle class families. But the focus of the story is the visit to Glastonbury by a young Jesus who is under the tutelage of a Druid priestess. We hop between Roman and modern times with tensions and cliff hangers in both timelines. I really can't be doing with ghosts and all those men and women who put so much belief in ghosts, prayers and crystals - well, it is set mostly in Glastonbury. It reminded me a lot of the Phil Rickman book I worked my way through in '23.