Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham - MC Beaton (1999)

I really hate being disappointed in a book. Not that I don't get annoyed at a disappointing movie or album or whatever, but there's something particularly unexpected and irksome about a poor book from a trusted writer. Note - not a disaster from a favourite writer; that'd be a cause for real concern, not my current feeling of vague irritation. Don't get me wrong, this is not John Irving's descent from the majesty of A Prayer for Owen Meaney to that dull one about tattooists (or, on a muscial note, Bowie managing to go from Scary Monsters to Never Let me Down in a few short years), but still I found myself turning each page with an almost audible grunt of dissatisfaction and a sense of being very ineptly mugged.

It'd be too tiresome to go into some sort of line by line breakdown of what's wrong with this book (and besides, it's fairly clear no editor ever bothered such an analysis prior to publication, so why should I?), but it'd be facile to just shrug and say 'it didn't work for me' when there is actual stuff which can be pointed at accusingly.

It's not very well written but anyone coming to one of Beaton's cosy mysteries expecting scintillating dialogue and subtle characterisation is in for a nasty shock. As with all the other Agatha Raisin mysteries, every character uses the exact same voice, the heroine and her coterie of friends and admirers are so sketchily, well sketched, that were it not for someone occasionally baldly stating their ages the reader would struggle to pin them down to within a couple of decades. At times even that doesn't really help much - Agatha herself is at times described as a pensioner and middle-aged and jumps in and out of bed with the gay abandon of a teenager, while I still have no idea what age her occasional paramour, Charles, is supposed to be.

More importantly though, the actual solution to the mystery is both extremely obvious from the very beginning and, crucially and disappointingly, is solved by Charles taking 'a lucky guess' and thus discovering the murderer. Throw in a small village in which - because it suits the plot - there lives a sound engineer who can also set up bugs on people, about fifty unhappily married and easily seduced women and a seeming innocent who just happens to have connections in the Glasgow underworld...oh never mind. I can already feeling myself considering looking up a few examples of utter stupidity and I said I wasn't going to do that.

Suffice to say that usually Beaton turns out uninspired but comfortingly cosy mysteries - this, however, falls well below even that standard.

Like Agatha and any of her tediously uncaring lovers I'm horribly disappointed...

The Immorality Engine - George Mann (2011)

You know what's particularly annoying about most alternate Britains, especially steampunk ones? It's the fact that the author seems far too often to think that all that's required is to stick a Zeppelin or two in the sky and allude to brass instruments a lot and that means he's done his job. The flip-side of this overly lazy approach is no better either: the type of book which doesn't really have a story as such, just a series of carefully constructed non-electronic machines, described in lovingly autistic detail, with a plot of sorts hazily sketched in between clockwork robots and steam powered spaceships, like an inconvenient addendum.

So, the fact that George Mann's alternate England is one where the machinery complements rather than swamps the story puts him ahead of the game from page one. This world is one where steam-driven machinery is everywhere, but only mentioned when the exploits of Sir Maurice Newbury and Miss Veronica Hobbes require it. The same goes for the Revenant (for which, basically, read 'zombie') plague which lay at the core of the first N&H book. There are still revenants wandering about London, but they remain in the background, because they're not needed in this book. Miss Hobbes may mention a zeppelin on the horizon in passing, but she feels no need to delineate the exact mix of hydrogen to helium required to make it float, or to give us a potted alternate history of flying machines. Like the maps at the beginning of epic fantasy novels, such concerns have their place, but are only of fleeting interest - they might provide what marketeers refer to as Added Value, but they're not the reason for purchase.

As a result, Mann's London feels like a real place, with a real (if different) history and a cast of real (if different) people, who step forward and back into and out of the narrative when the situation requires and not simply to show how clever the author can be,

Queen Victoria in this world, for example, has existed since the first novel as a malevolent spider at the centre of a web of tubes and coils, piping and pumps, all designed to artificially extend her life. In The Immorality Engine she achieves centre stage while rarely actually appearing as it becomes crystal clear that everything which has happened to date is a consequence of her altogether selfish machinations. Newbury and Hobbes, meanwhile, continue their will-they, won't-they dance round one another and Charles Bainbridge (in many ways my favourite character in the series) continues to struggle between what he'd like to be true and what evidently and actually is.

On which subject, this book successfully addresses one minor failing (if you can call it that) of the earlier books. There's far more emotional depth to the characters here than before. There was always a sneaking suspicion in the two earlier novels that Newbury and Hobbes' mutual attraction was more a matter of authorial fiat than growing naturally from two characters in real sympathy with one another, but here Mann treats the relationship (and that between the two and Bainbridge) with a wonderfully deft touch. That Newbury's opium addiction, initially obviously reminiscent of Holmes' cocaine habit, is overcome under Miss Hobbes' ministrations is refreshing in itself, as it sets Newbury apart from that too famous detective. Better still, however, towards the end of the book it seems possible that Newbury will have to re-addict himself for the good of Miss Hobbes and her ailing sister. Layers pile upon layers in a relationship which could easily have appeared artificial until it's clear that Mann intended this slow growth in affection all along.

Don't be fooled however; this is not a novel of romance only. Mann is one of the best writers of action sequences in any genre, and he never fails to impress here, with several set pieces which glory in quick shifts of perspective, sudden bursts of activity and sundry feats of derring-do. Bainbridge under attack from rockets and ruffians; robotic horses at the charge; and more than one mechanical spider armed with razor sharp blades - Mann treats the reader to all this and more with apparently effortless skill.

Like Paul Magrs' Brenda and Effie series or George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman, this is a book which can be read as a standalone or, more profitably, as one in a series of increasingly impressive volumes. If you haven't tried any Newbury and Hobbes yet, this is the perfect time to jump on, while the series is still young.

Trust me, this is a series that could run and run...

[Oh, btw, I get thanked in the acknowledgements but that doesn't make me any more of a fan of the book - it's a chicken and egg thing. If I didn't think it was a great series, I wouldn't have been a proof-reader and so wouldn't appear in the acknowledgements!]

Clearing the Decks...

I've been finishing things off recently, clearing the decks for new things and consigning the old to the book cases that used to be kitchen cabinets in the shed, and to big black folders full of dvds.

We limped to the end of The Duchess of Duke Street for one. Slightly disappointingly the second - and final - series tailed off rather than thundering to the finish, with loose ends too conveniently tied up and the emerging storyline of Louisa's relationship with her daughter too quickly settled. It's be interesting to know about the production gossip of the time for this series - was it cancelled with pretty short notice, so that John Hawkesworth needed to cram too much into too little space, perhaps? Lalla Ward as the all singing and dancing daughter is actually much better than I expected (though not a par on the fabulous Gemma Jones or Richard Vernon) but I do find it odd to hear her described as a ravishing beauty, when so far as I can see she has that English Rose quality best summed up as a cross between a horse and a mildly embarrassed bottle of milk. Sort of Gail Tilsley with sex appeal.

I (as opposed to we) also finished the second season of the adult cartoon, Archer. A recommendation from the always reliable Rob, I wasn't sure about this madly OTT tale of a sex mad super spy, his vile, alcoholi cmother and hs collection of psychotic work colleagues, but it grew on me and by the end I was really looking forward to each episode. And is it wrong to find the women in a cartoon a tiny bit sexy?

We (as opposed to I) also finished Endgame (another Rob recommendation), a Canadian mystery show about an agrophobic chess grandmaster. If you've not already seen it, it's probably not worth bothering with since vieweing figures which Channel 5 would be ashamed of led to its cancellation towards the end of season one. Shame, as it was a neat little show, even if the link to chess was too often tangential at best.

Oh and I watched the first couple of episodes of Pathfinders, a seventies drama series about bombers in the war, but it was dully written and acted so I bailed...

A pile of books got read in the last week or so too - best of the set was Ben Aaranovitch's Remembrance of the Daleks, which it turns out I'd never read. Long mentioned as the first (if unofficial) Virgn New Adventure, this book is fabulous, witty and clever - and so has nothing in common with the vast majority of gritty grimefests which most often characterised the NAs.

I also finished off Deadline, sequel to last year's excellent Feed - like Duchess of Duke Street it was very good but ended poorly; George Mann's Paradox Lost, which is easily one of the top few Dr Who NSAs; and read - in draft format - an exciting new project which Obverse might soon be involved with.

And now onto new stuff - Bill Bryson's new book waits plumply by my bed, Upstairs Downstairs sits in the dvd player and I will soon have Pathfinders in Space ordered from Network.

Feed - Mira Grant (2010)

Zombies are boring. Sorry, but it's a fact.

You can do the George Romero thing of having a small group or community menaced by hordes of the shuffling bastards, but other than that all you have is over-reaching gimmicky pap like those Pride and Prejudice and Zombies novels, and humorous uses like Michael Jackson's Thriller video.

The problem is that they only really do a couple of things well. Menacing shambling can be pretty effective if there's enough of them or if the intended victim is in some way hemmed in (which is why 'The Walking Dead' works best in scenes featuring hundreds of swarming undead). And they can look pretty good lunging forward out of dark corners to take a quick, gory bite out of the neck of some passer-by. But other than that...

Until now, that is. I'd never heard of Mira Grant or 'Feed' until it featured on the internet's most enjoyable podcast, Writer and Critic (hosted by Fandom's Nicest Man, Ian Mond, and what may well be Fandom's Sexiest Voice, Kirstyn McDermott). I'm so glad I have now though. Grant's taken a genre which was tired and hackneyed almost from the moment it was born and - somewhat ironically - injected new life into it. Zombies still hirple round biting and infecting people in Feed's 2040 but they're not the story in any sense.

In fact, actual zombies as zombies play a very minor role in the book, although it's made clear that the threat they pose is the single most important thing in the life of every person. Instead, the virus which has infiltrated every person's (and every other large mammal's) bloodstream is the central danger. Designed as a cure for the common cold, but mutated into a lethal virus which can either randomly turn a person into a zombie (or, 'amplify' them) during life or, invariably, upon death, the Kellis-Amberlee virus is incurable, easily contracted via contact and invariably and swiftly lethal.

That last is fairly important actually - the virus is only 'swiftly' and not, say, 'instantaneously' lethal, primarily because it can be weaponised and injected, shot in a dart, swallowed and so forth. So instead of zombie victims disappearing under a mass of rending, tearing flesh, it's possible for people to be infected at a distance from the actual danger ('I was dead the second the hypodermic hit my arm', as one character says matter-of-factly). As a result they then have time for effecting final words and, more importantly, to pass on information vital to the plot.

Because this is a book with a proper, fairly convoluted plot, which at a stroke pushes it beyond even Romero's movies. Put in a single sentence, Feed is a political thriller as good as any other, but set in a world where zombies are a reality. It's a brilliant idea and Grant really runs with it. The possibility of infection informs literally everything that the characters do. There's no death penalty except for terrorism, for instance, which makes sense in a world in which the newly dead are as likely to rip your face off as lie there quietly. Apple make the very best infection testing kits (not called 'iZombie', sadly), Alaska has been abandoned, the most popular children's names are George and Georgia (after Romero), notification of death by zombie is automatically uploaded to the CDC, nobody under 40 is comfortable in a crowd and, crucially for the story, online bloggers have replaced traditional newspapers as the primary source of news.

It's a crucial consideration because the reader's viewpoint is that of one of the top news bloggers covering the Republican favourite candidate in a US presidential election (there's little mention of the Democrats, which quite neatly highlights the increasingly right-wing, paranoid America created by the zombie threat). Gonzo journalism is the norm - maintaining a distance from the news is seen as a negative in many ways - and Georgia and Shaun, brother and sister bloggers (he an Irwin who throws himself directly into harm's way to get the story, she a straight Newsie) and their team are amongst the very best. The invitation to join front-runner Senator Ryman's campaign catapults them to the top of the pile, but at the same time exposes them to deadly danger as they unearth a widespread and potentially life-threatening conspiracy.

Grant keeps a fairly tight rein on her story, with a series of reveals which seem, in retrospect, to be pretty standard for the genre but on which she puts an interesting spin. And she's also not afraid to put her characters at risk, even to death, which keeps the zombie threat to the fore. If I had one complaint it's that an editor should have caught the couple of times when she repeats the exact same information within a page or two (about the Sacramento State Fair, for example), but that's a minor quibble amongst an ocean of positives.

There's a sequel out later this year which I'll definitely be picking up. highly recommended.

Catching Up - Books, Movies and Television

Well I finally put the Faction Paradox book to bed, after a weekend of proof-reading and fiddling with the PDF, then sent it off to the printers. Which means it's time for a bit of a catch-up on what I've been reading and watching over the past month or two, while I've had little time for posting on here.

Let's see...

Two books featuring Oscar Wilde as a character: Willie Rushton's only novel, WG Grace's Last Case and one of Gyles Brandreth's Oscar Wilde Mysteries.

The Rushton was the better of the two: a caddish cricketer dies with an Indian arrow in his back while running up to bowl to WG Grace, and so Grace regales Inspector Lestrade and Dr Watson with the tale of his travels across America some years previously in the company of AJ Raffles, Oscar Wilde and others and explains exactly what relevance that trip has to the current murder. If you like Rushton's humour in general, then you'll love this early stab at a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen style adventure.

The Brandreth book is considerably more sensible in every respect, and suffers because of it. It's a common enough trick nowadays to grab AN Literary Figure and make him a detective of some sort, but it's a far more difficult trick to do so and actually make the Literary Figure serve a genuine purpose. Brandreth nearly manages it, but he spends so much time ensuring Oscar rings true that at times it seemed too implausible that he would also be the great detective he proves himself to be in the book. It's pleasantly written, very sympathetic to Wilde and full of interesting background on late 19th century theatre, but perhaps because of the latter, it's a little stuffy, doesn't flow as well as it might and the solution was a tiny bit obvious, meaning I ended up reading it in fits and starts, picking it up largely on the basis that it was to hand, rather than a genuine desire to plunge back into the narrative. Worth a read, certainly, but if it's a choice between the two books, go with Willie Rushton.

A series of monologues about the Crucifixion: Tales from the Madhouse.

Tales from the Madhouse is a short series of 18 minute monologues in which the major figures in the Easter story are relocated from the middle east to a Victorian English madhouse, where they describe in retrospect their actions in Jerusalem and the impact those actions had on one Jewish mystic. I can't recommend this highly enough. The writing is wonderfully rich, the translocation from Judea to England deftly handled and the acting, from the likes of James Cosmo, Claire Bloom and Joss Ackland, is absolutely top-notch.

Shamefully this sn't out on a commercial DVD, even though - for instance - every episode of 'Two Pints of Lager' is. Clearly, there is no God.


Books about old films: '50 Years of Carry On' - Richard Webber and 'So You Want to be in Pictures' - Val Guest

Richard Webber is probably my favourite tv writer. It helps that he seems exclusively to write about things I love - Dads Army, Carry On, Porridge, Hancock, Are You Being Served? and more - but more importantly, he writes about stuff which he loves. And it shows. 'What a Carry On' charts the movies all the way from the excellent 'Carry on Sergeant' in 1958 to the abysmal 'Carry on Columbus' in 1992, with a lot of detail on the development of the series by Rogers and Thomas, and on the interactions of the various stars. It's quite a dry read but never less than interesting, and Webber avoids the temptation to write a blinkered hagiography (who but fans are likely to buy the book, after all?) and rightly slates the films made after the departure of Talbot Rothwell, and points out the failings of the occasional Big Names pulled in to add star cachet to the regulars.

So You Want to be in Pictures should have been great but even though it falls short of that, it still manages to be pretty bloody good. Val Guest directed some of the seminal British stars and movies of the first half of the twentieth century, including one of my all time favourite films, Will Hay vehicle, 'Oh! Mr Porter' and several Hammer movies, as well as workign in the States during the Hollywood golden age. It's no surprise therefore that his autobiography is packed full of anecdotes, backstage gossip and forgotten tales of the black and white era. Compulsive name dropping, a vivid, chatty writing style and a consistently positive attitude towards everything he encounters makes this my current favourite film biography. If you've got any interest in Gainsborough movies, Hammer or Will Hay (or any number of other things, actually), pick up a copy of this book...

Cartoon Movies

Rio - Was OK. Pretty standard cartoon movie fayre, with almost nothing worth noting expecially, but wildly popular with my kids for some reason. The very definition of 'Will make more money via lunchboxes and free toys in Macdonalds Kiddie Meal boxes than in the cinema).

Rango - Was brilliant, Like David Lynch made a cartoon with Sergio Leone filtered through Tod Browning. Possibly with the intervention of some French cinematographer. it looks wonderful, all washed out dustbowl colours and strangely deformed talking animals. It's got a cinematic feel to the direction which is rare - actually, unknown - outside a Pixar film, and it features The Man with No Name as the Spirit of the West. Anyone want to argue that's not the Best Thing Ever?

Crossroads, Kojak and The Wood

It's been a week of books about tv and pulpy horror. Steve Cole kindly sent me a copy of the massive Goodies book, Super Chaps Three, which I'm currently making my way through while simultaneously watching the series from the start. And then Johnny Mains, horror geek extraordinaire, sent me a big envelope stuffed full of the kind of cheap, trashy books I love. Finally, a slight tidy up of my 'office' pushed a Mac Hulke Crossroads novel which Paul Magrs gave me at Christmas to the top of the To Be Read pile.

First though I read Kojak: Reqiuem for a Cop from Johnny's parcel of mental paperbacks. It's not a tv series I ever cared much for, and I wasn't expecting more than a straight copy of the tv script , but instead the book is written as a kind of hardboiled first person narrative. Kojak talks like Sam Spade at times as he investigates the murder of an old friend, full of stylised threats of violence and evocative sketches of the city, playing the unconventional, rebellious loner card to the full and leaving a trail of battered bodies in his wake. At times it even reminded me of Chester Himes' Coffin Ed books. Actually, that's perhaps pushing it a bit far. There is something reminiscent of Himes, but it's be wild hyperbole to claim that this was as good as Himes' fantastic crime novels. And there's an unpleasant homophobia at play throughout which leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Still, as novelisations of tv scripts go, there's a lot more effort been put into this than a reader thirty years later has any reason to expect.

Crossroads: A Warm Breeze on the other hand is exactly what I would have imagined a Mac Hulke penned Crossroads novel would be like. Astonishingly bonkers source material (in one section Meg and former motel manager Kevin crash their plain in what is effectively a hidden valley and there discover a house where nothing has changed since World War I!) combined with Hulke's fantastic prose style and desire to inject left wing rhetoric into everything he wrote, make for the sort of book you just have to read to the end in one go.

It's enormously funny, full of asides and sly nods from Hulke, but with a definite air of the sinister about it. The waitress Josefina's belief that the English postal service are censoring her husband's mail in the manner of Franco and the way she checks under the stamps on the envelopes for the smuggled out truth, combines this mix of the witty and the worrying perfectly, but the book is littered with examples of Hulke's subtle layering of jokes and social commentary.

Elsewhere, poison pen letters accusing Meg of murder arrive in the same week that a figure in the dark attempts to assault various female members of the motel staff, and a Spanish couple who work in the kitchens find themselves the victims of racism and intimidation. And yet this juxtaposition of the comic and the creepy never feels forced or imbalanced, even at the end where it all goes a bit 'Twin Peaks' of all things!

Hulke's simply a good writer, incapable of writing rubbish and as a result 'A Warm Breeze' is a bit of a mini-triumph.

Another good writer playing his trade at the less well thought of end of the fiction marker is Guy N Smith, legendary author of 'Night of the Crabs' and other creepy, slightly minging horror novels.

Big admission up front - I'm not very knowledgeable about horror novels. Even as a kid, although I read King, Herbert and a couple of other big name horror writers, I wasn't what you would call much of a fan. It always seemed a bit predictable and backwards and needlessly gory - give me a spaceship over a graveyard, any day.

The Wood doesn't start particularly promisingly either, to be honest. Unpleasantly voyeuristic rape scene combined with spooky wood outside little village sums up the brutal end of 70s horror for me.

As it turns out though, this is a strangely dream-like book, with very well imagined overlapping realities and a lovely turn of phrase - 'His instinct surfaced, defied surrealism' is not, for instance, a line you'd expect in a producton line horror novel, at least in my mind. Smith actually has a very distinctive voice (which he uses to better effect for internal monologue than dialogue, if I'm being honest - the dialogue is the weakest part of the book for me) frequently utilising sentences witha fairly uncommon structure ('Starting to panic as an awful realisation dawned on him: life sentence.', 'Blank, terror stricken stares; the boy starting to sob.') to excellent effect. But it's the manner in which the various time periods overlap and integrate into one another which brought it home to me that horror novels needn't all be yawn-inducing clowns, plagues of unlikely killer insects or repulsively misogynistic rape fantasies. Really, I went into this expecting to give up half way through, but I ended up ripping through it, and I intend to move onto more Smith books in the near future.

That's this week's reading then - two tv novelisations and a cheapy horror paperback. And every one of them more enjoyable than the latest weighty, worthy, pompous Salman Rushdie tome.

Erasing Sherlock - Kelly Hale (2008)

There's one truly shocking line in the otherwise brilliant Erasing Sherlock, a sentence so unbelievably bad, so implausible and unlikely, that it suspends belief for a second, jerks the reader out of the narrative and leaves him glaring at the page, daring the words to re-assemble themselves into something which more nearly approximates to a sensible universe.

'After 3o years of writing short stories, Kelly Hale has had two published'

The Author's Note also mentions one novel co-authored for the BBC Doctor Who range and, of course, the current volume, in the copy to hand the penultimate novel in the Faction Paradox range of loosely linked novels.

One and a half novels and two short stories (actually now three, after I had the pleasure of publishing the quite lovely 'Big Horn Casino' in Iris: Abroad last year) in 30 years for a writer as talented as Kelly Hale? That's horrible.

Anyway, enough of the soapbox stuff - what about Erasing Sherlock?

First thing to point out is that if anybody's worried that they don't know a bloody thing about this Faction Paradox malarkey, don't worry. As with all the best Faction stories, ES has only the most tenuous link to anything else in the series and, in truth, the actual Faction stuff occurs only very late on and has a very 'tacked on' feel to it (presumably the new Kindle version of the book removes the Faction entirely which will, I suspect, make it an even better book).

The second thing worth noting is that it's a fabulous novel, not a fabulous science fiction novel or a fabulous Sherlock Holmes sequel. True enough, it's the story of a modern day academic who goes back in time to study the real life Sherlock Holmes as part of her doctoral thesis into 19th century crime. But, no matter how that sounds, this is neither merely competent genre fiction nor simple above average pastiche.

Holmes and Watson live and breathe in this book in a way that brings to mind Conan Doyle himself rather than the ranks of hacks and cash-in artists who followed him, and Hale has clearly studied the more seedy elements of Victorian society and demonstrates that study on the page to great effect. Gillian Petra is a believable heroine and the story itself is a fascinating one, moving from serial killing in smog bound London to torture and murder near Krakatoa as it erupts and covers the world in ash.

But at the heart of the book is the relationship between Holmes, Watson and Petra. Hale thankfully doesn't shy away from...well, from anything. Actually, maybe it's that which prevented this novel from being a deservedly massive hit. Where it should have picked up impetus from Sherlockians desperate for new Holmesian adventures, it possibly scared them away by talking about - the horror! - periods, rape and masturbation, and by depicting the Great Detective as a sexual human being. But the fact is that, as with Hale's portrayal of Watson, nothing in the characterisation of Holmes feels askew. Rather, Holmes suddenly feels imbued with a third dimension (for reference, playing the fiddle and being a bit of a junkie do not a genuine personality make) and Watson becomes more than a mere cypher.

'I have a fondness for the game - the challenge and the chase - which I fear will fade once the puzzle of you has been pieced together...It is craven of me to want you the way I do, when I know I will not when you cease to be a mystery to me.'

I drew one hand dramatically across my brow. 'You have no affection for me? Mon Dieu. I shall die!' His mouth pursed in annoyance. 'If this is supposed to be an apology, it's a piss-poor one.'

Erasing Sherlock is a more up to date and modern take on Sherlock Holmes than the recent Robert Downey Jr movie or anything from the past 100 or so years of sequels, parodies and pastiches (though you can spot certain similarities with the new BBC tv series written, co-incidentally, by another couple of Doctor Who writers). As demonstrated by it's change from a prize winning entry in the North American Fiction prize in 2000, to its existence as a Faction Paradox novel in 2008 and now a Kindle standalone novel in 2011, it's good enough to work on any number of levels and with any amount of different emphases.

Seriously though - three short stories and one and half novels in thirty years? That's a bloody disgrace. Someone give this woman a three novel contract, now!

You can buy Erasing Sherlock for Kindle here (not for the superior epub format though, which is something which needs fixed)

Moriarty - John Gardner (2008)

The big list of Stuff I Like includes Doctor Who, David Bowie, historical fiction, seventies telly and classic crime novels (a combination of all of these in one would be the perfect product for me). So I'm inclined to be attracted to things like John Gardener's 'Moriarty', the third and final book in a series which tracks the career of Sherlock Holmes' nemesis after he (allegedly) survived his encounter with the Great detective at the Reichenbach Falls.

Don't be put off by the fact this is the end of the series, btw. The first two books were written in the 1970s and the main connections between those and this book are explained by the author's preface. It's enough to know that Moriarty is back in London after a spell in the States and is looking to take his criminal empire back from one Sir Jack Idell ('Idle Jack') who has taken his place as London crime Kingpin.

Having read one of Gardner's Bond books and finding it...unassuming at best, I picked up this book cheaply in an excellent remainder bookshop just outside Manchester (on a cold, misty night in the good company of Paul, George and Jeremy, which made book buying all the more pleasurable), attracted byt he subject matter far more than the writer. And I'm glad I did. It's the sort of book I find myself gobbling up greedily, delaying putting the kids to bed to finish the chapter, walking slowly to the shops so I can read another couple of pages on the way, hiding in the bedroom to read just a little more. The writing is assured and never descends to pastiche and Gardner has clearly done his research (even including a glossary at the end).

What sets this apart form many other Holmes' sequels I've read (apart from the almost complete absence of Holmes!) is the set of characters who inhabit the book like very slightly shop-soiled Dickensian figures. Armies of punishers and dippers, lurkers and cracksmen create a backdrop against which Moriarty and his Praetorian Guard plot and scheme against Idle Jack and his minions, and in which disfigurement, torture and death seem a commonplace, even if love and humour also flourish in the most unlikely of places. It's a wonderfully immersive book, and an easy one to get lost in, as all good books should be.

The first two in the series seem to be quite expensive second-hand, but I'll be buying them in any case. Highly recommended.

Current Reading, dispersed round the house

We've been decorating like mad round ours for the past week or two. People have been flooding the house at all hours, building walls and putting up kitchens and moving radiators and every other peace and quiet ruining thing you can do in a house.

As a result, my 'study' (for which read sort of corridor space with a cupboard on one side and bookcases on the other) has been used as a dumping ground for anything which needs taken out of the way of various tradesmen. Which means also that my usual pile of books I'm reading has been disturbed and the various individual titles scattered round the house like a papery Key to Time.

All of which really brought home to me what a lot of books I have going at the same time. Just from last week I'm part way through (in one case just finished, tbh):

• Bowie, Bolan and the Brooklyn Boy (Tony Visconti's autobiography - fascinating and full of great anecdotes but also full of real dribbling nonsense about ghost and auras and the like).
• Memories, Grave and Gay (a memoir published in 1904 by a former Scottish Schools Inspector -odd thought that this book, which I think of as being 'modern' since it was published in the 20th century, is about a period closer to the Jacobite Rebellion than today)
• The Fires of Fu Manchu (continuation of Sax Rohmer's series by his friend Cay Van Ash - there is another in the series which also features Sherlock Holmes, which Paul reckons is even better)
• Connections (chick lit short story collection by Sheila O'Flanagan which is more amusing than most even for a neanderthal like myself)
• Kobayashi Maru (pretty standard Star Trek fayre, though since it's about the awesome first ENTERPRISE crew, it's better than most)
• WG Grace's Last Case (Willie Rushton penned pre-cursor to Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - just started this and it's brilliant)
  
• Mystery Mile (one of the several Campion's I haven't read - good as ever)
• From Hell (a re-read of the graphic novel, after recommending it the other day)
  

plus sundry other things - Faction Paradox short stories, sitcom script books, Senor 105 proof collections and so on - either on the ebook reader or for occasional dipping into beside my bed.

Is this a normal style of reading, I wonder? I bet it is for anyone who really likes to read, after all you need to have something to read close to hand at all times...

The Long Weekend

My pal Scott likes to come up with a meme every New Year that he casts out onto the Internet in hopes of starting a fad. Last year it was make up an Amazon Basket of great books for under £50 or something, this year it's make a Spotify Playlist with a song which reminds you of every year of your life. I was actually tempted to do the latter - and I may yet - but I can barely remember last week half the time so it seemed more trouble than it was worth.

What did pop into my head though was the idea of books that bring certain periods to mind. Like I mentioned the other day, the mobile library reminds me so much of being a kid, looking through the net curtains in the kitchen, waiting for the library to pull up in our square, then the dash downstairs and back up with the permitted three books in my hands.

But certain books remind me of far more specific times.

Just before I left University, I was involved in the death throes of a relationship that had lasted me since the first week of second year. We'd drifted apart, as you do when you're twenty, and though we were still going out officially, we were really just friends. She'd got a room in a flat in town though, right above the old James Thins Bookshop and I'd gone round one Friday night after the pub. Next day we lay in bed all day, hungover, reading Laura Ingalls Wilder books, one after the other, in order. When I finished one I'd give it to her and then quickly get dressed, nip downstairs to buy the next one, then head back for bed.

All weekend we did that, following Laura from the Big Woods of Wisconsin, to Plum Creek and Silver Lake, then into town at Walnut Grove. It felt like watching a great long rambling movie, or a soapy mini-series - but one filled with right-wing Christian Americans, hating the Injuns and Big Government and loving the flag and self-sufficiency.

Laura lost in a blizzard and Pa on the march for work, the Long Winter and Mary going blind, Laura marrying Almanzo and then watching him cripple himself in a storm - over that long weekend we saw all of this unfold, buoyed up with innumerable cups of tea and hundreds of Malboro cigarettes.

And then, suddenly, almost unexpectedly, the books were finished and so were we...

All praise the t'internet...

I've been reading all sorts of little bits and pieces recently. Short books and easy reads, tv tie-ins and paperback novelisations, loads of the sorts of books which tend to accumulate in precarious piles in what I laughingly call my study, picked up for a penny plus postage from Amazon Marketplace or on eBay for a pound. Stuffed into second hand padded envelopes, sealed shut with masking tape and with my name scrawled over the top of somebody else's address in huge black felt-tip letters.

Which is one of the best things about the Internet actually. Once upon a time, books I vaguely remembered from my childhood remained forever beyond reach. There was no way of checking the exact title of that book about the two kids hiding in a museum, never mind actually owning a copy. And the only place to buy old books was in second hand book shops, a bus journey away, with no guarantee of anything beyond multiple copies of Catherine Cookson novels and little chance of the sort of thing I wanted to read - pulp science fiction and schlocky horror.

As a result I read and re-read the same 100 or so books over and over again, occasionally adding to that total via jumble sales and presents from relations. Come the internet though...

In the past week parcels have arrived with copies of old Fu Manchu novels, Secret Army novelisations, Sexton Blake short stories and Dads Army annuals. Last week brought a Roald Dahl, a biography of Peter Purves, a pile of magazines and a strange looking little book about killers on Victorian trains. All of which I'm currently reading in my usual half a dozen books at a time style ands which I'll probably mention on here over the next week or two.

And the insttant gratification of it all! Read a blog review of an ancient kids' book or the biography of an obscure 70s sitcom star and two clicks later you're on eBay or Abe or Amazon or Play, typing in your credit card details and buying the book. It may take a day or a fortnight to get into your hands but the ease of purchase and the speed is the thing - maybe it;s just me, but once it's bought I think of a book as mine even if I can't actually read it yet.

Best of all are those purchases you forget about until a bulky parcel arrive sin the postie's hand and it tunrns out to be a passing fancy you can't even remember buying. Bliss!

From the current pile of recent arrivals I just finished the Secret Army book, Kessler, which was excellent - very much John Brason's view of the character and series rather than the one strictly seen on screen but none the worse for that. The story is slight, to be honest, and secondary to a fascinating study of a fictional character who was so well written that it's far easier to believe in his actual existence than it is for many real Nazis in genuine history books. I'd probably never have got a copy of this from a secondhand bookshop - thank God for the internet...

A Plethora of Puffins

Some things will always remind of being ill as a child. Lying on the settee in the middle of the afternoon, hypnotised by the brown and orange palette of Crown Court, eating saps (white bread soaked in hot milk and sprinkled with sugar) on a tray, the smell of wet clothes hung out in front of the fire - and reading books full of stories of people caught up in unlikely adventures.

Sometimes the books came in carrier bags from my nana, paperback Louis L’Amour westerns, nicotine yellow at the edges, with pencil drawn front covers of dusty cowboys; sometimes library books from the mobile library, wrapped in clear plastic to keep them safe as they passed through a multitude of grubby hands, chosen by my dad and so likely to be Rudyard Kipling or Arthur Ransome, wholesome adventures of posh kids I didn’t really recognise; even occasionally brand new books from W H Smith or Menzies (though in those cases they were invariably Target Doctor Who books. They had to be or the disappointment would undoubtedly have caused a relapse).

My favourite books, though, were what seemed to be a multitude of Puffins and Penguins full of genteel and inexplicable time travel. Children, often sick and frequently poor, would set off on a journey, and once there they would stumble over something magical, and the journey would become far greater than they could ever have expected.

I quickly learned to spot this kind of book, and when one pitched up I’d start reading with one eye already anticipating the moment at which the magic would begin. As Tolly crossed the floodwaters on the way to Green Knowe or sickly Mary arrived in England from India and explored the Secret Garden; when the Five Children arrived in the country and headed for the beach or unrolled a nursery carpet at home, or when Lucy and Jamie followed Mr Blunden into the countryside – on every occasion I knew that magic was just round the corner.

A journey to the country was frequently a starting point, in fact – a concept I could entirely understand as a young boy living in the high flats on an estate in the city. Of course the countryside was full of mysterious shenanigans and unexpected goings-on! That was obviously the kind of thing that happened there...

Only as an adult though did I find out how many of those books were successful enough to be made into television. Or thought worthy enough, perhaps – I never did know what special quality it was that meant one book was deemed good enough for a BBC serial whilst another book, equally good in my eyes, remained forever unadapted.

I now imagine the transition from page to screen as though the process itself were in a movie, like those wonderful bits in the Disney Winnie the Pooh film where the words on the page fall off in the flood. The images created in my head by the text gradually fade and merge with those on the television, until the one has replaced the other entirely and where once I had been lost in a welter of words now I find myself mesmerised by those characters come alive on the screen.

And there are so many of them! So many classic serials on radio and TV, so many half forgotten books from my younger days which Amazon and the internet have brought back to mind and which the postman has dropped through the letterbox. And at the same time dvd companies seem to be releasing everything I could possibly want to watch. News about dramatisations I never even knew existed seem to appear at fairly regular intervals in newletters and adverts, falling into my Inbox with a satisfying thud.

Moondial, The Phoenix and the Carpet, Red Shift, Children of Green Knowe, The Snow Spider...the list is endless and brilliant and reminds me of being young and having enough of a cold to stay off school but not enough to want to waste time sleeping...sitting on the settee under a thick golden quilt with a lion embroidered in one corner, eating Rich Tea with margarine on and reading, reading, reading...