Books read in 2025
1. The Dutch House, Ann Patchett (Book Club Secret Santa from Kate)
I enjoyed this far more than I feared I might. It tells the story of Danny and his elder sister Maeve from childhood into adulthood,with the Dutch House playing a role in the story as much as the love between the siblings. Beginning in the 50s, it's set in Philidelphia and New York and so has that extra resonance for me. Excellent story telling. Ann Patchett moves from present day back to different moments in history, focusing on differnet people as needed. Really good.
2. Annihilation, Michel Houellebecq
I bought this on my first visit to the Topping's shop in Ely. It looked like an intriguing French thriller and I was looking forward to reading it. Well, it was French. The narrative focuses on the life of a senior French civil servant who, yes, is tangentially involved in a terror plot but that's a tiny part of the story. Long, slow.
3. Guilty By Definition, Susie Dent
The former Oxford English Dictionary lexicologist turns her hand to delivering a mystery centred on the lexicologists of the Oxford English Dictionary. Naturally, Susie Dent makes great use of her extensive knowledge of historial words. It's a very enjoyable read with the feel of a Miss Marple mystery or Midsommer Murders story as the disappearance of the primary character's sister more than a decade ago is gradually explained. There's also a strong and welcome thread of dealing with sexism.
4. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiel Hammett (book club, me)
This was one of the Folio society books that I inherited from Maz. I took the opportunity to suggest this as a book club choice to prompt me to read it.
As King George III supposedly said of Hamlet: "too many quotations!" Well, not so much quotations as stereotypes of the hard-nosed private detective who uses various illegal and barley-legal means to achieve the right thing in the end, mistreating women at every turn. Except that this is one of the books that defined the genre. It's a century old now and the attitudes to women are particularly unpleasant. Apart from that, the various players all seeking a supposedly valuable statuette (of a falcon) are all as bad as each other and Sam Spade gets the better of all of them. What I hadn't known was that at the beginning of the book, Spade has a partner called Miles Archer. He doesn't last long but his brother, Phil, appears once in a while. Who knew!
5. Patriot, Alexei Navalny
Birthday present from D.
Navalny was a man of extraordinary bravery, driven by a deep love of his country and a desire for all Russians to thrive. Rather than accept the corruption and criminality of the gang that runs the Kremlin, he chose to fight it by exposing what Putin and his cronies were up to with incontrovertible evidence and good humour, qualities that gained him widespread support. Putin killed him for it.
When I hear Putin aplogists saying that somehow the war in Ukraine is the fault of Ukraine itself, or NATO, The West, Zelenskiyy or whoever else they pick on at random, I think of Sarah Rainsford reporting on the war crimes committed in Bucha and Mariupol and of being thrown out of Russia, of Bill Browder fighting Putin's corruption, of Navalny's press secretary Kira Yarmysh's experience in prison and of Navalny's bravery and inspiring patriotism.
6. Dirty Money, Charlotte Philby
Philby's new detective is a privileged woman whose brother becomes Home Secretary. She's also friends with a recovering drug addict who used to be a journalist and who is constantly in mortal danger having exposed a drug lord. Of course our detective is unorthodox and has a poor relationship with her boss but always gets results.
The setting is London and there are any number of journeys across town and references to parts of the city that of course I have no idea where they are other than being somewhere within the M25, so that's all a bit lost on me (and a tad irritating tbh). In a fictional setting, the author will take the trouble to describe where places are, at least in relation to each other. Like all Londoners, Charlotte Philby assumes everyone knows where Pimlico is in relation to Knightsrbidge.
I'm being way too negative. I enjoyed this a lot and raced through it.The plot was original (within the genre), the characters likeable and relatable, the story-telling excellent as always. I'm delighted that I'll have a chance to meet Charlotte Philby at an event at Hull Library in a couple of months' time.
7. The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Natasha Pulley
Ooh this was a good 'un. I enjoyed the Mars House last year and am now booked to go to see Natasha Pulley at two events in the space of a week shortly. I'd signed up for an event with Topping's in Ely, including paying for the new book, and then saw that she's doing an event at Waterstone's in Chelmsford two days before with Claire North. Gotta go to that one. I'd feel bad if I cancelled the Ely one so... I'll go to both.
Ahead of meeting Natasha Pulley and hearing about her new book, I wanted to read this, her first novel. It's absolutely terrific. And it even has some timey-wimeyness that is reminiscent of Claire North's Harry August. Keito Mori is a Japanese Baron who makes exceptional clockwork objects. Thaniel Steepleton is a seemingly bland character who works as a telgraphist at the Home Office (to start with). They form an unlikely friendship in the midsts of an Irish terrorist campaign. Grace Carrow, a scientist fighting the ridiculous patriarchy and mysogeny of the day completes the set of primary characters.
My copy is a special first edition. Number 63 of 300 with a printed cover, not a dust cover, and a circle cut in the front to reveal a watch underneath. An object of pleasure in itself. I ummed abd ahhed about asking Natasha to sign it personally but when it came to it (17 April 2025), I did. Having noticed that it was a special first edition, she asked me very directly "are you sure?" Having thought about it I said "it will reduce the value but it will mean more to me".
8. Death at the White Hart, Chris Chibnall
I enjoyed going to the Topping & Co event with Chris Chibnall. Event organiser, Emma, said she read this book in four hours. That was probably not much less than the cumulative time I spent reading this too. It's an enjoyable if rather sterotypical police procedural in rural England. The characters are, for the main part, all drawn to type and the plot is interesting enough to keep you engaged and guessing, sure, but it's not the most challenging of whodunnits. The only unusual thing that I could see was that the young detective (known as Westlife because of his boyish good looks) was not a bumbling idiot as a foil to DS Nicola Bridge's brilliance.
Unsurprisingly given the author, the TV adaptation is in hand and the second book is nearing completion. My question to Chris Chibnall was something like "you said you're the one doing the screen adaptation? Despite your track record, surely the last person who should be doing that is you?" He said it was being done by a team, not just him. When I saw Claire North and Natasha Pulley in conversation (15 April 2025) in Chelmsford, they brought up the issue of screen adaptations of their work and said, as I had thought, that authors should never adapt their own work. I was able to relay the exchange I'd had with Chibnall.
9. Idolfire, Grace Curtis
I very rarely go anywhere near fantasy. Magic potions, dragons and quests leave me cold for the most part. But this one I very much enjoyed, despite one of the protagonists being a princess with some magical powers on a quest that will decide whether or not she takes the throne hooking up with a peasant girl who's jolly handy when it comes to hunting, lighting fires and generally surviving off the land.
IIRC I picked up Grace Curtis's first novel, Frontier when browsing in a London Waterstone's. Having enjoyed that, I eagerly bought her second, Floating Hotel and now this, her third. Interleaved with the questing and fighting off brutal would-be warlords in strange lands with alternating impenetrable forests, wide open plains and storm-raged seas is the evolving and complex relationship between Aleya and Kirby. I raced through this is little more than a week and look forward to her next, even if it is another fantasy.
My copy is personally signed although I have yet to meet Grace Curtis. I ordered it online from Topping's. By default, online orders go to the Edinburgh branch where she was due to do an event. Hence the remotely-arranged personal signature.
10. The Death Of Us, Abigail Dean
Another superb book from Abigain Dean. It has her trademark theme of how loving relationships evolve and cope with long-term trauma. In this case the trauma is caused by an "Invader" who targets well-off couples and families, raping the wife while the husband is immobilised through threat and the fear of worse should he resist. It completely dominates the rest of the lives of Isabel and Edward, pushing and pulling them in every direction. It took me a little while to work out that the Isabel chapters were her writing to the Invader, Nigel Wood, while the Edward chapters were third person narration of "now". That made for brilliant story-telling.
Very much a "couldn't put it down" book. Abigail Dean signed it at Golsboro Books on 10 April. I finished it ten days later, Easter Sunday.
11. Piranesi, Susanna Clarke (Book club, Kate)
Mixed feelings on this one. The set up is that there is a parallel world, built of an infinite series of halls with statues. Sea fills the lower halls, clouds the upper ones. Piranesi lives in the middle layer, surviving on fish. And yet he can read and write, and there is one other person who he sees twice a week and who apparently can provide new shoes, blank journals, pens and other things not of this world. So there's something not right about any of this. Gradually we discover the truth of who Piranesi really is, which he has completely forgotten, and how he got there. The relevant episode of Radio 4's book club is helpful.
12. A Trial in Three Acts, Guy Morpuss
I can't remember where I bought this but it was on a general browse, probably Waterstone's. The central event takes place during a play when a murder scene that has been performed many times actually does result in the murder of the actor. Around that we have the murder trial and the back story of how the characters all ended up where they were with the relevant loves, hates and betrayals. No spoilers but the murderer, as always, almost got away with it. Great story telling with laughs throughout. The only slight negative I'd say was that what I thought was a red herring turned out to be a series of massive clues to the real murderer's identity. In other words, the real culprit was signalled a long way before the end. But overall, good fun.
13. The Cure, Eve Smith
I rarely say that a book is an author's best yet but I'm pretty sure this is. As with Eve Smith's previous works, this one describes a dystopia that is created as a direct consequence of a change in healthcare. In the Waiting Rooms it was the rationing if antibiotics to address resistance, in Off Target it's the unwanted effects of meddling with a foetus's genes, in One it's a strict one child policy. Now in The Cure, it's the cure for old age. Like John Wyndham's Trouble with Lichen, we have an ethical female scientist whose work is exploited by their unethical boss/research partner. Massive inequality between the haves and have nots ensues. Old people who don't retire blocking the careers of young people and, of course, massive over-population. As with Logan's Run, the solution is age-based euthanasia - for the hoi polloi only of course. As well as the original scientist, there's a highly-motivated investigator and, in the background, the money and obsession of a chimera of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos ('Busk'). Top notch stuff.
14. On Angel Mountain, Brian John
Inevitably, I read this on a visit to Newport and, yes, read some on Angel Mountain itself (Carn Ingli). I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would and am keen to read the others in the series. The book itself takes the form of diary entries over an eventful year in Martha Morgan's life that includes her wedding, a miscarriage, dealing with a French invasion, wrongful imprisonment and more. The resonance for me, of course, is the location. Plas Ingli doesn't exist any more (if it ever did) although the map records Ingli Lodge where the Plas is located. But all of the farms and locations mentioned in the book certainly do. I took a very enjoyable circular walk that included them all - Dolrannog Uchaf and Isaf, Penrhiw, Lannerch and Cilgwyn. There you can see the mill that features in the story and the house Trefelin which gets a mention too. The book begins with a modern day account of how Brian John came across Martha Morgan's papers. The book is a novel so whether any of that modern day account is true, I guess only a few people know for sure. Trefelin, in Cilgywn, is the address of the publisher and, until recently, the site of a Bluestone Museum.
That's the other resonance.
The series of books about Mistress Martha is very much a side hustle for Brian John. He's an eminent geomorphologist and exact contemporary of another eminent geologist and glaciologist who, through my work at W3C, I came to know: Geoffrey Boulton. I was lucky enough to be able to hear his talk on the Stonehenge Bluestones. Over the course of a 90 minute talk, Brian John laid out all the evidence why the notion that Mesolithic people quarried and carried the Preseli Bluestones to Wiltshire to create Stonehenge is complete bunk. In particular, Mike Parker Pearson's conjecture that an original circle, first built at Waun Mawn, was transported wholesale to Stonehenge is shown as being ludicrous. I was well aware of that story having seen the glossy TV documentary with Alice Roberts and duly went to visit the stones with my daughter not long afterwards. Brian John has written extensively on this topic. His academic article, Waun Mawn and the search for "Proto- Stonehenge" documents his response to Mike Parker Pearson's original The original Stonehenge? A dismantled stone circle in the Preseli Hills of west Wales.
The myth and mystery around the Preseli Bluestones (which aren't actually blue at all) is naturally captivating. It speaks to a set of very human emotions. Preseli is indeed a special and spiritual place, one to which I am drawn again and again. But there never was a quarry, and no humans ever transported those stones to Wiltshire. It was the glaciers what did it.
15. The Sunshine Man, Emma Stonex
I saw this in the Victoria Bookshop and immediately picked it up. Not just because it was a signed special indy bookshop edition but because I'd enjoyed The Lamplighters. This one tells the story of the intertwined lives of people who grew up in the same small village. There are the haves and the have nots, the "bad family" and the "good families". Events have long-lasting impacts. Good stuff.
16. The Anniversary, Stephanie Bishop (book club, Elaine)
This was a good choice by Elaine. There was a lot more depth than typical "something happens and we gradully find out why stories". At the heart of it is the protagonist's struggle to prove that she is her own woman; that her talent is her own and that she is not her more famous husband's protégé. As her star rises, his falls and still she's seen as "the wife who was his young student". Her behaviour after the husband is swept overboard from their cruise ship is distinctly odd but becomes slightly less odd as her full story is revealed. Can't help think of the enormous cost of so many last-minute flight and hotel bookings.
I did not read Dark Diamond, Neal Asher for documented reasons.
17. Other People's Houses, Clare Mackintosh
The third Ffion Morgan/Leo Brady novel following the Last Party and Game of Lies. Leo's ex-wife is a prominent character this time. She's an absessive social climber trying desperately to inveigle her way into the small cul de sac of upmarket houses. Those houses are the location for multiple crimes that turn out to all be connected over the years. As ever, not everyone is who they seem to be and motives can last for years. Oh and Clare Mackintosh clearly has a downer on estate agents! Enjoyable easy reading.
18. The Hymn to Dionysus, Natasha Pulley
This was a bit of a slog - it's not a quick read - but it is very good. The works of Dionysus are revealed as they affect an individual knight, Phaidros, so it's largely him that sings the hymn. Dionysus is at the centre of the madness and tumult that grips Thebes, and it's Phaidros that finds himself fighting to uphold his oaths and duties to Queen Agave. It's not like the other Ancient Greece books I've read recently (Claire North, Rosie Hewlett, Jennifer Saint) that tell well-known stories from less well-known points of view, and the distinction made between a witch's magic and the acts of capricious gods seemed a little odd but it all fits together beautifully. Natasha Pulley uses all her erudition and linguistic skill to create a first class book.
19. The Paris Express, Emma Donoghue
This is a very good novelization of a real event when an express train from Brittany to Paris ended up crashing through the terminal station concourse. The only fatality was the newspaper seller who was unfortunate enough to be underneath the train when it landed on top of her. Emma Donohuge researched the accident itself and all of the known passengers and, from that, developed a story that, while not entirely true, certainly could have been given the known facts. The journey itself, the passengers and where the boarded all provide the narrative structure. Those of us unfamiliar with the facts don't know how the journey ends, only that it doesn't end well. So there is a build up of tension. Good stuff.
20. A Murder in Paris, Matthew Blake
More Parisian scenes but a very different scenario. The plot and interweaving personalities are good. We have historical facts, survivors of the Holocaust and of the occupation, murders, suspects, bertrayals, lies and modern-day themes of - spolier alert - coercive control and false relationships with under cover police. That's all packed into what is a pretty short novel. But the execution is lacking. When you're told early on, in direct terms, that the primary character has a secret that's affected her adult life and keep being told that, without being told what it is, it's not intriguing, it's irritatating. A more experienced author would find more subtle and literary ways to convey that. Blake's handling of the character of Tom was much better, but generally speaking it felt rather pedestrian. And, while short chapters are always a help, these were too short. Narratives carry on from one chapter to the next in a way that rather made the point that all that was needed was a blank line between two paragraphs.
I bought this on the day of its publication (3/7/25) and finished it within a week. When I read Anna O last year I had a suspicion that it was his one great idea and I wanted to test that with his second novel. Anna O is terrific and well-written. On current evidence, A Murder in Paris suggests my suspicion was correct. It is perhaps notable that Victoria Bookshop in Haverfordwest, where I bought my signed first edition of Anno O didn't stock A Murder in Paris and when I bought it in Waterstone's Ipswich I think it was the only copy on the shelf. No promotional events from what I can see, and it was published at a fallow time of year. Hmmm … maybe the original deal was for two books and this one was published because of that obligation? I hope not - there's real potential in Matthew Blake's work. I'll look out for novel 3 with interest.
21. Proof, Adam Kucharski
This piqued my interest on a visit to the Victoria Bookshop. The author was one of the experts whose deep understanding of statistics, data and what they do and don't show put them at the heart of decision making during the COVID pandemic. From the Monty Hall problem (why is it always better to switch?) through to handling small data sets, the book is a very readable account of some tricky concepts and logical conundrums.
22. The Salt Path, Raynor Winn (Book club, Nickie)
This was chosen for the book club before, writing in the Observer, Chloe Hadjimatheou reported that the story as told in the book is at least largely a lie. "Moth and Raynor Winn" are actually Sally and Tim Walker. There's strong evidence that Sally embezzled money out of her former employer. Most importantly, a long walk will not cure CBD. Hadjimatheou's video is worth a watch. See also Wikipedia. At the time I read this (late July 2025), there were more revelations and details still emerging.
Knowing that any kernel of truth was buried within a false narrative, I tried to read this purely as fiction. A bit like Brian John's creation of Mistress Martha on Angel Mountain. Carn Ingli exists as do all the places mentioned, but the narrative, while largely plausible, is fictionalised. Winn's descriptions of the sections of the South West Coast Path that I have walked certainly seemed fully authentic. One of the lines of the narrative is that Moth is repeatedly mistaken for Simon Armitage. He became Poet Laureate in May 2019, 6 years after the events in the Salt Path reportedly ocurred. I admit I hadn't heard of him then, so, no criticism that Ray and Moth hadn't heard of him either. However, I did not find it credible that so many people they met along the way would have known who Simon Armitage was, let alone, taken Moth to be him.
With all that, I take it as an account of a long walk, a love story, and a "triumph in adversity" story, set against a part of the country that is well known and greatly loved. It's all that, for sure. But it ain't a way to overcome an incurable disease.
23. Little Red Death, Alexandra (A.K.) Benedict
Wow, this was a page turner. Although I am useless at spotting clues that writers as clever as Alexandrea Benedict insert into her books, this was a terrific read. DC Lyla Rondell is working the case of the Grimm Ripper - a serial killer whose murders are all fairy take themed, as was the sudden disappearance of her teenage best friend Allison. All is not as it seems of course and there's a lot of the writer's craft on show here. Thoroughly enjoyable.
24. House of Angels, 25. Dark Angel, Brian John
The Angel Mountain Saga/Mistress Martha Morgan books 2 & 3.
Having enjoyed On Angel Mountain far more than I thought I would, inevitably, I want to read the remainder of the series. These two books see Martha dealing with tragedy, love, criminals out to get her, children growing up, mysterious figures and much intrigue. There are a further two books in the series presented as Martha's diary and then three more volumes of stories set around the same characters. I'll get to those in the coming months.
As I write, I'm in Newport for another week and have spent more time walking and cycling around Carn Ingli, the Dolrannog road where Plas Ingli is imagined to have been, Llanerch and Pontfean. I'm seeing the mountain and things like Bedd Morris in ways I've never seen before and enjoying every minute of it.
I was delighted on this visit to be able to visit Brian and Inger John and buy the remainder of the series direct from the author himself.
26. Son, Johanna Gustawsson & Thomas Enger
A good Nordic Noir, clearly set up for a series featuring the "human lie detector" Kari Voss. Standard fare in terms of the police jumping to the obvious conclusion based on the overwhleming evidence but, well, Kari sees something else. Enjoyable page turner.
27. This is Not a Game, Kelly Mullen
Over-contrived big house murder mystery. The cast is assembled, no one can escape, the snow is falling, the draw bridge is firmly up, everyone has an alibi, everyone is lying. Hmmm... not great but an easy read.
28. The Cut Throat Trial, The Secret Barrister writing as S J Fleet
