The Secret Hours - Mick Herron

 

Mick Herron's The Secret Hours is a novel that can be read and enjoyed on multiple levels. For some it will serve as a standalone novel, possibly even an introduction to Herron's work and his take on the world of espionage. For others, those readers who have already read all or most of Herron's Slough House series, The Secret Hours will read as the prequel to the series that they've been hoping for for a while now. 

Spies and politicians have always been closely linked, and they do not always agree on exactly which of them should be calling the shots - especially when it comes to means and methods. That's why one disgruntled prime minister decided to form the Monochrome inquiry, a small group tasked with uncovering any "historical over-reaching" by the British spy agencies. And now, just when it seems that the inquiry will come to nothing, the committee learns of something that happened in Berlin in 1994, something that fits the definition of over-reach perfectly.

Herron's story alternates between flashbacks to 1994 that are seen through the eyes of a young agent on her very first assignment and that same agent's witness testimony in the present. What the witness tells the committee will reveal the details of an operation that went so badly that its repercussions were felt at the highest levels of MI5 both then and now. 

But as I say, readers are certain to experience The Secret Hours differently. The novel's premise has all the makings of a standalone spy thriller, and it certainly works well as one, especially for readers who make the effort to keep up with all the character names right from the beginning. But longtime Slough House series readers are going to quickly figure out that there's a lot more there for them than for standalone readers. They will start to recognize characters from the series despite the fact that those characters are working in Berlin under aliases. They will begin to smile to themselves when they realize, that their favorite series characters have not changed a whole lot since this 1994 career-defining fiasco - and they will laugh out loud at the caustic wit and sarcasm they have become so accustomed to in Mick Herron's prose style. 

Personally, I'm grateful that I am caught up on the Slough House series, including novellas and short stories, because The Secret Hours answers so many questions I had about incidents only alluded to to one degree or another in the series books. This is most definitely the series prequel I've been wishing for.

Mick Herron jacket photo

June Reading Highlights and One Disappointment

June worked out pretty well for me as I continued to explore Mick Herron's work, read the latest from one of my all-time favorite authors, and read what I think is the definitive biography of my favorite singer, Merle Haggard. 

It's kind of hard for me to believe that I only so recently discovered Mick Herron's "Slough House" series of novels and short stories because I've now read three of the books. The series is a rather cynical look at international espionage and those who spy for a living, and I've enjoyed reading all three books - and I'm looking forward to reading the series all the way through. 

Merle Haggard is unfamiliar to lots of people who don't believe they have anything in common with real country music (not that watered down stuff called country today...that's not even close to being music, much less authentic country music). But if a person were forced to listen to only one singer for the rest of his life, Haggard would be a good choice. The man was a musical genius who combined his wonderful voice and songwriting skills with his life experience to create some of the most beautiful, and meaningful, music ever recorded. Haggard's life story is so unusual that Marc Eliot's Merle Haggard bio, The Hag, reads like a novel at times.

It was nice to catch up, too, with Anne Tyler again via her latest novel French Braid. This, like most of Tyler's work is an understated look at a Baltimore family over several generations. It's impact begins to hit the reader about three-quarters of the way through, and by the novel's end I found myself truly caring what would happen to these people.

So, these are the ten books I completed in June:

1. Dolphin Junction - Mick Herron - collection of short stories & novellas featuring his series characters - uneven, but fun
2. The Hag - Marc Eliot - maybe the definitive Merle Haggard bio
3. Dead Lions - Mick Herron - "Slough House" #2 - excellent story about Soviet sleeper agents who "wake up" after two decades
4. Trunk Music - Michael Connelly - Harry Bosch #5 in which Harry reconnects with ex-FBI agent Eleanor Wish and they marry
5. Death Be Not Proud - John Gunther - memoir of a father who watched his son fight a brain tumor for 15 months (1947 death)
6. Hidden Depths - Ann Cleeves - Vera Stanhope #3 (2007)
7. The Secret Keepers of Old Depot Grocery - Amanda Cox - heavy-handed Christian novel with boring final third
8. The List - Mick Herron - Novella, "Slough House" #2.5 
9. French Braid - Anne Tyler - Gradual changes in family-tightness over four generations of a Baltimore family 
10. Nightfall - David Goodis - New York noir classic from 1946

I have to say that I was disappointed and bored by The Secret Keepers of Old Depot Grocery but that was more my fault than the author's because I didn't do my homework before getting well into the novel. If I had, I wouldn't have begun it at all because it is part of a genre I try to avoid: "Christian novels." My distaste for these novels has nothing to do with personal faith; I simply find the vast majority of them to be very heavy-handed and predictable. And, as a result, boring.

Nightfall is a 1946 novel that could serve as the blueprint for the entire noir crime genre with its very dark, almost surreal, setting and the way that all of the main characters (cops and crooks, alike) seemed to be doomed in one way or the other. I've been a fan of David Goodis novels ever since reading Dark Passage a while back, and this one is even better than Dark Passage in my estimation.

I spent the last couple of days in June immersed in Deon Meyer's Devil's Peak but didn't finish it up until today, so it will go down as a July read. I only discovered Meyer a couple of weeks ago when I saw that he was featured on the cover of the current issue of Mystery Scene magazine. Meyer is a South African novelist who is translated into English from Afrikaans, and he is brutally honest about the culture in which he lives and writes. I'll try to add something more about him later as time allows.

I hope you are all doing well these days and that things, tough as they can be, are at least slowly returning to the life we so used to take for granted. Still busy here as always, but hoping to speak with you guys soon.

Sam

2022 Reading Log

(For personal reasons, I've been forced to put an unplanned end to Book Chase. I do intend, however, to use the site to keep a record of my reading and will do so via this list - and perhaps other variations. Please feel free to comment in the usual manner if so inclined; I miss book blogging a lot, but I miss our conversation the most...Sam.)

5-Star Books (Ranked within Fiction and Nonfiction):

The Searchers - Alan Le May

Slow Horses Mick Herron

Fight Night - Miriam Toews

Joe Country - Mick Herron

Nightfall - David Goodis

London Rules - Mick Herron

French Braid - Anne Tyler

The Bomb Maker - Thomas Perry

Cobra - Deon Meyer

Spook Street - Mick Herron

Devil's Peak - Deon Meyer

The First Stone - Carsten Jensen

Trunk Music - Michael Connelly

Endangered - C.J. Box

Red Bones - Ann Cleeves

The King Is Dead - Ellery Queen

Raven Black - Ann Cleeves

The Junction Boys - Jim Dent - NF

To Hell with Honor - Larry Sklenar - NF

The Splendid and the Vile - Erik Larson - NF

One Damn Thing After Another - William P. Barr - NF

Stolen Focus - Johann Hari - NF

4-Star Books:

Black Ice - Michael Connelly

Crime Hits Home - Various Authors

Little Big Man - Thomas Berger

Wednesday's Child - Peter Robinson

Get Back - The Beatles

Cold Earth - Ann Cleeves

Harlem Shuffle - Colson Whitehead

Tennison - Lynda La Plante

Innocent Graves - Peter Robinson

White Nights - Ann Cleeves

Cry Macho - N. Richard Nash

Dead Water - Ann Cleeves

Red Handed - Peter Schweizer

The Anthropocene Reviewed - John Green

The Silence - Susan Allott

Murder in Mykonos - Jeffrey Siger

Open Season - C.J. Box

One Writer's Beginnings - Eudora Welty

Grave's End - William Shaw

Angry Mobs and Founding Fathers - Michael E. Newton

Pudd'nhead Wilson - Mark Twain

Last Stand at Saber River - Elmore Leonard

Rediscovering Travel - Seth Kugel

Dolphin Junction - Mick Herron

The Hag - Marc Eliot

Dead Lions - Mick Herron

Death Be Not Proud - John Gunther

Hidden Depths - Ann Cleeves

The List - Mick Herron

Blank Pages - Bernard MacLaverty

Thirteen Hours - Deon Meyer

The Trawlerman - William Shaw

The Ranger - Ace Atkins

Seven Days - Deon Meyer

We Came, We Saw, We Left - Charles Wheelan

Real Tigers - Mick Herron

A String of Beads - Thomas Perry

The Burglar - David Goodis

Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë

Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson

Cold Is the Grave - Peter Robinson

Black Fly Season - Giles Blunt

One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow - Olivia Hawker

All That's Left Unsaid - Tracy Lien

Silent Voices - Ann Cleeves

Bad Actors - Mick Herron

The Woman They Could Not Silence - Kate Moore

3-Star Books:

Expats - Christopher Dickey

The Kings of London - William Shaw

The Illusion of Simple - Charles Forrest Jones

Final Account - Peter Robinson

The Mountain Lion - Jean Stafford

The Dutch Shoe Mystery - Ellery Queen

Black Money - Ross Macdonald

Blue Lightning - Ann Cleeves

Rizzio - Denise Mina

Thin Air - Ann Cleeves

Wild Fire - Ann Cleeves 

Maigret in New York - Georges Simenon

Blood at the Root - Peter Robinson

Savage Run - C.J. Box

Indemnity Only - Sara Paretsky

1979 - Val McDermid

Old Man Country - Thomas R. Cole

The Madness of Crowds - Louise Penny

Back of Beyond - C.J. Box

The Good Daughters - Joyce Maynard

Stupid Things I Won't Do When I Get Old - Steven Petrow

Bridge of Spies - Giles Whittell

Blood Safari - Deon Meyer

In a Dry Season - Peter Robinson

Leave the Grave Green - Deborah Crombie

Vanishing Act - Thomas Perry

Wrong Place, Wrong Time - Gillian McAllister

Bookends - Zibby Owens

Mourn Not Your Dead - Deborah Crombi

Our Country Friends - Gary Shteyngart

The Graduate - Charles Webb

Our Wives Under the Sea - Julia Armfield

Last Summer Boys - Bill Rivers

The Maid - Nita Prose

The Long Way Home - Karen McQuestion

Stargazer - Anne Hillerman

Uprooted - Grace Olmstead 

2-Star Books:

The Words Between Us - Erin Bartels

The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections - Eva Jurczyk

Shadows of Pecan Hollow - Caroline Frost

Sea of Tranquility -  Emily St. John Mandel

Tyrus: A Memoir - Tyrus

The Babes in the Wood - Ruth Rendell

The Secret Keepers of Old Depot Grocery - Amanda Cox

The Woman in the Library - Sulari Gentill

Packing My Library - Alberto Manguel

 January 2022

1. Black Ice - Michael Connelly - Harry Bosch  #2
2. Crime Hits Home - Various Authors - Short Stories
3. Little Big Man - Thomas Berger - Classic Western Novel
4. Wednesday's Child - Peter Robinson - Inspector Banks #6
5. Get Back - The Beatles - Documentary Companion Book
6. Cold Earth - Ann Cleeves -  Jimmy Perez #7
7. The Illusion of Simple - Charles Forrest Jones - Crime Novel
8. Expats - Christopher Dickey - Nonfiction 
9. The Kings of London - William Shaw - Breen & Tozer #2
10. Harlem Shuffle - Colson Whitehead - Crime Novel
11. Raven Black - Ann Cleeves - Jimmy Perez #1
12. The Words Between Us - Erin Bartels - Thriller Romance 

February 

1. The King Is Dead - Ellery Queen - 1952 Classic Mystery
2. The Searchers - Alan Le May - 1954 Classic Western
3. Final Account - Peter Robinson - Inspector Banks #7
4. Tennison - Lynda La Plante - Jane Tennison #4 - Prequel 
5. The Mountain Lion - Jean Stafford - 1947 coming-of-age novel
6. Innocent Graves - Peter Robinson - Inspector Banks #8
7. White Nights - Ann Cleeves - Jimmy Perez #2
8. Stolen Focus - Johann Hari - Big Tech impact on ADD
9. The Dutch Shoe Mystery - Ellery Queen - 1931 Classic Mystery
10. Black Money - Ross Macdonald - 1965 - Lew Archer #13
11. Red Bones - Ann Cleeves - Jimmy Perez #3

March

1. The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections - Eva Jurczyk - Novel about thefts from a university library 
2. Cry Macho -  N. Richard Nash - 1975 novel & 2021 coming-of-age movie starring Clint Eastwood (brilliant book/so-so movie)
3. Blue Lightning - Ann Cleeves - Jimmy Perez #4
4. Shadows of Pecan Hollow - Caroline Frost - Predictable crime/coming-of-age novel set in Southeast Texas
5. Dead Water - Ann Cleeves - Jimmy Perez #5: Jimmy is back
6. Red Handed - Peter Schweizer - How prominent Americans are bribed by the Chinese government and what they do in return
7. The Anthropocene Reviewed - John Green - A revealing memoir disguised as 44 short, unrelated essays
8. Rizzio - Denise Mina - novella, 16th century historical fiction
9. Thin Air - Ann Cleeves - Jimmy Perez #6
10. The Silence - Susan Allott - British mystery set in Australia 

April

1. The First Stone - Carsten Jensen - Danish novel about Afghani war
2. Wild Fire - Ann Cleeves - 8th & Final Jimmy Perez novel - flat 
3. The Junction Boys  - Jim Dent - Coach Bear Bryant's infamous 1954 football camp at Texas A&M (favorite sports book ever)
   
4. Sea of Tranquility - Emily St. John Mandel - time-travel novel in which I never felt a connection to any of the characters
5. Maigret in New York - Georges Simenon - Maigret #27 (1947)
6. Endangered - C. J. Box - Joe Pickett #15; excellently plotted
7. Murder in Mykonos - Jeffrey Siger - CI Andreas Kaldis #1
8. Open Season - C.J. Box - Joe Pickett #1 - Perfect introduction
9. One Writer's Beginnings - Eudora Welty - memoir in three parts
10. Grave's End -  William Shaw - Alex Cupidi # 4 - well written, character-driven crime novel
11. Blood at the Root - Peter Robinson - Inspector Banks #9
12. Angry Mobs and Founding Fathers - Michael E. Newton - a revealing look at the American Revolution

May

1. Savage Run - C.J. Box - Joe Picket #2 - modern range war
2. Pudd'nhead Wilson - Mark Twain - slave-baby & master's-baby switched at birth - lots of social commentary of the times
3. Indemnity Only - Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski #1 - good introduction to series main characters, but mediocre plot 
4. 1979 - Val McDermid - OK 1st book of proposed 10-book series
5. One Damn Thing After Another - William P. Barr - at almost 700 pages, it answered all the questions I had about truth in politics
6. Last Stand at Saber River - Elmore Leonard - excellent character-driven post Civil War novel set in Arizona
7. Old Man Country - Thomas R. Cole - Interviews of elderly men about living into the "4th Age" - somewhat disappointing
8. Rediscovering Travel - Seth Kugel - travel stories and tips from a professional traveler 
9. The Madness of Crowds - Louise Penny - Unnecessarily long, dark post-pandemic novel; Penny may have "jumped the shark"
10. Tyrus: A Memoir - Tyrus - short  memoir that completely manages to ignore the author's marriages and children
11. The Babes in the Wood - Ruth Rendell - excellent mystery until Rendell ruins it by having Wexford recount its climax second-hand: show me, don't tell me  
12. Slow Horses - Mick Herron - excellent tale about group of MI5 castoffs with ideas of their own - Book #1 in Slough House series

June

1. Dolphin Junction - Mick Herron - collection of short stories & novellas featuring his series characters - uneven, but fun
2. The Hag - Marc Eliot - maybe the definitive Merle Haggard bio
3. Dead Lions - Mick Herron - "Slough House" #2 - excellent story about Soviet sleeper agents who "wake up" after two decades
4. Trunk Music - Michael Connelly - Harry Bosch #5 in which Harry reconnects with ex-FBI agent Eleanor Wish and they marry
5. Death Be Not Proud - John Gunther - memoir of a father who watched his son fight a brain tumor for 15 months (1947 death)
6. Hidden Depths - Ann Cleeves - Vera Stanhope #3 (2007)
7. The Secret Keepers of Old Depot Grocery - Amanda Cox - heavy-handed Christian novel with boring final third
8. The List - Mick Herron - Novella, "Slough House" #2.5 
9. French Braid - Anne Tyler - Gradual changes in family-tightness over four generations of a Baltimore family 
10. Nightfall - David Goodis - New York noir classic from 1946

July

1. Devil's Peak - Deon Meyer - Benny Griessel #1 - South African
2. Blank Pages - Bernard MacLaverty - 12 memorable short stories from an excellent Irish author
3. Thirteen Hours - Deon Meyer - Benny Griessel #2 - Two American teens run for their lives in South Africa
4. The Trawlerman - William Shaw - Alex Cupidi #5
5. Back of Beyond - C.J. Box - Standalone set in Yellowstone
6. The Ranger - Ace Atkins - Introduces the Quinn Colson series
7. Seven Days - Deon Meyer - Benny Griessel series #3
8. Cobra - Deon Meyer - Benny Griessel series #4
9. The Splendid and the Vile - Erik Larson - WWII history (1942) focusing on Churchill, Hitler, Goring, and Roosevelt
10. The Bomb Maker - Thomas Perry - crazy bomb-maker tries to wipe out entire LAPD bomb squad

August

1. The Good Daughters - Joyce Maynard - Two very different families share a huge secret for over 50 years
2. We Came, We Saw, We Left - Charles Wheelan - man travels around the world for 9 months with wife & 3 teens - Nonfiction
3. To Hell with Honor - Larry Sklenar - Brilliant explanation of what happened at The Little Big Horn and who was responsible
4. Stupid Things I Won't Do When I Get Old - Steven Petrow - writer vows to practice what he learned from watching his parents age
5. The Woman in the Library - Sulari Gentill - Disappointing mystery using novel-inside-a-novel structure that is stupefyingly formulaic 
6. Real Tigers - Mick Herron - #4 in the terrific Slough House series 
7. A String of Beads - Thomas Perry - Jane Whitefield #8 - Jane hides he childhood Seneca best friend from cops and killers 
8. Bridge of Spies - Giles Whittell - Account of U-2 pilot Gary Powers, his capture by Russia and exchange for Russian spy
9. Blood Safari - Deon Meyer - Second novel in Meyer's Lemmer series about a South African bodyguard
10. In a Dry Season - Peter Robinson - Inspector Banks #10 - a case going back to World War II; Banks meets DS Annie Cabbot
11. Packing My Library - Alberto Manguel - Argentinian author's 10 essays and 10 "digressions" on packing away his personal library

September

1. The Burglar - David Goodis - '50s noir at its best - really gets into the heads of the gang members and what motivates them
2. Leave the Grave Green - Deborah Crombie - Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James #3 - in which the pair get "romantic"
3. Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë - the classic anti-Jane-Austen-novel; filled with dark, cruel, and egotistical characters
4. Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson - nonfiction account of the September 8, 1900 hurricane that almost wiped out the city of Galveston
5. Spook Street - Mick Herron - #5 in Slough House series - proves that this series really does need to be read in order; it's brilliant
6. Vanishing Act - Thomas Perry - Jane Whitefield series #1; Jane fails a client - does not feel as formulaic as the more recent books
7. Wrong Place, Wrong Time - Gillian McAllister - "Can you stop a murder after it happens?" One woman sure hopes so.
8. Cold Is the Grave - Peter Robinson - Inspector Banks #11 - Banks's chief nemesis has his whole family destroyed
9. Bookends - Zibby Owens - found it difficult to feel a lot of empathy for the author of this memoir; not bad, otherwise
10. Mourn Not Your Dead - Deborah Crombie - rather simple mystery in this 4th Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James series novel

October

1. Fight Night - Miriam Toews - novel about a nine-year-old and her grandmother, each who thinks she's taking care of the other
2. Black Fly Season - Giles Blunt - #3 in six-book Canadian detective series featuring John Cardinal of Algonquin Bay
3. One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow - Olivia Hawker - two women are forced to share a single homestead in 1876 snowbound Wyoming if they are to survive - and one hates the other 
4. Our Country Friends - Gary Stheyngart - Friends gather at a New York state estate to quarantine as the world tries to deal with COVID-19 in early 2020 
5. The Graduate - Charles Webb - Pretty much the same plot as the movie, but "Ben" is an obvious sociopath and "Elaine" has mental problems of her own. Now I need to re-watch the movie.

November

1. Our Wives Under the Sea - Julia Armfield - After being trapped in a submarine for five months, a woman returns to her wife
2. Last Summer Boys - Bill Rivers - coming-of-age novel about three brothers and their city-boy cousin in rural PA
3. The Maid - Nita Prose - a somewhere-on-the-spectrum maid in a big hotel discovers a murder victim then plays with everyone's minds, including the reader's
4. The Long Way Home - Karen McQuestion - 4 women, all strangers, drive from Wisconsin to Las Vegas
5. All That's Left Unsaid - Tracy Lien - Set in 1996 small town Australia; explores the Vietnamese immigrant experience 
6. Stargazer - Anne Hillerman - Bernie Manuelito does not believe her old college roommate when she confesses to murder

December

1. Silent Voices - Ann Cleeves - Vera Stanhope #4, in which a woman is strangled in the steam room of Vera's hotel health club
2. Uprooted - Grace Olmstead - nonfiction - the author considers going back to Idaho - a look at declining family farm industry
3. Bad Actors - Mick Herron - When a Russian mole is discovered working with the PM, the scramble to get rid of her is frantic
4. London Rules - Mick Herron - North Korean terrorists use MI5 game-plan in London
5. The Woman They Could Not Silence - Kate Moore - Nonfiction account of woman wrongly confined to insane asylum by husband
6. Joe Country - Mick Herron - Slow Horses' search for son of former colleague's son culminates in bloody Wales snowstorm

Currently Reading: 

• The World Played Chess - Robert Dugoni
• The Marylebone Drop - Mick Herron

Categories:

• E-books - 32
• Audiobooks - 32
• Abandoned - 9
• Translations - 7
• Library Books - 79
• From My Shelves - 28
• Review Copies - 3
• Amazon Prime Loans - 5
• Fiction - 91
• Nonfiction - 24

• Male Authors - 73
• Female Authors - 41
• By Both - 1

• American - 59
• British - 39
• Canadian - 6
• Danish - 1
• French - 1
• South African - 5
• Irish - 1
• Australian - 2
• Argentinian - 1

• 2022 - 19
• 2021 - 18
• 2020 - 3
• 2010s- 31
• 2000s - 14
• 1990s - 14
• 1980s - 1
• 1970s - 1
• 1960s - 3
• 1950s - 4
• 1940s - 4
• 1930s - 1
• 1920s - 0
• 1910s - 0
• 1900s - 0
• 1800s - 2

Pages Read: 

• Jan -    3,348
• Feb -   3,559
• Mar -  3,326
• Apr -   3,466
• May -  3,316
• Jun -    3,229
• Jul -     3,702
• Aug -   3,265
• Sep -    2,774
• Oct -    1,738
• Nov -   2,082
• Dec -    1,991
• Total - 35,896

May Reading: Highlights & Disappointments

It's been a while, guys, but I thought I'd post a really brief recap of my May reading today in hopes that I may hear from some of my old friends out there.

This is what May 2022 looked like for me:

1. Savage Run - C.J. Box - Joe Picket #2 - modern range war
2. Pudd'nhead Wilson - Mark Twain - slave-baby & master's-baby switched at birth - lots of social commentary of the times
3. Indemnity Only - Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski #1 - good introduction to series main characters, but mediocre plot 
4. 1979 - Val McDermid - OK 1st book of proposed 10-book series
5. One Damn Thing After Another - William P. Barr - at almost 700 pages, it answered all the questions I had about truth in politics
6. Last Stand at Saber River - Elmore Leonard - excellent character-driven post Civil War novel set in Arizona
7. Old Man Country - Thomas R. Cole - Interviews of elderly men about living into the "4th Age" - somewhat disappointing
8. Rediscovering Travel - Seth Kugel - travel stories and tips from a professional traveler 
9. The Madness of Crowds - Louise Penny - Unnecessarily long, dark post-pandemic novel; Penny may have "jumped the shark"
10. Tyrus: A Memoir - Tyrus - short  memoir that completely manages to ignore the author's marriages and children
11. The Babes in the Wood - Ruth Rendell - excellent mystery until Rendell ruins it by having Wexford recount its climax second-hand: show me, don't tell me  
12. Slow Horses - Mick Herron - excellent tale about group of MI5 castoffs with ideas of their own - Book #1 in Slough House series

Currently Reading:

• The Splendid and the Vile - Erik Larson
• Dolphin Junction - Mick Herron
• The Hag - Marc Eliot

The book that knocked my sox off last month was Mick Herron's Slow Horses, and I only even became aware of Herron's "Slough House" series because Apple TV decided to make the first book into a six-part series. I was immediately fascinated  by the characters, the actors, and the premise that a bunch of MI5 failures were shunted off to a dump of a building to do nothing but paperwork for the rest of their careers. 

I'm really excited by the series and Herron's writing. Dolphin Junction is a new collection of some of his short stories and novellas, and for the most part, I'm loving those too. I'm also reading a brand new Merle Haggard biography and struggling a bit to get into The Splendid and the Vile by another of my favorite authors, Erik Larson.

I do have to say that I was disappointed by several of my old favorites, specifically by Val McDermid's 1979, Ruth Rendell's The Babes in the Wood, and Louise Penny's The Madness of Crowds. Oh, well, can't win 'em all, I guess. 

Here's hoping all of you had a wonderful reading month and that you are all doing well. I've not been able to check in on your blogs as often as I hoped, but I may surprise you with an appearance soon.

Stay well, guys.

August Reading: Quantity Was There, Quality Not So Much

 

While I did manage to read 11 books during August, a good part of my reading seemed to go more sluggishly than usual. I'm not sure if I simply made some poor choices this month or if it's more a problem with my general attitude. Whichever it was, I'm really looking forward to a fresh start in September...although that's the peak of hurricane season in this part of the country, so it could turn out to be an extra-interesting month. Looking at the ones I finished in August, I'm a bit surprised to see that six are novels and five are nonfiction because I don't usually read nonfiction in that kind of ratio to fiction.

1. The Good Daughters - Joyce Maynard - Two very different families share a huge secret for over 50 years
2. We Came, We Saw, We Left - Charles Wheelan - man travels around the world for 9 months with wife & 3 teens - Nonfiction
3. To Hell with Honor - Larry Sklenar - Brilliant explanation of what happened at The Little Big Horn and who was responsible
4. Stupid Things I Won't Do When I Get Old - Steven Petrow - writer vows to practice what he learned from watching his parents age
5. The Woman in the Library - Sulari Gentill - Disappointing mystery using novel-inside-a-novel structure that is stupefyingly formulaic 
6. Real Tigers - Mick Herron - #4 in the terrific Slough House series 
7. A String of Beads - Thomas Perry - Jane Whitefield #8 - Jane hides he childhood Seneca best friend from cops and killers 
8. Bridge of Spies - Giles Whittell - Account of U-2 pilot Gary Powers, his capture by Russia and exchange for Russian spy
9. Blood Safari - Deon Meyer - Second novel in Meyer's Lemmer series about a South African bodyguard
10. In a Dry Season - Peter Robinson - Inspector Banks #10 - a case going back to World War II; Banks meets DS Annie Cabbot
11. Packing My Library - Alberto Manguel - Argentinian author's 10 essays and 10 "digressions" on packing away his personal library

I think I'm a little disappointed with this lot because even some of my favorite crime writers didn't impress me all that much this month. I read four of my favorites this month: Mick Herron, Deon Meyer, Thomas Perry, and Peter Robinson. Of the four books of theirs, the only one that stands out to me as representative of their best work is Herron's Real Tigers, and based on that one's not-so-promising plot summary I was surprised by how much I liked it. I absolutely loved the first third of Meyer's Blood Safari, but it became a routine thriller after one of the book's two main characters was sent to hospital in a coma - where she stayed for almost the rest of the book. I "liked" Perry's A String of Beads right up until I realized that Jane Whitefield was going to be using the same evasion techniques that she uses in all of the novels featuring her and that she was simply teaching them to a new client. This is only the second Whitefield novel I've read, though, so maybe that criticism is premature. As for Robinson's 10th Inspector Banks novel, it is built around one of the things I like least in fiction: an author "telling" what happened rather than "showing it." In In a Dry Season, Robinson flashes back and forth via an unpublished manuscript that fills in most of the holes from the WWII portion of the novel. And that goes on for about ninety percent of the novel. It became tedious because the "manuscript author" wrote so passionlessly.

And then there were two 2-star books this month: the robotically written The Woman in the Library and the way-over-my-head Packing My Library. I had high hopes for the latter, even to purchasing an e-book copy of it, but it was a real slog for me, and I'm still not sure what I read...or why. The Woman in the Library is so formulaic that it could have been written by a software program. Before that one is over, just about every main character in the novel has been featured in the role of red herring. It just got silly sometimes.

My favorite book of the month turned out to be To Hell with Honor by Larry Sklenar, an in-depth study of exactly what must have happened at the Little Big Horn in 1876 when Custer and most of his 7th Calvary were destroyed. It is very well researched and explains how such a thing could have happened - along with whom was really responsible for the poor decisions made that day by the US Army leadership. It is a real eye-opener, and it's earned a permanent slot on my History bookshelf.

Now that I've come to the end of this month's reading recap, I realize just how "blah" a reading month I really had. Having had only one particularly outstanding book all month long means that September almost has to be better without even trying very hard. 

As August ends, I'm at various stages of reading: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, The Burgler (a 1954 noir novel by David Goodis, Isaac's Storm (Erik Larson's third book), The Three-Cornered War (a Civil War history by Megan Kate Nelson), and Leave the Grave Green by Deborah Crombie. Already, these seem to be going better than almost everything I finished it August.

Bye for now.

What I'm Reading This Week (August 28)

 Despite a busy week that cut deeply into my reading hours, I still somehow managed to read a decent number of pages. That allowed me to complete four of the eight books I came into the week reading (The Revivalists, Satan Is Real, Flags on the Bayou, and The Constant Soldier), and I decided to abandon one other (American Ramble).That means that three (The Librarianist, Cleveland Noir, and Dickens and Prince) will be carried into the new week - and that several newbies will be added:

I've expressed my love of Mary Lawson's novels before, and at least through the first 30 pages I'm happy to see that A Town Called Solace is every bit as good as I'd hoped it would be. It's a complicated story of a still-missing 16-year-old girl who ran away from home. The story unfolds from three different viewpoints: the missing girl's little sister, the old woman who lives next door, and the old woman's thirty-something son who has recently come to town.

Mick Herron is a relatively new favorite of mine, but I've already read almost everything he's had published in the U.S. I am, of course, a big fan of his Slough House series, but Herron's standalones make for exciting reading also. The Secret Hours, set for a September 12 publication date, is one of those standalones. It's all about an investigation of MI5 that reveals a classified 1994 Berlin operation that went horrifically bad and has been covered up for the last thirty years.

I enjoyed reading Somebody's Fool so much a few days ago, that I decided to go back and re-read this first book in Richard Russo's North Bath trilogy. I first read the novel back in the mid-nineties sometime, so believe me when I tell you that other than already being familiar with the recurring characters, it's like reading the novel for the first time. At 560 pages, it's another long one, but reading it so close to finishing the novel that ends the series makes Nobody's Fool read more like a fun prequel than the standalone it must have felt like when I first read it in the nineties.

I have read and enjoyed a couple of Brian Kilmeade's histories in the past, and I'm hoping that I enjoy Teddy and Booker T as much as I enjoyed those. This one is about how much of the country reacted in 1901 when Teddy Roosevelt made the famous Booker T. Washington  part of his inner circle of counselors.  Apparently, both Roosevelt and Washington were surprised by the wave of racist violence that followed Teddy's decision. The book will be published on November 7, 2023.

Those will start me off with seven active books, but I'm already fairly close to finishing two of them, so it's not as ambitious a week as it may appear to be at first glance. I spent most of yesterday at two different urgent care centers with my grandson who suffered a deltoid muscle tear at work early Sunday morning, so I didn't get a lot done reading-wise. I suspect that this new week will happen at a lot slower pace, though - at least I hope so - because it almost has to.