Being off work is a great excuse to catch up with the reading. Unfortunately hospital is not a brilliant place for concentrating on serious fiction but it is a good test for thrillers – can they distract and entertain?
The new Lee Child, Make Me, is some way off his best. Jack Reacher is as tough and clever as ever but it may be that now in his twentieth outing the plots have got a bit threadbare. The much lauded I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes is at nearly 900 pages something of a heavyweight. While some of its plot twists are (a little) preposterous, the narrative drive is good, and the inside view of the Saudi state is pretty shocking. Tim Weaver is an author much lauded by his publisher (Penguin) who has yet to make it big. His latest, What Remains is a long complex London crime novel with plenty of twists and much violence. The best of the lot was a by a new writer, Jason Matthews called Palace of Treason. It’s a tense tightly plotted spy thriller – fiercely anti-Putin and his kleptocratic oligarchy. It is published in January and is definitely one to look forward to.
Next week historical fiction (and other easy convalescent reads….)